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.

29
Los Angeles is warm and sunny all year round. Driving through the city,
sometimes it’s hard to remember what season it is. Everywhere you look, people
are wearing sunglasses and drinking cold drinks out of straws, smiling and
laughing underneath the clear blue sky. But in January 2008, winter really felt
like winter, even in California, because I felt alone and cold and I was
hospitalized.
I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but I was hell on wheels. I was taking a lot
of Adderall.
I was horrible, and I will admit to doing wrong. I was so angry about what
happened with Kevin. I’d tried so hard with him. I’d given my everything.
And he’d turned on me.
I had started dating a photographer. I was completely infatuated with him.
He’d been a paparazzo, and I understood that people thought he was up to no
good, but all I could see at the time was that he was chivalrous and helped me
out when the others got too aggressive.
Back then I would speak up if I didn’t like something—I would certainly let
you know. And I wouldn’t think twice about it. (If I had been hit in the face in
Vegas—as happened to me in July 2023—I would’ve hit the person back, 100
percent.)
I was fearless.
We were always being chased by the paparazzi. The chases were really insane
—sometimes they were aggressive, and sometimes they were playful, too. Many
of the paps were trying to make me look bad, to get the money shot to show
“Oh, she’s lost and she looks crazy right now.” But sometimes they wanted me to
look good, too.
One day, the photographer and I were being chased, and this was one of those
moments with him that I’ll never forget. We were driving fast, near the edge of a
cli, and I don’t know why, but I decided to pull a 360, right there on the edge. I
honestly didn’t even know I could do a 360—it was completely beyond me, so I
think it was God. But I stuck it; the back wheels of the car stopped on what
seemed like the very edge, and if the wheels had rotated maybe three more times,
we would have just gone o the cli.
I looked at him; he looked at me.
“We could have just died,” I said.
I felt so alive.
As parents we’re always telling our children, “Stay safe. Don’t do this; don’t
do that.” But even though safety is the most important thing, I also think it’s
important to have awakenings and challenge ourselves to feel liberated, to be
fearless and experience everything the world has to oer.
I didn’t know then that the photographer was married; I had no clue that I was
essentially his mistress. I only found that out after we’d broken up. I’d just
thought he was a lot of fun and our time together was incredibly hot. He was ten
years older than me.
Everywhere I went—and for a while I went out a lot—the paparazzi were
there. And yet, for all the reports about my being out of control, I don’t know
that I was ever out of control in a way that warranted what came next. The truth
is that I was sad, beyond sad, missing my kids when they were with Kevin.
The photographer helped me with my depression. I longed for attention, and
he gave me the attention I needed. It was just a lustful relationship. My family
didn’t like him, but there was a lot about them I didn’t like, either.
The photographer encouraged me to rebel. He let me sow my oats and he still
loved me for it. He loved me unconditionally. It wasn’t like my mom screaming
at me for partying. He said, “Girl, go, you got it, do your thing!” He wasn’t like
my father, who set impossible conditions for his love.
And so, with the photographer’s support, I 100 percent did my thing. And it
felt radical to be that wild. That far from what everyone wanted me to be.
I talked as if I were out of my mind. I was so loud—everywhere I went, even
at restaurants. People would go out to eat with me, and I would lie down on the
table. It was a way of saying “Fuck you!” to any person who came my way.
I mean, I will say it: I was bad.
Or maybe I wasn’t bad so much as very, very angry.
I wanted to escape. I didn’t have my kids, and I needed to get away from the
media and the paparazzi. I wanted to leave LA, so the photographer and I went
on a trip to Mexico.
It was like I’d ed to a safe house. Everywhere else there’d be a million people
outside my door. But when I left LA, even though it was for a short time, I felt
far from everything. This worked—I felt better for a little while. I should have
taken more advantage of it.
It seemed like my relationship with the photographer was getting more serious,
and as that happened, I sensed that my family was trying to get closer to me—in
a way that made me uneasy.
My mom called me one day and said, “Britney, we feel like something’s going
on. We hear that the cops are after you. Let’s go to the beach house.”
“The cops are after me?” I said. “For what?” I hadn’t done anything illegal.
That I knew for sure. I’d had my moments. I’d had my wild spell. I’d been high
on Adderall and acted crazy. But I didn’t do anything criminal. In fact, as she
knew, I’d been with girlfriends the prior two days. My mom and I had had a
sleepover with my cousin Alli and two other girlfriends.
