They could never have known how just fitting the name would be, that the ship which had brought so much death to these shores would have as its namesake a child who would perish without ever seeing the results of their ancestors' hardship.

They could never have known her death would give so much more life to the old woman who shared her name. The old woman who now stood with a ghost of a smile hidden beneath her veil, beside her caretaker, her son, and the big city bitch whose meddling had killed their child.

Though it was Barrows Bay tradition to hold a wake, the St. Johns declined. No one could blame them. Their child hadn't lived long enough for her life to be celebrated.

After the funeral service let out—everyone paying their respects to the bereaved, perfunctorily thanking the reverend for his thoughtful words and paying near reverential respect to Martin's mother, as if she'd performed the funeral services herself—nearly everyone went back to their respective homes to reflect on mortality with their spouses and relatives and friends.

Others moved on to the Legion for a stiff drink, while more immersed themselves in various forms of entertainment, unwilling to dwell on death and misery any longer. With this death falling just one day after that nutjob Nadine Hinkley's bizarre run-in with the deer, it was difficult for townsfolk not to wonder if a pall had fallen over Barrows Bay.

Any one of them could be next, at least according to some of the more wary types at the Legion, particularly veterans of the Vietnam War, who had reason to be distrustful.

Though there was no wake, no one could say the island of Barrows Bay didn't pull together during a tragedy. Norma made her famous marinated roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and Ruby baked another strawberry-rhubarb pie. Martin and Sheila left them both on the St. Johns' inner porch alongside dozens of Tupperware dishes, bowls and pans covered with tinfoil or plastic wrap and elastic bands, bottles of wine, vases brimming with flowers, cards with "love" and "condolences" and "deepest sympathies" scrawled hastily, printed neatly or written in cursive inside.

Sinjin stood in the dim light behind the screen door to offer brusque thanks but he didn't invite them in. The sound of Laura's crying issued from within: long, animalistic wails that sounded like they'd already torn her throat out hours earlier.

"This whole thing is just awful, Martin," Sheila said as they descended the steps. They headed somberly down the walkway between beds of last year's dead flowers.

"I can't even imagine what they must be going through right now," he said.

At the sidewalk, they turned left, heading toward the Savage house. They walked under a heavy silence for half a block, until Sheila, thinking of the unfinished booty, finally forced herself to—breech—broach the subject she'd needed to for the past several days.

"I told you I had an abortion, didn't I?" She looked at him askance, anxiously awaiting judgement.