There was a weight to that movement that made my stomach tighten. I knew what was coming. I’d known since Ford showed me last year. Since Bree had gone white and silent and then angry. Since we’d all sat in a room and let the reality settle, and none of us had been able to move for a long minute afterward.
Madden didn’t have that. She had only the name Gwen Busby that lived in every part of this island’s history and in every part of her own.
Ford’s hand hovered over the trackpad. He looked directly at Madden for the first time since we’d sat down. “You sure?”
Madden didn’t hesitate. “Play it.”
Ford clicked.
The second video was worse. Not in quality. It was actually less grainy than the first. Though the light was dimmer, it was still plenty bright to show metal walls behind a trembling body.
Gwen. Just fifteen years old. Duct tape across her mouth. Wrists bound behind her back. Dark hair tangled around her face, eyes huge and wet, darting like an animal trapped in a place it couldn’t understand.
Madden made a sound that wasn’t a word. It didn’t come from her throat so much as from somewhere deep in her chest, the kind of sound you made when your body reacted before your mind could shape it into language.
The camera panned across Gwen’s form with slow deliberation, like the person filming wanted the viewer to see every detail.
Then the off-screen voice spoke.
“You were warned, Busby. We own you now.”
Madden’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. Her whole body locked. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. She sat like she’d been nailed to the couch.
The video cut to black. The TV screen went dark, reflecting all of us back in a distorted, dim mirror. Ford’s laptop cursor hovered. No one moved.
Madden lowered her hand. Her voice was quiet, which was worse than if she’d shouted. “You knew?”
No one answered fast enough.
She turned her head slowly, looking at each of us as if she couldn’t make sense of why the room was full of people who’d sat with this without her. “All this time you knew?” Her gaze landed on me and held. “You knew?”
My chest tightened. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out on the first try because there wasn’t a clean sentence that would fix it. “We didn’t know,” I said, because the words mattered and because the truth mattered even if it was messy. “We suspected.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You saw this.”
“Yes.” I didn’t look away. I didn’t let myself soften it with qualifiers. “We saw it.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
My jaw clenched. “We thought you already had the context.”
“Why would you think that?” Her voice didn’t rise. That was the part that made my blood run colder. She wasn’t spiraling. She was cutting.
Because you’re family, I wanted to say. Because this island devoured your cousin and then fed you a story that everyone could live with, and I assumed the people who loved you would have told you everything they’d learned, even if it tore them apart.
Instead, I said the part that mattered. “We didn’t deliberately keep this from you.”
Madden stared at me like she didn’t believe I could use the word deliberately and mean it.
Gabi shifted, hands twisting in her lap. “Madden?—”
Madden’s head snapped toward her. “You too?”
Gabi’s chin lifted, eyes shining. “Yes.”
“And no one thought I might want to know?”
Willa leaned forward, voice steady. “We weren’t aware you didn’t.”