“Just come to the house!” she said. “We want to talk to you.”
So I went to the house with them. The photographer met me there.
My mother was acting suspicious.
When the photographer got there, he said, “Something’s up, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Something’s really o.” All of a sudden, there were
helicopters going around the house.
“Is that for me?” I asked my mom. “Is this a joke?”
It wasn’t a joke.
Suddenly there was a SWAT team of what seemed like twenty cops in my
house.
“What the fuck did I do?” I kept shouting. “I didn’t do anything!”
I know I had been acting wild but there was nothing I’d done that justied
their treating me like I was a bank robber. Nothing that justied upending my
entire life.
I’d later come to believe something had changed that month, since the last time I
was brought to the hospital for evaluation. My father had struck up a very close
friendship with Louise “Lou” Taylor, who he worshipped. She was front and
center during the implementation of the conservatorship that would later allow
them to control and take over my career. Lou, who had just started a new
company called Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group, was directly involved in
calling the shots right before the conservatorship. At the time, she had few real
clients. She basically used my name and hard work to build her company.
Conservatorships, also called guardianships, are usually reserved for people
with no mental capacity, people who can’t do anything for themselves. But I was
highly functional. I’d just done the best album of my career. I was making a lot
of people a lot of money, especially my father, who I found out took a bigger
salary than he paid me. He paid himself more than $6 million while paying
others close to him tens of millions more.
The thing is, you can have a conservatorship that lasts for two months and
then the person gets on track and you let them control their life again, but that
wasn’t what my father wanted. He wanted far more.
My dad was able to set up two forms of conservatorship: what’s called
“conservatorship of the person” and “conservatorship of the estate.” The
conservator of the person is designated to control details of the conservatee’s life,
like where they live, what they eat, whether they can drive a car, and what they
do day-to-day. Even though I begged the court to appoint literally anyone else—
and I mean, anyone o the street would have been better—my father was given
the job, the same man who’d made me cry if I had to get in the car with him

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.

CHAPTER 29
Slick called on Thursday at 10:25 in the morning.
“I’ll come,” she said. “But I’ll only look. I won’t open anything
that’s closed.”
“Thank you,” Patricia said.
“I don’t feel right about this,” Slick said.
“I don’t either,” Patricia said, and then she hung up and called
Mrs. Greene to tell her the good news.
“This is a big mistake,” Mrs. Greene said.
“It’ll go faster with three of us,” Patricia said.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Greene said. “But all I’m telling you is that it’s a
mistake.”
She kissed Carter good-bye on Friday morning at 7:30, and he left
for Tampa on Delta flight 1237 from the Charleston airport, with a
layover in Atlanta. On Saturday morning at 9:30 she drove Blue to
Saturday school. She told Korey they could work on her list of
colleges together, but by noon, when she had to go pick up Blue from
Saturday school, Korey had barely glimpsed at the catalogs.
When she pulled up in front of Albemarle at 12:05, the only other
car there was Slick’s white Saab. She got out and tapped on the
driver’s-side window.
“Hi, Mrs. Campbell,” Greer said, rolling down the window.
“Is your mother all right?” Patricia asked.
“She had to take something over to the church,” Greer said. “She
said she might be seeing you later?”
“I’m helping her plan her Reformation Party,” Patricia said.
“Sounds fun,” Greer said.
She and Blue got home at 12:40. Korey had left a note on the
counter saying she was going downtown to step aerobics and then to
a movie with Laurie Gibson. At 2:15, Patricia knocked on Blue’s
bedroom door.
“I’m going out for a little while,” she called.
He didn’t answer. She assumed he’d heard.
She didn’t want anyone to see her car, and it was a warm afternoon
anyway, so she walked up Middle Street. She saw Mrs. Greene’s car
parked in James Harris’s driveway, next to a green-and-white
Greener Cleaners truck. James Harris’s Corsica was gone.
She hated his house. Two years ago, he’d torn down Mrs. Savage’s
cottage, split the lot in half, and sold the piece of it closest to the
Hendersons to a dentist from up north someplace, then built himself
a McMansion that stretched from property line to property line. A
massive Southern lump with concrete pineapples at the end of the
drive, it stood on stilts with an enclosed ground floor for parking. It
was a white monstrosity painted white with all its various tin roofs
painted rust red, encircled by a huge porch.
