You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

PART IV
BEA

Bea hadn’t want­ed to do din­ner with Blanche and Tripp tonight, but tra­di­tion is tra­di­tion, and this
is theirs—every oth­er Thurs­day night, the four of them meet up some­where. Tonight, it’s a new
place in Home­wood, fan­cy bar­be­cue, over­priced drinks. They sit out­side in a court­yard at a
wrought-iron table, fairy lights in the trees, and Bea fights the urge to check her phone every ten
min­utes.
She’s start­ed to real­ize how lit­tle she actu­al­ly has in com­mon with Blanche these days, and lord
knows, Eddie and Tripp don’t have much to talk about. They exhaust foot­ball as a top­ic of
con­ver­sa­tion before the first drinks arrive, and then Tripp launch­es into some dia­tribe about a new
fam­i­ly mov­ing into the neigh­bor­hood, how they’ve put up a bas­ket­ball hoop, how he’s going to
com­plain to the HOA.
Eddie smiles at him, but his voice has an edge to it as he says, “Or you could just let the kids
play in their own dri­ve­way? Maybe the bet­ter option?”
“That’s what I told him,” Blanche says, rolling her eyes and reach­ing over to shove at Tripp’s
arm. She hadn’t shown up half-drunk tonight, and her wine­glass is still most­ly full, which Bea
takes as a good sign.
She also notices that Blanche looks nicer tonight than she has in a while, her make­up sub­tle,
but pret­ty, her sim­ple pink sheath dress mak­ing her com­plex­ion glow.
Anoth­er good sign.
Bea knows Blanche is unhap­py, knows she’s bored with Tripp and Thorn­field Estates and her
life, that all the com­mit­tees and boards she’s signed up for aren’t fill­ing the void, but it’s noth­ing
they’ve been able to talk about. Every time she tries to bring it up, Blanche changes the sub­ject or,
if she’s had too much wine, makes some cat­ty com­ment about Bea work­ing all the time.
But tonight, she’s relaxed, hap­py, and Bea is relieved to see it. Maybe the old Blanche is still in
there after all.
They’ve just got­ten their main cours­es when Blanche says, “You know, we were so inspired by
the work y’all did on your house that Tripp and I were think­ing about doing some ren­o­va­tions of
our own.”
That’s a sur­prise. Bea knows that mon­ey has not exact­ly been abun­dant for the Ingra­hams
late­ly, but it’s not like she can say that out loud.
Appar­ent­ly, she’s not the only one sur­prised. “We were?” Tripp asks. He’s on his third bour­bon
now, lean­ing back in his chair, his food most­ly untouched on his plate, his cheeks red. He’s still
hand­some in his way, but every time they do one of these din­ners, Bea can’t help but think how
much bet­ter Eddie looks in com­par­i­son.
Blanche waves her hus­band away. “I talked to you about it,” she says. “You prob­a­bly just
for­got. Or weren’t lis­ten­ing. Or were drunk.”
There’s the bite Bea has got­ten used to hear­ing in Blanche’s voice when­ev­er she talks to Tripp.
Tripp is used to it, too, though, and he just snorts, tak­ing anoth­er sip of his drink. “Do what
you want, my love,” he tells Blanche. “You always do.”
Ignor­ing him, Blanche leans for­ward, focus­ing on Eddie. “Of course, we’d want you for the
job,” she says, and Eddie grins as he slices his brisket.
“I was going to say, I hope you’re bring­ing this up because you’re plan­ning on hir­ing me,
oth­er­wise this is going to get very awk­ward.”
They all laugh at that, and Bea reach­es over to lay a hand on Eddie’s thigh, squeez­ing slight­ly.
“Your sched­ule is kind of full right now, hon­ey,” she reminds him, and she sees the way Blanche
glances at them, at Bea’s hand there on his leg.
She can’t explain why she doesn’t want Eddie work­ing on Blanche’s house. She wants to tell
her­self that it’s because she knows Blanche and Tripp don’t have the mon­ey, that this is going to be
a waste of everyone’s time, and besides, since she gave Eddie the cap­i­tal to start his con­tract­ing
busi­ness, she has a say in what projects he takes on.
But it’s more than that. There’s some­thing going on here, some­thing she can’t quite put her
fin­ger on.
Some­thing about the hard look in Blanche’s eyes even as she smiles at Bea.
