That was an understatement. “It was the start of my insomnia,” she said, flushing hot despite the fact that Izzy must know about it. “I was screaming all the time, too, apparently. Just absolutely out of control. Lena—my aunt—tried to help me. But we barely knew each other.”

“What was the breaking point?”

“I locked myself in the bathroom,” Mia said, her tongue scraping along the roof of her mouth, finding the ridge there, pressing against it to center herself. More than she hated thinking about it, she hated talking about it. The words were rotten and heavy, and she had to force each one out. “I was trying to claw open my wound.”

She held her wrist up, even though her scar was covered.

“I was hospitalized after that,” Mia said. That was the word everyone scrambled for. Hospitalized.

“Where was your mother?” Izzy asked the obvious question.

Mia shook her head. “She didn’t leave the island in those days. The only reason she does now is to see me, and those visits are few and far between.”

“Even though you were . . . hospitalized?”

Pretending not to hear the pause, Mia nodded, knowing Izzy wouldn’t understand. “She was cleaning up my mess anyway.”

Izzy nodded, but Mia could see the impulse to argue still there in the twist of her mouth. She let it die.

“People are going to be . . .” Mia struggled to find the words. She actually didn’t know how anyone would react to seeing her again, but she had a good guess. “I’m telling you all this because they might say something. You might hear rumors.”

She forced herself to meet Izzy’s eyes, her chin up. This was the time for Izzy to bail, if she wanted to.

In the pause that followed, Mia’s bones ached with the weight of it all—the confession, the judgment, the nasty gossip that was sure to haunt her as long as she was on the island. The chance that Izzy might change her mind now that she knew the truth. All of it.

Mia had spent so many years keeping these memories at bay, building walls, brick by brick, to prevent the thoughts from digging their claws into fragile skin. The longer she and Izzy were forced to stay on the island, the quicker those defenses would crumble. The darkness that lay beyond those walls terrified her.

It was why Mia didn’t ever come back, why she’d stopped talking about that night long ago.

The question of what really had happened that night snuck up on her sometimes—when she was distracted, when she wasn’t actively telling herself not to remember—her brain skittering back away from the thought as soon as it caught up. Because she knew, with certainty, that she was terrified of what that answer would be.

Izzy shifted, finally. Cleared her throat. “Yeah, well. Lucky for you, I don’t scare off easily.”

CHAPTER FOUR