She’d been inside once for his housewarming party last summer,
and it was all sisal runners and enormous, heavy, machine-milled
furniture, nothing with any personality, everything anonymous and
done in beige, and cream, and off-white, and slate. It felt like the
embalmed and swollen corpse of a ramshackle Southern beach
house, tarted up with cosmetics and central air.
Patricia turned onto McCants then turned again and looped back
until she stood on Pitt Street directly behind James Harris’s house.
She could see its red roofs looming over the trees at the end of a little
drainage ditch that ran between two property lines from this side of
the block to the other. When it rained, the ditch carried the overflow
water off Pitt down to the harbor. But it hadn’t rained in weeks and
now it was a swampy trickle, with a worn path the children used as a
shortcut between blocks running alongside it.
She stepped off the root-cracked sidewalk and walked to his house
along the path, as fast as possible, feeling like eyes were watching her
the entire way. James Harris’s backyard lay in the heavy shadow of
his house, and it was as chilly as the water at the bottom of a lake.
His grass didn’t get enough light and the yellowed blades crunched
beneath her feet.
She walked up the stairs to his back porch and paused, looking
back to see if she could spot Slick, but she hadn’t gotten there yet.
She kept moving, wanting to get out of sight as soon as possible. She
knocked on the back door.
Inside, she heard a vacuum cleaner whirl down and a minute later
the weather seal cracked and the door opened to reveal Mrs. Greene
in a green polo shirt.
“Hello, Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said, loudly. “I came to see if I could
find my keys. That I left here.”
“Mr. Harris isn’t home,” Mrs. Greene responded loudly, which let
Patricia know that the other woman working with her was nearby.
“Maybe you should come back later.”
“I really need my keys,” Patricia said.
“I’m sure he won’t mind if you look for them,” Mrs. Greene said.
She stepped out of the way, and Patricia came inside. The kitchen
had a large island in the middle, half of it covered by some kind of
stainless-steel grill. Dark brown cabinets lined the walls, and the
refrigerator, dishwasher, and sink were all stainless steel. The room
felt cold. Patricia wished she’d brought a sweater.
“Is Slick here yet?” Patricia asked quietly.
“Not yet,” Mrs. Greene said. “But we can’t wait.”
A woman in the same green polo shirt as Mrs. Greene came in
from the hall. She wore yellow rubber dishwashing gloves and a
shiny leather fanny pack.
“Lora,” Mrs. Greene said. “This is Mrs. Campbell from down the
street. She thinks she left her keys here and is going to look for
them.”
Patricia gave what she hoped looked like a friendly smile.
“Hi, Lora,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. Don’t let me get in your
way.”
Lora turned her large brown eyes from Patricia to Mrs. Greene,
then back to Patricia. She reached down to her belt and unclipped a
mobile phone.
“There’s no need,” Mrs. Greene said. “I know Mrs. Campbell. I
used to clean for her.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Patricia said, pretending to scan the granite
countertops. “I know those keys are somewhere.”
Her huge brown eyes still on Mrs. Greene, Lora flipped the phone
open and pressed a button.
“Lora, no!” Patricia said, too loudly.
Lora turned and looked at Patricia. She blinked once, holding the
open phone in her yellow rubber hand.
“Lora,” Patricia said. “I really do need to find my keys. They could
be anywhere and it might take me a while. But you won’t get in any
trouble for what I’m doing. I promise. And I’ll pay you for the
inconvenience.”
She had left her purse at home, but Mrs. Greene had told her to
bring money, just in case. She reached into her pocket and pulled out
four of the five ten-dollar bills she’d brought and placed them on the
kitchen island closest to Lora, then stepped away.
“Mr. Harris won’t be coming back until tomorrow,” Mrs. Greene
said.
Lora stepped forward, took the bills, and made them disappear
into her fanny pack.
“Thank you so much, Lora,” Patricia said.
Mrs. Greene and Lora left the kitchen and the vacuum cleaner
roared back to life, and Patricia looked out the back window to see if
she could spot Slick coming up the path, but it was empty. She
turned and walked through the wide front hall and looked out the
window by the door. The glass was artfully rippled to make it seem as
if it were antique. Slick’s Saab wasn’t in the driveway. It wasn’t like
her to be late, although if she’d lost her nerve at the last minute
maybe that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She didn’t know how
Lora would react to two of them searching the house.