Eddie pats her hand, and goes back to his food. “I can always make time for friends,” he says
eas­i­ly.
Blanche’s smile widens. “Great!” she says. “I already have, oh god, about a hun­dred and five
dif­fer­ent ideas.”
The rest of the din­ner pass­es in some­thing of a blur for Bea. She drinks a lit­tle more than she’s
used to, and she keeps watch­ing Blanche, won­der­ing what this is all about, fight­ing the urge to
blurt out what she knows about Blanche and Tripp’s mon­ey prob­lems.
And when Blanche says, “I’ve always loved how open y’all’s kitchen is. Maybe that’s
some­thing we could do?” Bea comes so close to mak­ing a snide com­ment, she actu­al­ly feels the
words sit­ting heav­i­ly on the tip of her tongue.
Of course, Blanche wants what they have. Of course, their house is nicer. Of course, Blanche
can’t stand it that Bea has come out on top after all these years.
The evening wraps up as it so often does, with Tripp drink­ing too much. This time, it’s bad
enough that Eddie has to help him to the car.
Bea and Eddie are parked on the street while Tripp and Blanche are in the small park­ing lot in
the back of the restau­rant, so Bea goes to the car alone, the keys in her hand.
It’s only when she’s open­ing the pas­sen­ger door that some urge over­takes her, and sud­den­ly
she’s hur­ry­ing across the pave­ment, duck­ing around the side of the restau­rant to the lit­tle lot where
Blanche and Tripp’s car is parked.
She sees Eddie and Blanche clear­ly in the street­lights, stand­ing next to Tripp’s mas­sive SUV.
Eddie must’ve already got­ten him in the back­seat because it’s just the two of them, just her
hus­band and her best friend, stand­ing there.
Blanche is stand­ing close to Eddie, too close, in Bea’s opin­ion, her face awash in the orange
light. She’s smil­ing up at him, and Eddie is smil­ing back.
It’s the same smile he turned on her in Hawaii, the deep one that gives him a trio of wrin­kles at
the cor­ner of his eyes, the smile that had made some­thing in her chest feel warm, because she’d
some­how known he didn’t smile like that at every­one.
That smile she’d thought was just for her, and now it’s Blanche’s, too.
Bea feels numb as she turns away from them, her heels click­ing on the asphalt.
So, this is what Blanche wants. This is what the “ren­o­va­tions” are about.
She doesn’t want Bea’s house.
She wants Bea’s hus­band.

SEPTEMBER, TWO MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE
This is going to sound bizarre (but then again, what about this doesn’t?), but I’m set­tling into a rou­tine
in here.
We’re set­tling into a rou­tine.
Eddie doesn’t come every day, but every three days. Every time is the same. He brings food and
water, enough to get me through until the next time he sees me. Actu­al­ly, more than enough. I’ve got
extra bot­tles of water lined up against the wall.
For the first few weeks, I hoard­ed all of it, rationing out food and water to myself in case he
didn’t come back, but—another bizarre thing—I’ve start­ed to trust that he’s not going to just leave me
up here to starve to death.
He still doesn’t talk to me, though, and there are a mil­lion ques­tions I want to ask him. Not just the
obvi­ous things like, “Why the fuck are you doing this?” but lit­tle things. I want to know what he’s told
the world about me, I want to know what’s hap­pened to South­ern Manors.
Do peo­ple here miss me? Do they miss Blanche?
There has to be some way to get him to talk to me.
I think if I don’t talk to some­one soon, I’m going to lose my mind.
Today, final­ly, a break­through.
Thanks to a shirt, of all things.
When Eddie came to bring me sup­plies, I noticed he was wear­ing the blue dress shirt I got him for
our last anniver­sary. It was the exact same shade of blue as his eyes, which is why I’d bought it, and
he still looked great in it. He’s been look­ing bet­ter in gen­er­al late­ly, more like him­self.
And so I said, “You look good.”
That sur­prised him. Instead of turn­ing away from me, he glanced down at him­self, like he’d just
real­ized what he was wear­ing. Saw the sig­nif­i­cance of it.
“Thanks,” he said at last. “I for­got you got this for me.”
“I got most of your clothes for you,” I replied, “except for that godaw­ful hound­stooth tie you like.
That was all you.”
He smiled a lit­tle at that, his eyes crin­kling at the cor­ners. “I love that tie.”
Well, now you can wear it all the time, I guess.
