Sheila ran.

In the city, there were hard sidewalks and cramped streets to clear her mind of distractions, to focus her thoughts on whatever she needed to work out. A trial. A major life event. She usually ran from her apartment in Gramercy to the Central Park Loop and around the Reservoir in a loop-de-loop. When faced with a particularly difficult problem, she might run the Lower Manhattan Loop, with its various monuments.

In Barrows Bay, there were few distractions. This was her third run since they arrived, and she was sure by now she'd seen the entire island, from the sandy peninsula on the northernmost tip to the craggy bluffs and crunchy seashell beaches to the south. She'd run through forests and roads cut through granite. Past grassy fields and crumbled wooden shacks and farmland. Breathing in clean ocean air, spicy conifers, damp earth, diesel fuel from the ferry docks and pungent pig manure from a farm off the main road.

She seemed to be the only runner on the island. Plenty walked, rode bikes, drove ATVs, ramshackle trucks and farm equipment. Most people she passed looked at her as if she were an alien from another planet. Which in a way, she supposed she was—Manhattan was like Mars compared to island life.

Yesterday on her run she tried to work out what to do about the Midwives. Their negligence that caused the death of little Ruby St. John. The main distraction was Barclay. She'd been trying to run him out of her mind since the day she found out he escaped. Their last day in the city she'd arrived home from a run attempting just that when she found the ankh necklace he'd left for her, which had apparently belonged to Letitia May Cotton, his erstwhile accomplice.

It was no good. The killer was ever present in her mind, living rent-free in her amygdala, the fear center, the almond-shaped nuclei where nightmares live. He was next-door neighbors with spiders and creaky stairs and her mother's china dolls and all the other things that frightened her.

Today she ran with a secondary purpose. She was returning a Tupperware.

Geraldine MacKenna lived close to the ferry docks on the northwestern face of the island. Sheila wasn't looking forward to conversing with the old woman, particularly after what Martin said about the way they'd barged into the house yesterday and force fed his mother some kind of vile-smelling meat and herb concoction, neglecting the advice of the doctor to keep her off solid foods for several days.

This morning Ruby seemed fine. Someone who didn't know better might have considered the change miraculous. But Sheila knew medical "miracles" happened often. The human body had an incredible power to heal itself. Mind over matter worked, as evidenced by the placebo effect. Thoughts could affect health negatively or positively, depending on the severity of the illness.

Ruby was a strong-willed woman. She had simply willed herself well.