Besides, there wasn’t much in it. The kitchen drawers were empty.
The cabinets barely contained any food. No junk drawer. No
magnetized advertisements from the exterminator or the pizza
delivery people on the fridge door. No toaster on the countertops, no
blenders, no waffle irons, no George Foreman grills. It was the same
all over the house. She decided to go upstairs. If he had anything
personal it was more likely to be hidden there.
She started up the carpeted stairs, the vacuum cleaner noise falling
away below her. She stood in the upstairs hall lined with closed doors
and suddenly felt like she was on the verge of making a terrible
mistake. She shouldn’t be here. She should turn around and leave.
What had she been thinking? She thought about Bluebeard where
the bride was told not to look behind a certain door by her husband
and of course she did and discovered the corpses of his previous
brides. Her mother had told her the moral of the story was that you
should trust your husband and never pry. But wasn’t it better to
know the truth? She headed for the master bedroom.
The master bedroom smelled of hot vinyl and new carpet, even
though the carpet must be two years old by now. The bed was made
neatly and had four posts, each one crowned with a carved
pineapple. An armchair and table sat by the window. On the table
was a notebook. Every page was empty. Patricia looked in the walk-
in closet. All the clothes hung in dry-cleaner bags, even his blue
jeans, and they all smelled like cleaning chemicals.
She searched the bathroom. Combs, brushes, toothpaste, and floss,
but no prescriptions. Band-Aids and gauze but nothing that told her
anything about the occupant. It smelled like sealant and Sheetrock.
The sink and the shower were dry. Patricia went back to the hall and
tried again.
She went from room to room, opening empty closets, looking
inside empty drawers. Everything smelled like fresh paint. Every
room echoed emptily. Every bed was carefully made up with pristine
pillow shams and decorative pillows. The house felt abandoned.
“Find anything?” a voice said, and Patricia leapt into the air.
“Ohmygoodness,” she gasped, pressing her hand to the middle of
her chest. “You scared me half to death.”
Mrs. Greene stood in the doorway.
“Did you find anything?” she repeated.
“It’s all empty,” Patricia said. “Slick hasn’t come by, has she?”
“No,” Mrs. Greene said. “Lora is having lunch in the kitchen.”
“There’s nothing here,” Patricia said. “This is pointless.”
“There’s nothing in this entire house?” Mrs. Greene said.
“Nowhere? Are you sure you looked?”
“I looked everywhere,” Patricia said. “I’m going to leave before
Lora changes her mind.”
“I don’t believe that,” Mrs. Greene said.
Her stubbornness provoked a flash of irritation from Patricia. “If
you can find something I missed, by all means, feel free,” she said.
The two of them stood, glaring at each other. The disappointment
made Patricia irritable. She’d come this far, and now nothing. There
was no path forward.
“We tried,” she finally said. “If Slick comes, tell her I came to my
senses.”
She walked past Mrs. Greene, heading for the stairs.
“What about that?” Mrs. Greene said from behind her.
Wearily, Patricia turned and saw Mrs. Greene with her neck
craned back, staring at the hall ceiling. More specifically, she was
staring at a small black hook in the hall ceiling. Using it as a
landmark, Patricia could just make out the rectangular line of a door
around it, the hinges painted white. She got a broom from the
kitchen and used the eyelet in its handle to snag the hook. They both
pulled and, with a groan of springs and a cracking of paint, the
rectangular edges got bigger, darker, and the attic door dropped
down and the metal stairs attached to it unfolded.
A dry, abandoned smell rolled down into the hall.
“I’ll go up,” Patricia said.
She gripped the edges hard, and the ladder rattled as she climbed.
She felt too heavy, like her foot was going to break the steps. Then
her head passed through the ceiling and she was in the dark.
Her eyes adjusted and she realized it wasn’t completely dark. The
attic ran the length of the house and there were louvers on either
end. Daylight filtered through. It felt hot and stuffy. The end of the
attic facing the street was bare, just joists and pink insulation. The
back was a jumble of dim shapes.
“Do you have a flashlight?” she called down.
“Here,” Mrs. Greene said.
