Dr. Sivar­nan­dan observed Lis­beth Salan­der’s week­ly vis­its to Hol­ger Palm­gren, where their dynam­ic seemed more like play­ful squab­bling than care­giv­er and patient. Salander’s involve­ment in Palmgren’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion took an offi­cial turn when she cre­at­ed a non­prof­it foun­da­tion to fund his care, which includ­ed a sig­nif­i­cant dona­tion of 2.5 mil­lion kro­nor for his reha­bil­i­ta­tion. The arrange­ment seemed eth­i­cal­ly sound to Dr. Sivar­nan­dan, who soon hired Johan­na Karoli­na Oskars­son as Palmgren’s assis­tant. This deci­sion led to notice­able improve­ments in Palm­gren’s con­di­tion, though it remained unclear how much of this was due to the train­ing or Salan­der’s influ­ence dur­ing her vis­its.

Dur­ing one of Palmgren’s chess match­es, Salan­der dis­played an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to grasp the nuances of the game, which amused Palm­gren. They found joy in their inter­ac­tions, sug­gest­ing a pow­er­ful bond had formed. Mean­while, Nils Bjur­man returned to a pile of mail, among which was a state­ment reveal­ing with­drawals from Salander’s account, sug­gest­ing her return to Swe­den. He con­tact­ed a giant fig­ure involved in his dark deal­ings but was abrupt­ly dis­missed.

In a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive thread, Salan­der enjoyed a mas­sage from Mim­mi, anoth­er ten­der indi­ca­tion of her per­son­al life and the close­ness she shared with her. Receiv­ing a present from Mim­mi, she opened a beau­ti­ful cig­a­rette case meant to encour­age her to stop smok­ing. Their light­heart­ed ban­ter, full of under­ly­ing ten­sion regard­ing their rela­tion­ship, was punc­tu­at­ed by an impromp­tu kiss that sur­prised both women.

Mean­while, at the Mil­len­ni­um offices, pub­lish­er Mikael Blomkvist and Svens­son dis­cussed a miss­ing con­tact from Säpo, with Svens­son reveal­ing an out­ra­geous plan involv­ing a fake lot­tery win to track him down. Their con­ver­sa­tion shift­ed when Blomkvist noticed Salan­der in the bar where they unwit­ting­ly con­verged, trig­ger­ing a mix of emo­tions with­in her.

Lat­er, as Salan­der returned home, she began inves­ti­gat­ing the files on Blomkvist’s com­put­er, uncov­er­ing not only his ongo­ing projects but also a trou­bling men­tion of a fig­ure named Zala asso­ci­at­ed with her pre­vi­ous life. The name resur­faced as a men­ac­ing shad­ow in her thoughts, linked to vio­lence and threats with­in a dark under­world. Mean­while, Svens­son reflect­ed on his work and grow­ing anx­i­ety about the dan­gers sur­round­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into Zala, hint­ing at the unrav­el­ing webs of intrigue and vio­lence they were entan­gled in.

In the chap­ter titled “Joe’s funer­al,” the nar­ra­tive unfolds with an extrav­a­gant depic­tion of the funer­al as a grand event in Orange Coun­ty, show­cas­ing a blend of social sta­tus and com­mu­nal rev­er­ence. The atten­dees, drawn from diverse back­grounds, hon­or Joe, illus­trat­ing his promi­nent role in the com­mu­ni­ty. Amidst the spec­ta­cle, Janie expe­ri­ences a pro­found inter­nal trans­for­ma­tion; while the world out­side is enveloped in mourn­ing, she remains emo­tion­al­ly detached, almost serene behind her veil, con­tem­plat­ing her new­found free­dom.

After the funer­al, she sym­bol­i­cal­ly sheds her past by burn­ing her head rags, opt­ing for a thick braid that falls below her waist, rep­re­sent­ing her lib­er­a­tion from Joe’s oppres­sive lega­cy. Janie con­tin­ues to man­age the store but with a new­found ease. Nights are lone­ly in the large house, pro­vok­ing reflec­tions on her pre­vi­ous life with Joe and her grand­moth­er, Nan­ny, whose aspi­ra­tions for Janie had con­strained her. Janie grap­ples with feel­ings of resent­ment towards Nan­ny, acknowl­edg­ing the need for per­son­al auton­o­my to pur­sue her own desires and con­nec­tions with oth­ers.

As time pass­es, Janie becomes aware of the pecu­liar scruti­ny sur­round­ing her wid­ow­hood. Men who pre­vi­ous­ly had no con­nec­tion with Joe seek her atten­tion, assert­ing that an unmar­ried woman is pitiable and requires a man for sup­port. While she finds humor in their well-mean­ing but patron­iz­ing con­cerns, she rel­ish­es her soli­tude and free­dom, hav­ing expe­ri­enced enough of rela­tion­ships that lacked gen­uine con­nec­tion. A humor­ous exchange with Ike Green reveals the absurd notion of remar­ry­ing soon after Joe’s death, stir­ring Janie’s exas­per­a­tion as she affirms her unwill­ing­ness to con­sid­er such ideas yet.

