The oldest headstones were crumbled, blackened from age and barely legible, marking the plots of those who had perished on the coffin ship, Ruby. Wildflowers and weeds grew rampant there, as if nourished by the dead moldering below. They needed to be cut back from smothering the graves weekly in the spring and summer months. Reverend Atkins paid Mavis Lynch's young neighbor, Charlie Watson, by the hour for the chore. Charlie worked like the dickens, his lean, muscular young body tanning and glistening with sweat under the hot summer sun.

Ruby St. John's tiny coffin was placed in the ground at just after eleven in the morning. The day was bright, sunnier than it had been since October, when winter had swept in from the north and smothered the island under its cold, harsh hand. Spring would soon be here, and though the townspeople had come to mourn, thoughts of rebirth and regrowth—and of the coming summer, long, lazy days spent on the beach and evenings at backyard barbeques and fireworks displays—weren't far from mind. God's plan and all.

The Midwives stood in funeral black to the left of the family, looking appropriately grieved beneath their veils, though inwardly they were quite pleased with themselves.

The county coroner didn't notice he'd performed his autopsy on a china doll stuffed with straw, removing giblets purchased from Sinjin's very own meat department. Nor was the funeral director aware of the embalming fluid oozing from tiny cracks in its porcelain fingers and toes, soaking the pale pink fabric of its belly and bum.

It had been a dreadfully successful glammer, all around. One for the books. Even the parents were none the wiser.

While Mother and the Midwives permitted the reverend to ramble on about his God and his God's only begotten bastard Son—this was after all an important part of the theatrics—Mavis studied Mother and her bastard son from the corner of her eye.

A new plan had been set into motion, of which Mavis Lynch wholeheartedly disapproved. It meant she would need to play her own hand sooner than she hoped. A bold move no one would see coming. A Hail Mary, so to speak.

For the sake of the others, for the sake of the town, Ruby Savage's boy had to die.

"'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,'" the reverend said, allowing his gaze to fall very briefly over the old ladies in black, attempting to gauge their reaction without alerting them. "'That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'"

You keep on peddling that crap, Padre, Mavis thought. But who'll save your soul? With all that you know, and all you've kept secret?

Hugging each other at the edge of the grave, Laura and Sinjin wept as the stainless-steel machine lowered their daughter into the ground. Separately, they had already decided this pregnancy would be their last attempt. Ruby's name had been chosen long before the poor soul had come and gone from this world, a fitting tribute to Barrows Bay and its history, a town that had provided for the St. Johns and been their home. The best little island in the world.