She unclipped something from her keychain and Patricia came
down a few steps and took it: a small, turquoise rubber rectangle the
size of a cigarette lighter.
“You squeeze the sides,” Mrs. Greene said.
A tiny bulb on the end emitted a weak glow.
It was better than nothing.
Patricia went up into the attic.
The floor was gritty, covered in a layer of cockroach poison, mouse
droppings, dried guano, pigeon feathers, dead cockroaches on their
backs, and larger piles of excrement that looked like they came from
raccoons. Patricia started walking toward the clutter. Cool air formed
a cross breeze blowing from the vents at either end. The white
powder ground against the plywood beneath her feet.
It smelled like dead insects up here, like rotten fabric, like wet
cardboard that had dried and mildewed. Everything downstairs had
been meticulously cleaned and polished, scoured of anything
organic. Up here, the house lay exposed: splintery joists, filthy
plywood flooring, construction measurements penciled onto the
exposed plywood beneath the shingles. Patricia played the flashlight
beam over the mound of items at the rear and realized that this was
the graveyard of Mrs. Savage’s life.
Blankets and quilts and sheets were draped over all the boxes and
trunks and suitcases she’d once seen in the old lady’s front room.
Studded with cockroach eggs, sticky with spiderwebs stretched
between every open space, the filthy sheets and blankets were stiff
and rank.
Patricia lifted one tacky corner of a pink quilt and released a puff
of rotten wood pulp. Beneath it, on the floor, lay a cardboard box of
water-damaged paperback romances. Mice had chewed one corner to
shreds and brightly colored paperback guts spilled onto the floor.
Why had he brought all this garbage into a new house? It felt wrong.
In his entire, new, meticulously blank home, this stood out like a
mistake.
Her skin seethed in revulsion wherever she touched the blankets.
They were covered in grime, white cockroach poison, and mouse
droppings. She walked around the boxes to where the blankets
ended, where the brick chimney rose through the floor and then the
ceiling. She recognized the row of old suitcases sitting next to it,
surrounded by furniture she remembered from the old house:
standing lamps completely obscured by spiderwebs that were thick
with eggs, the rocking chair with its seat chewed into a mouse nest,
the cross-stretcher table whose veneer top had warped and split.
Not knowing where to start, Patricia lifted each of the suitcases.
They were empty except for the second-to-last one. It didn’t budge.
She tried again. It felt rooted to the floor. She slid the brown, hard-
sided Samsonite bag out, sweat dripping from her nose. She undid its
first latch, stiff with disuse, then the second, and the weight of
whatever was inside popped it open.
The chemical stench of mothballs exploded into her face, making
her eyes water. She squeezed the light Mrs. Greene had given her and
saw that it was crammed with black plastic sheeting speckled with
white mothballs that rolled onto the floor. She pulled aside some of
the plastic and a pair of milky eyes reflected the light back at her.
Her fingers went numb and the flashlight went dark as she
dropped it into the plastic. She stepped back, missed the edge where
the plywood flooring ended, and her foot came down on the empty
space between two of the joists. She started to fall backward, arms
pinwheeling, and only just managed to grab a rough beam on the
ceiling and catch herself.

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.

29
It must be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, going to Tripp Ingraham’s house. And that’s really saying
something for me.
He’s been charged with murder. I am willingly going to an accused murderer’s house.
I say that to myself over and over again as I jog down the street, trying to look like it’s just a
regular day, just regular Jane out for her morning run, certainly not about to do something so shit-
stupid she might die.
His texts kept me up all night last night, and I can’t explain it, but I need to hear what he says.
Because something in me tells me he’s telling the truth.
Tripp is so many ugly things—a drunk, a lech, a Republican—but murderer still doesn’t fit on
him. I’ve known violent men. I’ve been around too many of them, and I learned how to sniff them out
early. I had to.
Tripp just … doesn’t smell right.
I hurry up his driveway, praying to god that no one catches a glimpse of me. His bushes are
overgrown, dead leaves and flower petals strewn along the walk at the front of the house, and if I’d
thought his place seemed dark and sad before, it’s nothing compared to how it feels now.
After ringing the doorbell, I wait for so long that I think he’s not going to answer, and I’m
uncomfortably aware that anyone could come by and see me standing there. This neighborhood
seemed to have eyes everywhere, and Tripp is not supposed to have visitors, not without it being
cleared through the police first.