The words were right there, a pithy come­back, the kind of thing he used to like from me. But I
held my tongue because I knew it would just make him leave. And I need­ed him to stay.
“It did look good on you,” I said. “Which was very irri­tat­ing.”
A snort, then he turned for the door, and was gone. I’d want­ed him to linger, to keep talk­ing, and it
was hard not to feel dis­ap­point­ed. But there was a loose­ness to him as he left that hadn’t been there
when he came in.
It’s a start.
OCTOBER, THREE MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE
Eddie came back today, which sur­prised me. He’d just been here yes­ter­day, and I was used to wait­ing
three days between vis­its, count­ing the time as best as I can up here.
He brought more food and water with him, but I still had plen­ty, and after he dropped them off, he
just stood there by the door for a long while, his hands in his back pock­ets.
“Do you want some more books?” he final­ly asked, and it took me a minute to respond.
“That would be great,” I said, and meant it. He doesn’t know I’ve been using this one as a jour­nal,
and I could real­ly use some more read­ing mate­r­i­al.
He nod­ded and, as he left, said, “Bye, Bea.”
He hasn’t done that before. It’s the first time I’ve heard my own name in weeks.
Anoth­er day, anoth­er vis­it from Eddie. He’s com­ing every day now. Not stay­ing long, and twice now,
he’s been here while I’ve been asleep, and I won­der if that means he’s com­ing at night. I don’t have
the best sense of night and day right now, but I still sleep, and I assume that I must be keep­ing a semi-
reg­u­lar sched­ule. I don’t know why he’d sud­den­ly be com­ing up at night, though.
But no, I told myself that I can’t do that, can’t try to guess at his rea­sons or his motives. If I do
that, I’ll go crazy.
Well, cra­zier.
Eddie stayed for an hour today. Maybe longer.
He didn’t even both­er bring­ing food and water, and for the first time since I woke up in here, I felt
some­thing in my chest loosen, like I could breathe again.
He’d brought me books like he promised, and as soon as he came in, I held up one of them, a
polit­i­cal thriller I remem­bered him read­ing. “This was maybe the stu­pid­est book I’ve ever read,” I
told him, and he crossed the room, tak­ing it from my hand, study­ing the cov­er.
“Is this the one where they replace the pres­i­dent with a clone?”
“It was the vice pres­i­dent,” I remind­ed him, “but yes.”
Read­ing the back, Eddie smiled faint­ly. “I bought it in an air­port. No one can be judged for the
books they buy in air­ports.”
“I remem­ber that,” I said, and sud­den­ly I did. We’d been going to a con­fer­ence in Atlanta. Well,
I’d been going to the con­fer­ence. Eddie had come with me so he could go to some foot­ball game there
the same week­end.
“Women and Lead­er­ship, Lead­ers and Wom­an­hood,” I said. “Some work­shop like that. Three
days of lec­tures with titles like, ‘A Gen­tle Hand: Com­mand­ing Respect with­out Fear,’ and ‘Women on
Top.’”
He smiled. “You hat­ed that shit.”
“I did,” I replied, nod­ding. “That one was espe­cial­ly bad, though.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, remem­ber­ing that week­end, how mis­er­able and bored I’d felt,
over­dressed in my pen­cil skirts, wast­ing my time.
I could still see the woman who led one of the group work­shops, stand­ing in front of us, her hair
short and pre­ma­ture­ly gray, a cream-col­ored cash­mere cardi­gan near­ly swal­low­ing her bird­like
frame.
“We keep so many things in our brains,” she’d said. “More than men do. They’re allowed to only
wor­ry about busi­ness, while we have to wor­ry about busi­ness and our fam­i­lies. Our chil­dren. I bet if
I were to ask a male CEO, ‘How much milk do you have in your fridge right this sec­ond?’ he’d have
no idea. But all of you know.”
The woman had smiled, beatif­ic, then low­ered her voice to a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al whis­per. “You all
know, don’t you?”
A wave of chuck­les and know­ing nods, and I’d looked around think­ing, Are all of you for fuck­ing
real?
I told Eddie that sto­ry now, and he laughed, fold­ing his arms across his chest. “Right, but every
day, when I got back to the room and asked how your day had gone, you’d said, ‘Fine.’”
I shrugged. “What was I sup­posed to say? I was the one who’d cho­sen to go. I didn’t want to
admit that you were right, and it was a waste of time.”
