She felt familiar in a way that made my heart ache.
Pearl gasped suddenly.
“What?”Anchor asked sharply.
Pearl held up a yellowed, wrinkled piece of newspaper.“I didn’t know… I didn’t know there was a murder on the island?”
Anchor’s entire posture changed.
He sat forward.“What?”
“Here.”Pearl shook the clipping a little.“It says Caleb Token died from drowning on the island.They think it was suspicious, but they didn’t have enough information to say more.”
Caleb?That was a name I had never heard before.
Prime leaned over and grabbed the clipping.“That was twenty-three years ago.”His voice lowered as he looked at me.“You would’ve been three, right?”
My mouth went dry.
Pearl’s brows pulled together.“You don’t think… this is what your memory is about, do you?”
I closed my eyes.
And just like that, the darkness behind my lids flickered into pieces of something half-real, half-buried.
A woman screaming.
A man yelling.
The sound echoing through trees.
I dug deeper.Pressed harder.
Lights.
Headlights pointed at the water.
Shadows spilled across the lake.Lanterns, maybe?Or flashlights?
There was chaos in the memory, but everything was blurry and out of reach, like I was watching it through water.
“Shay?”Prime’s voice called me out of my haze.
“I can’t see anything else,” I whispered, and opened my eyes.
Pearl scooted closer.“What about what the person was saying?Were they words?Or just screaming?”
I searched the edges of the disappearing memory harder than I should have.
“The guy was just… screaming,” I said slowly.“Like he was in trouble.Or… hurt.”
“What about the woman?”Prime asked quietly.
I squinted and tried to pull her voice from the foggy edges of the memory.But it was just noise—sharp, terrified noise.“Just screaming too,” I whispered.“I can’t remember if she was saying anything.”
The frustration hit me all at once.
I opened my eyes and let out a shaky breath, defeated.“I’m sorry.”