Like I was going to do that.
Just as I’m about to turn away, the door opens.
Tripp stares at me, wearing a plaid bathrobe tied loosely at the waist and a pair of matching
pajama pants. His skin has gone grayish, his eyes nearly swallowed up by the hollows around them.
Tripp looked rough before, but now, he looks half-dead, and I almost feel sorry for him.
“You came,” he says, his voice low and flat. “I honestly didn’t think you would. Don’t just stand
there. Come in.”
He ushers me inside, and I’m hit with the smell immediately. Old food, garbage that hasn’t been
taken out, and booze.
So much booze.
“Sorry I didn’t clean up,” he says, gesturing for me to head into the living room, but I shake my
head, folding my arms over my chest.
“Whatever you have to say to me, go ahead and say it here. Say it fast.”
He lowers his gaze back to mine, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, and there it is again—a
shadow version of that Tripp, sure, washed out and barely there, but still.
“Don’t want to spend too much time in the murderer’s lair. I get it.”
I’d tell him not to be a dick, but that’s like telling him not to breathe, so instead, I just glare at him,
waiting, and eventually he sighs.
“You must’ve felt like you won the goddamn lottery when you met Eddie Rochester,” he muses.
“Rich, good-looking, charming as hell. But let me tell you something, Jane.”
He leans in close, and I catch the ripe odor of him, the stink of unwashed skin and unbrushed
teeth. “He’s poison. His wife was poison, too, so at least they were well-matched in that.”
Another smirk. “If I were you, I’d leave here, get whatever shit you can out of the house, and hit
the road. Leave Eddie, Birmingham, all of it.” He waves one hand, sagging back against the door.
“Sure as fuck wish I’d listened when Blanche said we should move.”
“Blanche wanted to move?” I ask incredulously, and he nods.
“Yeah. Two weeks before she died. Started talking about how she needed to be somewhere else,
that she felt like Bea was suffocating her. Wasn’t enough that Bea took her whole goddamn life, you
know? She had to be right up under us all the time, too. And Eddie. Fucker was always over at the
house, seemed like.”
“But you said you didn’t really think anything was happening there.”
“Still didn’t mean I liked it. Bea didn’t like it, either. It’s why she invited Blanche to the lake that
weekend. To ‘hash it out.’ I asked Blanche what that meant, and she said they were at … I don’t know.
Like a crossroads or something. That she wasn’t sure they could still be friends. And I thought maybe
it was about…”
His throat moves, but he doesn’t say anything, and when he reaches up to rub his unshaven jaw, I
see his hands are shaking slightly.
“Things had been fucked up for a while,” he finally says. “Between Blanche and Bea, between
Bea and Eddie, me and Blanche. It was all just toxic by that point. Which is why I was confused as
fuck when Bea called me and asked me to come up.”
My blood turns cold. “What?”
Sighing, Tripp scrubs a hand over his face. “That weekend,” he says, sounding tired. “Bea called
me that Friday night, said she thought Blanche needed me. So I got in the car, drove up to the lake, and
yes, we all had a lot to drink, but I passed out in the house. I was never on that goddamn boat. I woke
up the next morning in the guest bedroom, feeling like someone had jammed a railroad spike through
my skull, and neither Bea nor Blanche were there. I assumed they’d taken the boat out early, and I left.
Drove back home.”
His voice cracks and he takes a second to clear his throat, rubbing his face again. “I didn’t know.
I went home that morning, and I watched fucking golf on TV, and all that time, they were both … they
were already dead. They were … rotting in that water…”
There are tears in his eyes now. “It wasn’t until Monday, when she didn’t come home and I
couldn’t get her on the phone that I even realized something was wrong.”
His bleary eyes focus on my face, and now there are no smirks, no gross lines. “I swear to you, I
had nothing to do with any of it. Yes, I was there, and yes, I should’ve told the cops that immediately,
but I was afraid of…” He makes a strained sound that’s too sad to be a laugh. “This. Fuck, I was
afraid of this.”
His hands clutch my shoulders, hard enough that I think I’ll have bruises there. “I’m telling you,
leave. I didn’t get on that boat, but my fingerprints are on it. I didn’t buy fucking rope and a hammer,
but someone using my credit card did.”