I didn’t add that things had been strained between us then. That we’d been argu­ing more, even
before Blanche and her ren­o­va­tions.
I didn’t want him to remem­ber that.
“That week­end wasn’t exact­ly a bar­rel of laughs for me, either. I end­ed up giv­ing my tick­et to the
Fal­cons game to one of my clients, so I think I most­ly watched ESPN in the hotel room and ate bad
room ser­vice.”
He glanced around then, and I real­ized he was look­ing for a place to sit.
But of course, there wasn’t one, because this wasn’t my par­lor, it was a cell.
A cell he’d made.
Think­ing fast, I pat­ted the bed next to me. “It’s sur­pris­ing­ly com­fy,” I said, smil­ing a lit­tle. This
was the most we’d talked, and I want­ed him like this, relaxed and a lit­tle more open.
He hes­i­tat­ed, and for a moment, I thought he’d leave instead.
Then he sat.
The mat­tress dipped under his weight, mak­ing me lean toward him more, and I caught the scent of
his soap, and under­neath that, the clean, warm smell that was just Eddie.
That week­end in Atlanta hadn’t been all bad. Even with the ten­sion between us, we’d tak­en
advan­tage of that big hotel bed every night.
Things had always been good between us in bed.
Eddie looked over at me, his eyes very blue, and my mouth went dry.
He wasn’t look­ing at me like he hat­ed me, like he want­ed me gone. And there had to be a rea­son I
was still here, after all.
Blanche was dead, while I was alive.
That had to mean some­thing.
“We should’ve gone on more vaca­tions,” I said, let­ting my gaze drift to his lips. “Maybe back to
Hawaii.”
I glanced up at him then, and his face was open to me, final­ly. His eyes warm, his lips part­ed, the
Eddie I knew.
The Eddie I under­stood.
And sud­den­ly the best way to get out of here was very, very clear.

She hadn’t come to Hawaii to meet a guy. She’d come to sit in the sun­shine and drink over­priced
frozen cock­tails. To look out at the Pacif­ic Ocean, which she’d nev­er seen before that trip. In fact,
the only ocean she’d ever been to was the Gulf of Mex­i­co, that one sum­mer Blanche’s fam­i­ly took
her to their place in Orange Beach.
Blanche hadn’t approved of the trip to Hawaii. “It’s tacky,” she’d told Bea, wrin­kling her nose
as she’d tucked her hair behind her ear. “And you can afford bet­ter. Do Bali or some­thing. Fiji,
even.”
But Bea had want­ed Hawaii, so that’s where she’d gone, and Blanche could get fucked with her
judgey face and point­less opin­ions. She was just jeal­ous, any­way. Tripp hadn’t tak­en her any­where
since their hon­ey­moon in Italy, and Bea knew for a fact he was still pay­ing off the cred­it card bills.
But she sat there in her beach chair day after day, look­ing out at the ocean—as blue as she’d
hoped it would be—and Blanche’s words had spun around her mind. Should she have gone
some­where a lit­tle more exot­ic? Some­where hard­er to get to? Some­where where she wasn’t
spend­ing her days avoid­ing fam­i­lies and hon­ey­moon­ers?
It was always a bal­anc­ing act, sep­a­rat­ing the wants of the girl she used to be from the needs of
the woman she was now.
Anoth­er mai tai, too sweet, but she drank it any­way. No, Hawaii was good. Hawaii was
acces­si­ble, and that’s part of what South­ern Manors was sell­ing, right? Class, but in a com­fort­able
way. She might do an entire Hawai­ian line for next sum­mer. Hibis­cus blooms paint­ed on glass
tum­blers. Nap­kin rings in the shape of pineap­ples. A cheeky hula girl print.
Think­ing about work calmed her as it always did, made her brain cease that con­stant cir­cling,
like she was for­ev­er look­ing for the places where she’d stepped wrong, or could step wrong. She
nev­er had that uncer­tain­ty and self-doubt when it came to her busi­ness.
Bea pulled her iPad out of her beach bag where it sat next to the three mag­a­zines and two
books she’d picked up at the air­port, but knew she wouldn’t read.
With­in a few min­utes, she had a page of ideas for the sum­mer line, and was try­ing to think of a
name for the col­lec­tion that would be fun and catchy, but not over­ly cutesy. Anoth­er fine line she
walked all the time, but eas­i­er.
