With every day spent under the Savage roof, Sheila understood more about Ruby and her son. She could see why Ruby would have terrified him as a child. She was quick to judge, opinionated, forceful, brusque, constantly challenging the two of them and always criticizing Norma and Martin. It was no wonder he gravitated toward meek women. Women who wouldn't push back.

What does that say about me? she wondered.

"You're the exception to the rule," she said aloud, almost a war cry, pumping her legs, pushing herself to run harder, faster, the Tupperware slapping against her thigh.

Am I though? From what he said about Tish, it sounded like she was a tough cookie. Aside from her apparent worship of a serial killer of women, which inevitably led to her own death.

Not to mention the bookseller, who'd apparently made many enemies in town with her pushback against the Midwives.

Attraction-repulsion. Unconscious Oedipal urges lead him to seek out women who are very unlike his mother but also very much like his mother.

"Thank you, Dr. Freud, for your thoroughly pedestrian analysis," she said, breathing heavily.

Geraldine's house wasn't much further. Sheila remembered passing it on her first run. It was Ruby who suggested she be the one to return the Tupperware. Martin said he'd run it over in the car but Ruby said Geraldine felt they had left things badly between them at the birthing and she wanted to "bury the hatchet."

Sheila had no intention of allowing Geraldine to butter her up or make her consider dropping the subject, but she did feel it was in her best interest to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. Particularly if they were going to be staying here much longer. With Martin working on a new book—apparently incorporating elements of this town and his own childhood, at least as far as the glimpse she'd gotten at his notepad had hinted—it was likely they'd be here until Barclay was caught again.

Or either him or the two of them were dead.

Making sure the Midwives believed she had no ill will toward them was a wise move, strategically.

She rounded a curve and spotted the mailbox on the right, shaped like a cartoon owl. She stopped at the side of the road and caught her breath, hands on her knees.

Geraldine's house was set back from the road, nestled in the shade of tall pines and a giant red oak tree. The last snowfall still hadn't fully melted and lay in white patches here and there, giving the place a distinct "sweet old lady's cottage" feel. The roof was steep and taller than the entire first story, the siding old, gray cedar shakes. A stone chimney rose from the side nearest the sound.

Sheila walked the gravel path lined with small wooden windmills that spun lazily and plastic and ceramic woodland creatures, from snowy owls to squirrels standing to nibble on plastic acorns. The door knocker was a barn owl.