He'd forgotten all about his birthmark until just now. Aunt Norma had called it his "mother's mark." This was after his mother had already been taken away. Ruby had mentioned it when she was in the institution—his little "fairy mark," she'd called it. Just what a boy his age had wanted to hear.

The young mother at the table across from him was breastfeeding now. The boy suckled away while his mother continued to text.

They do say women are better multitaskers, he thought idly. No wonder kids these days grow up glued to a screen.

"Anyway," Izzie said. "Let's forget about James Barclay for the moment. Tell me about your childhood. I've read just about every interview you've done and you always skate around anything prior to your mid-teens, your Stratford years. But I did some digging and it turns out you weren't born in Connecticut."

"That's right."

"You were born in a small town nearby," she said, reading from her cell phone. "An island settled by the survivors of a ship carrying dozens of Irish immigrants. It sank in the Rhode Island Sound in... 1847... during the Potato Famine. Back then they called them 'coffin ships,' because of how many people would die on board. But this ship, the Ruby, they called it—that's your mother's name, isn't it?

Martin narrowed his eyes. He couldn't recall having mentioned it to anyone. As far as he knew, his mother's identity was a deep, dark family secret.

"It is," he said.

"Nearly everyone died on this ship, the Ruby, because of an 'unusually vicious storm system,' is what the town historian called it. The few survivors settled on the shore, where they buried their dead. In burial mounds. What the English sometimes called barrows."

She was pausing intermittently for dramatic effect. He nodded for her to get to the point.

"They named the island and the town after these graves," she said, "which I thought was kind of odd but it maybe explains a lot about your morbid fascination with death. You grew up in a town literally named after it. The town of Barrows Bay," she said, holding his gaze with her dark eyes, as if gauging his reaction.

He wouldn't give her the satisfaction. "You did your homework."

Izzie smiled proudly. "I did. And what I also discovered was that you weren't raised by family. A woman by the name of Norma Higgins raised you—who I noticed in a few other interviews you called your aunt, even though she's not a blood relative. This was after your mother, Ruby Savage, was committed to a mental facility for—"

The glass shattered in his hand.

He hadn't even realized he'd been squeezing it. Shards slashed his fingers, his palm, the ice and bourbon burning the wounds. He stood abruptly, instinctively sucking on the deeper gash in his palm. Blood filled his mouth disconcertingly fast as he stared down at the mess.

Izzie pushed her chair away from the table and was eyeing him with fear, as if she thought he might take a chunk of the glass and cut her throat with it.