A Vis­it from Pat­ti Love unfolds in 1969 when Pat­ti Love Andrews, the griev­ing moth­er of Chase Andrews, makes a piv­otal vis­it to the sher­if­f’s office. Dressed in mourn­ing attire, her eyes filled with sor­row and a lin­ger­ing sense of dis­be­lief, Pat­ti Love presents her­self as a woman who has yet to accept the trag­ic loss of her son. She is con­vinced that Chase’s death wasn’t sim­ply a freak acci­dent but some­thing far more sin­is­ter. She shares her grow­ing sus­pi­cion with Sher­iff Ed and Deputy Joe, express­ing her belief that some­one was involved in his untime­ly demise, not just the unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances. At the heart of this sus­pi­cion is the mys­te­ri­ous­ly miss­ing shell neck­lace, an item of great sen­ti­men­tal val­ue that Chase had been wear­ing the night he died. Pat­ti Love explains that the neck­lace, a gift from the Marsh Girl, was not among the belong­ings returned by the coro­ner, lead­ing her to con­clude that its absence could be a cru­cial piece of the puzzle—an indi­ca­tion of foul play, rather than an acci­den­tal death. She argues that the theft of such a mean­ing­ful item sug­gests a delib­er­ate act, hint­ing at the pos­si­ble involve­ment of some­one close to Chase and per­haps even a jeal­ous lover.

The con­ver­sa­tion between Pat­ti Love and the sher­iff becomes increas­ing­ly tense as more details about Chase’s life and rela­tion­ships emerge. Despite his mar­riage to Pearl, the rumor mill had long churned with whis­pers about an affair between Chase and the enig­mat­ic Marsh Girl, a reclu­sive woman known for her work gath­er­ing mus­sels and for nav­i­gat­ing the swampy waters of the marsh in her old, weath­er-beat­en boat. Pat­ti Love, now shar­ing her sus­pi­cions with the author­i­ties, paints a pic­ture of a woman dri­ven by jeal­ousy and resent­ment, some­one who, in her mind, might have gone to dras­tic lengths to set­tle old wounds. Her the­o­ry is that the Marsh Girl, pos­si­bly feel­ing betrayed by Chase’s mar­riage, took the neck­lace as a per­son­al tro­phy or evi­dence of her anger, fur­ther sug­gest­ing that Kya, the Marsh Girl, could be respon­si­ble for Chase’s death. This shift in focus from the ini­tial­ly sus­pect­ed acci­dent to a more per­son­al and vio­lent con­fronta­tion adds a lay­er of com­plex­i­ty to the case, with deep­er emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal moti­va­tions com­ing into play. Kya, once seen as an out­sider in the com­mu­ni­ty, now becomes cen­tral to a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion, where both her past rela­tion­ships with Chase and the mys­tery sur­round­ing the miss­ing neck­lace are fuel­ing sus­pi­cions.

The absence of the shell neck­lace becomes a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in the inves­ti­ga­tion, shift­ing the focus to Kya. Sher­iff Ed and Deputy Joe now see a new direc­tion in the case: the Marsh Girl, once just a fig­ure on the fringes of town life, is now being con­sid­ered as a poten­tial sus­pect. They begin to won­der if some­one famil­iar with the marsh’s wind­ing paths and seclud­ed spots could have lured Chase into a trap, orches­trat­ing a fatal encounter under the guise of a roman­tic meet­ing. The idea that the Marsh Girl may have orches­trat­ed Chase’s death, or at least played a role in it, is a stark con­trast to the ini­tial­ly sim­ple nar­ra­tive of a trag­ic acci­dent. With this fresh lead, the inves­ti­ga­tion is rein­vig­o­rat­ed, though it also becomes more com­pli­cat­ed, as the miss­ing neck­lace might be the only tan­gi­ble piece of evi­dence point­ing to Kya’s involve­ment.

The chap­ter draws to a close with a deci­sive shift in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Sher­iff Ed and Deputy Joe, now armed with the sus­pi­cion sur­round­ing Kya, decide to pur­sue this new lead, begin­ning with ques­tion­ing her about her where­abouts on the night of Chase’s death. They also intend to press her on the miss­ing neck­lace, which could hold the key to unlock­ing the mys­tery behind his demise. This new devel­op­ment rais­es the stakes in the case, and as the inves­ti­ga­tion deep­ens, the line between truth and rumor blurs. The chap­ter illus­trates how the com­mu­ni­ty’s long-held prej­u­dices and sus­pi­cions have shaped their view of Kya, turn­ing her into a sus­pect in a crime she may not have com­mit­ted. The tan­gled web of rela­tion­ships, secrets, and hid­den motives slow­ly unrav­els, leav­ing the read­er ques­tion­ing whether Kya’s con­nec­tion to Chase was tru­ly inno­cent or if there was more beneath the sur­face of their com­pli­cat­ed past.