There’s so much information coming at me at once that I barely know how to process it all, and I
blink, trying to step out of Tripp’s hold, trying to wrap my head around what he’s implying.
“You’re saying someone framed you?”
“I’m saying you still have the chance to walk away from these fuckers.”
He lets me go, stepping back. “I wish to Christ I had.”
I tear the house apart.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, only that there has to be something, some proof that Eddie did
this.
That’s what Tripp was trying to tell me, I know it, and so here I am, opening up closets, yanking
out drawers.
Adele rushes around my feet, barking frantically, and there are tears in my eyes as I survey my
destruction.
Books off shelves, heedlessly tumbled to the floor. Cushions pulled off the sofa.
I pick up anything heavy, all those tchotchkes from Southern Manors, looking for drops of blood. I
go through the pockets of Eddie’s clothes. I push the mattress off our bed.
Something, something, there has to be something, you can’t kill two people and not leave some
sign of it, you can’t. There are receipts, he’s hidden a murder weapon, there will be clothes with
blood, I will find something.
An hour later—no, two, almost two and a half—I’m sitting on the floor of the coat closet at the
front of the house, my head in my hands. Adele has lost interest in me now, and sits in the hall facing
me, her snout resting on her paws.
I’ve lost my fucking mind.
The house is a wreck, and I’m too exhausted to even think about putting it back together again.
Tripp is right. I should leave. Get out while I can because even if it wasn’t Eddie, there’s
something going on here, something so fucked up that no amount of money can make it worth it.
I’m just getting up from the floor when I see a jacket in the corner of the closet. It must’ve fallen
off a hanger while I was in here acting like a madwoman, but I don’t remember seeing it.
I also don’t remember the last time I saw Eddie wear it.
When I pick it up, I notice immediately that it feels a little heavier on one side than the other, and
my breath catches in my throat as my fingers close around something in the pocket.
But when I pull it out, it’s just a paperback book.
I imagine him, taking it to read somewhere, maybe at the office, maybe on his lunch break, and
shoving it back in a pocket, forgetting about it.
I’ve seen Eddie reading plenty over the past few months, but always some boring military thriller.
This is a romance novel, an older one with a pretty lurid cover, which doesn’t strike me as Eddie’s
thing.

Chapter 29 of “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne Brontë captures the nuanced struggles of Helen Huntingdon as she grapples with the challenges of her marriage to Arthur and her endeavors to navigate her life amidst his continued absence and questionable behaviors. Dated on December 25th, 1823, Helen reflects on another year gone by, capturing her concerns over the influence of Arthur on their son, little Arthur, her fears regarding her husband’s indulgent nature, and the subsequent impact on their child. She confesses to a diary—the silent paper—a candid introspection about her diminishing hopes and dreams within the marriage, spotlighting the stark contrast between her affections and Arthur’s increasingly detached behavior. As she delves into the particulars of their relationship, it becomes evident that Arthur’s notions of marital duties are vastly different from hers, further highlighting the emotional and physical distance growing between them.

Arthur’s impending trip to London sparks a significant discussion, underpinning his neglect and prioritization of pleasure over family responsibilities. Helen’s desperate propositions to accompany him are dismissed under various pretexts, underlining Arthur’s yearning for freedom from familial duties. This section poignantly illustrates Helen’s growing despair and isolation, exacerbated by Arthur’s lack of communication and apparent disregard for his familial duties during his time in London.

The narrative then transitions into a visit from Mr. Hargrave, a character trying to position himself as a friend to Helen during Arthur’s absence. Despite his attempts at sympathy and support, Helen remains wary of his intentions, protective of her personal struggles from external scrutiny. The exchange between Helen and Hargrave shines a light on the societal expectations placed on women, the limited avenues available for them to seek solace or understanding outside their marriage, and the nuanced dynamics of friendship and trust.

Ultimately, this chapter delves deep into Helen’s emotional landscape, offering insights into her resilience amid her troubled marriage. The introduction of Mr. Hargrave introduces new social dynamics and challenges, setting the stage for the complexities of navigating societal norms and personal happiness. Through Helen’s reflections and interactions, Brontë vividly portrays the internal and external conflicts faced by women in the 19th century, highlighting themes of love, duty, and the quest for personal autonomy.