She was on her third attempt (“Some­thing with Blue Hawaii? Too dat­ed?”) when a shad­ow fell
across her chair, and she heard some­one say, “Work­ing at the beach? I’m not sure if that’s
inspir­ing or depress­ing.”
It was the smile that did her in, almost from that first moment. Look­ing up at the man stand­ing
there in striped trunks and a white T‑shirt, one hand casu­al­ly in his pock­et, his sun­glass­es spot­ted
with dried sea­wa­ter, his hair falling over his brow like he was the hero of some rom-com she’d just
stepped into.
Bea smiled back, almost with­out think­ing. Lat­er, she’d real­ize that he was good at that, at
breach­ing walls before you’d even had a chance to put them up, but on that sun­ny after­noon, there
hadn’t been any­thing sin­is­ter about his charm.
“Beats work­ing in an office,” she heard her­self reply, and his grin had deep­ened, reveal­ing a
dim­ple in his left cheek.
“I’ll drink to that,” he replied, and then he was offer­ing her his hand, that smile as bright as
the sun over­head.
“I’m Eddie.”
Eddie. It was a boy’s name, Bea thought, but it suit­ed him because there was some­thing boy­ish
in his smile.
And she liked that. Liked it enough that she let him sit in the emp­ty chair next to her and that
she accept­ed his invi­ta­tion for din­ner that night.
Why not? she’d thought. Wasn’t this the kind of thing that was sup­posed to go along with this
new life of hers? Expen­sive vaca­tions, fan­cy cock­tails, din­ner with a hand­some stranger?
They ate in the hotel restau­rant, near the big plate glass win­dow over­look­ing the sea, the sky a
vio­lent mix of pink, pur­ple, and orange, a can­dle flick­er­ing between them, expen­sive wine sweat­ing
in a buck­et of ice by the table.
Look­ing back, Bea could see how it was almost too per­fect, too much of a roman­tic cliché, but
at the time, it had just felt excit­ing and … right, some­how. Like she was final­ly get­ting every­thing
she deserved.
They talked, and she was sur­prised at how easy it all was. How easy he was. He was from
Maine, orig­i­nal­ly, and loved boats. He was in Hawaii because he had a friend look­ing to get into
the yacht char­ter busi­ness, and they were scout­ing out oth­er com­pa­nies, see­ing how it was done.
And she’d told him about grow­ing up in Alaba­ma, leav­ing out the more South­ern goth­ic aspects
of her child­hood, focus­ing on the fan­cy board­ing school, the debu­tante scene, the all-girls col­lege
she’d attend­ed in South Car­oli­na. As she spun out her tales, she real­ized that she was doing it
again, paper­ing parts of Blanche’s life over the less savory parts of hers, but she’d been in the
habit for so long that it hard­ly reg­is­tered any­more.
Over dessert, laugh­ing sheep­ish­ly, a lit­tle cha­grined, rub­bing his hand over the back of his
neck: “You are real­ly fuck­ing beau­ti­ful.”
Shake of his head. “And I am clear­ly real­ly fuck­ing drunk,” he added.
But he hadn’t been. He’d had one old-fash­ioned ear­li­er, and his wine was most­ly untouched.
Maybe it should have alarmed her, that he was fak­ing being drunk as an excuse to say
some­thing like that to her, a woman he’d just met.
But it didn’t alarm her. It inter­est­ed her. It felt like it might be a hint at a weak­ness in a man
who, from what she could see, had no rea­son to be weak. Good-look­ing, smart, suc­cess­ful …
Bea would even­tu­al­ly find out that he wasn’t in Hawaii “on busi­ness” like he’d said, that the
char­ter yacht idea was clos­er to a pipe dream than an actu­al pur­suit, but by then it was too late
and she didn’t care any­way.
“I’m sure you get that a lot,” he went on, and Bea had looked at him, real­ly looked at him.
His eyes were blue, and there was just a hint of red high on his cheek­bones, from the sun she
thought, not booze or embar­rass­ment.
“I do,” she replied, both because it was true and because she want­ed to see how he’d respond.
If the script he’d come up with in his head had count­ed on her play­ing that myth­i­cal crea­ture boys
sang about, the pret­ty girl who didn’t know it.
But he didn’t seem flus­tered at all. He nar­rowed his eyes slight­ly, tilt­ing his glass at her. “So,
beau­ti­ful and smart enough to know it.”
“And rich,” she added. Also true, and again, she want­ed to see the look on his face when she