She had to be out of her mind.

And though he couldn't deny a creeping suspicion that something was rotten in Barrows Bay—had possibly always been rotten—he wasn't about to buy into her paranoid fantasies wholesale.

The pink Cadillac outside the store. The hole smashed through her front door. Maybe someone was messing with her. Gaslighting her. Trying to drive her crazy. Run her out of town for God knew what.

Or was there something about this place that bred these wild suspicions? A symptom of island life, lived both in isolation from the rest of the world yet never truly alone in such a confined space? Was it the harsh Atlantic winters? The weight of shared secrets kept from outsiders?

He didn't know. But as he walked across town, he felt judgmental stares from behind lacy curtains and crooked blinds. From strangers he passed in the street.

It's Aunt Norma's Them. Sweet-looking old ladies with sharp needles and murder in their eyes. The Barrows Bay Knitting Circle and Murder Syndicate. Knit one, kill one.

Martin laughed aloud, startling an old man trimming hedges, a wide-brimmed straw hat casting his face in shadow like the old lady across the street the night of the fire.

The man seemed to recognize him. Almost said something, then reconsidered it.

His shears went snick! and another branch fell, and in the same instant a fat black spider of terror crawled out from Martin's subconscious, causing him to break into a full run, glancing back at the startled old man, running until he was safely around the corner, behind the hedge, wondering what the hell just happened and why he started running in the first place.

Something about that sound—the terrible sound—had triggered a panic attack. Fight or flight. Run, Marty, run.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd had one so sudden. So severe.

Did the hedge clippers set him off? Remembering something about what Barclay had done to Tish? Or had he known the old man from childhood? What kind of maniac clipped their hedges in March, anyway?

He gave himself a moment to recover, getting his breathing under control in the shade of a large red maple. Thinking back to what Nadine said about living under the shadow of his mother and her friends.

She called them midwives. Not just midwives—the Midwives. With a capital M.

She seemed to be implying Ruby wasn't his mother, just a woman who'd delivered him. That—what?—she'd taken him from his birth mother? A stolen child, like the Yeats poem about faeries stealing children on a leafy island in Sleuth Wood? Come away! O human child.

He felt sudden pity for her. But what could he do? She was leaving the island on the last ferry out. His knowledge of psychology was limited, just enough to serve his literary career and help get him laid. Sheila was infinitely more qualified to help.

But no. That wouldn't fly. He would have to tell her about his encounter, and she'd figure him out right away. She'd probably smell it on him the second he walked in the door, the sex and patchouli. As good a liar as he was, he'd never been able to keep things from her. Just like his mother, in that sense. Sheila could always tell when he'd been with someone. It drove the final wedge in their brief relationship.