Page 181 of Secrets Along the Shore
I started up the stairs. My boots hit the steps, and I felt myself mentally return to these stairs to my own room, something I never hadat the school. It felt like I was walking through someone else’s life and not my own memories. At the top, I turned left. Second door on the right.
My bedroom.
I pushed it open. The door stuck for a second like it didn’t want to let me in. Then the hinges gave way, and the room opened around me.
Everything was smaller than I remembered and yet just as I left it. The bed with the carved posts. The dresser with the sticky top drawer. The chair in the corner where I used to sit and read books from the library below. Dust floated in the air like ash, catching the slant of sunlight that poured through the lake-facing window.
And there it was.
Theirhouse.
The sisters’ lodge stood across the water, proud and regal, its white wraparound porch facing directly into mine. Like we were always meant to see each other. Like our lives were connected in some invisible line across the lake.
I took a step closer to the window, peering through the smudged glass.
The house looked unchanged. A little weathered, maybe. The shutters needed paint. But the structure stood strong, the yard still trimmed, the dock still jutting into the water like an arm reaching out.
Were they still there?
WasBecca?
After her sister disappeared, I never saw her again. There were rumors, of course. Whispers. That the family moved. That Becca had a breakdown. That she’d accused someone, but no charges were ever filed. The authorities deemed the drowning an accident. The story faded like old paint, and no one ever talked about it again.
ButIremembered.
Even if my memories came in pieces—in flashes. Like dreams caught in a broken kaleidoscope. I’d see her—Becca’s sister—standing on the stairs, barefoot, wearing that pink nightgown with the little birds stitched across the hem. She’d look at me, eyes wide and frightened, then turn and row away.
I always followed into the dark. And then nothing.
Always nothing.
I tried to tell myself it was just a dream. That I’d built a memory around the silence of that night, filled in the blanks with guilt and imagination. But part of me didn’t believe that.
Part of me feared the truth.
I took a step back from the window, from the Bishop house, and I shook my head, hard. I needed to focus on the task at hand.
The place needed to be cleaned, appraised, listed. It would take time. But I’d make it fast. I’d find a real estate agent. Sell it off. Donate every penny to the school. Wipe my hands clean.
But a splinter of doubt wormed its way in.
Why hadn’t he left it to the school directly if he really had no one in his family to leave it to?
Was I really…favored?
I didn’t want to think so. Didn’t want to believe there was a reason I was selected every summer while others weren’t. That Scanlon had singled me out, not for my achievements but for something else.
I dropped my duffel on the bed and stepped out of the room.
Back in the hallway, I returned to the landing. Halfway down the stairs, I stopped with the memory surfacing again. A flash—Becca’s sister at the top of the stairs, her small hand gripping the railing. The blink of a flashlight. Her eyes locking with mine.
And then she was gone—vanished like a whisper in the fog over the water.
I gripped the banister, breath held in my throat.Stop it.You’re imagining things.These walls were soaked in memories. That’s all this was. Being here was bringing that time—those girls—back to my thoughts. I turned away and walked toward the kitchen, needing a task. Something physical. Somethingreal. I found a half-used bottle of dish soap, some rags under the sink, and started scrubbing down the counters and cabinets. The wood there was rich and dark, smooth under years of polish, now dulled by neglect.
As I cleaned, my eyes kept drifting to the window. To the water between us. Totheirdock. To their house. I told myself it was just a house. Wood and windows.
It didn’tmeananything.