Though remem­ber­ing Joe’s lega­cy and nav­i­gat­ing the expec­ta­tions of soci­ety, Janie remains in con­trol of her space. Her inter­ac­tions with Hezeki­ah, who mim­ics Joe’s role, bring lev­i­ty to her cir­cum­stances, yet remind her of her agency. As she tran­si­tions out of mourn­ing, the nar­ra­tive hints at bud­ding atten­tions from poten­tial suit­ors but empha­sizes Janie’s pref­er­ence for soli­tude and the joy of free­dom over soci­etal pres­sures. The chap­ter clos­es with Janie express­ing to her friend Pheo­by her love for free­dom, sug­gest­ing a bur­geon­ing sense of iden­ti­ty that grad­u­al­ly dis­tances her from the con­straints of the past.

Win­ston, over­whelmed by fatigue, moves through Lon­don with the weight of his brief­case, which con­tains a for­bid­den book he has yet to read. He reflects on the tumul­tuous week of Hate, where intense pro­pa­gan­da and patri­o­tism have shift­ed the ene­my from Eura­sia to Eas­t­a­sia with­out any pub­lic acknowl­edg­ment. Dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in a cen­tral square, an ora­tor from the Inner Par­ty shifts alle­giance mid-sen­tence, incit­ing the crowd into a fren­zy as they lash out at pre­vi­ous­ly dis­played pro­pa­gan­da. Amid this chaos, a stranger hands Win­ston back his brief­case with­out a word, an encounter that feels fore­bod­ing yet rou­tine.

Back at the Min­istry of Truth, an over­whelm­ing work­load awaits as all his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences to the war with Eura­sia must be cor­rect­ed, as Ocea­nia is, by new decree, at war with Eas­t­a­sia. Win­ston and his col­leagues work tire­less­ly, fueled by mea­ger rations and lit­tle sleep, to com­plete­ly erad­i­cate evi­dence of the pre­vi­ous ene­my. The demand for per­fec­tion in their fab­ri­cat­ed records weighs heav­i­ly on him, yet he finds solace in his secret quest for truth, know­ing that his con­tri­bu­tions are all based on lies. By the end of this har­row­ing peri­od, an announce­ment grants a tem­po­rary reprieve from duties, allow­ing Win­ston a moment of respite.

He retreats to his room above Mr. Charrington’s shop and final­ly opens the book he has been guard­ing. It bears the title “The The­o­ry and Prac­tice of Oli­garchi­cal Col­lec­tivism” by Emmanuel Gold­stein. Begin­ning to read, Win­ston is struck by the sense of read­ing in safe­ty; with no tele­screens mon­i­tor­ing him, he feels a rare sense of soli­tude. The book res­onates with his sup­pressed thoughts, affirm­ing his beliefs about the Par­ty’s manip­u­la­tions and the endur­ing cycli­cal struc­ture of soci­ety.

Even­tu­al­ly, Julia arrives, and they share inti­mate moments before Win­ston insists on read­ing the book togeth­er, reflect­ing their cama­raderie and shared rebel­lion against Par­ty dic­tates. As Win­ston reads, he real­izes that the truths con­tained with­in the book val­i­date his feel­ings about his real­i­ty, echo­ing the themes of dom­i­na­tion, con­trol, and the dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion of truth that per­me­ate their exis­tence under the Par­ty. The day ends with a sense of fleet­ing free­dom, laden with the knowl­edge that Chaos could sud­den­ly besiege their seem­ing­ly safe sanc­tu­ary .

In Chap­ter 9 of “The Art Thief,” the nar­ra­tive unfolds after a week­end theft, focus­ing on Anne-Cather­ine’s dai­ly rou­tine as she heads to work and Bre­itwieser’s metic­u­lous research into art while plan­ning his next heist. On week­days, he fre­quents local libraries in Mul­house and Stras­bourg, along with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel’s art-his­to­ry col­lec­tion, por­ing over the exten­sive Benez­it Dic­tio­nary of Artists. His research approach involves exam­in­ing artists’ cat­a­logues, trac­ing the prove­nance of stolen art­works, and tak­ing metic­u­lous notes, all while read­ing mate­ri­als in Ger­man, Eng­lish, and French.

Bre­itwieser metic­u­lous­ly orga­nizes stolen pieces in fold­ers, com­bined with ref­er­ence mate­ri­als and his own labeled sketch­es. With sup­port from his grand­par­ents, his per­son­al art library grows over time, sur­pass­ing five hun­dred vol­umes, lead­ing to exten­sive learn­ing in var­i­ous art forms and his­tor­i­cal con­text. His deep dive into the life of the artist Georg Petel, whose work he had recent­ly stolen, reveals Petel’s extra­or­di­nary tal­ent and trag­ic end due to the plague at thir­ty-four.

The thiev­ing cou­ple, now inten­si­fied in their activ­i­ties, exhibits a nat­ur­al instinct for risk-tak­ing. Their heists often reveal a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in muse­um secu­ri­ty that they seem to exploit, as many small muse­ums rely heav­i­ly on pub­lic trust and offer min­i­mal pro­tec­tion for their art—electing instead to acquire new works to attract patrons rather than for­ti­fy­ing secu­ri­ty. This presents a stark real­i­ty, as while muse­ums aim to fos­ter inti­ma­cy with art, they often leave them­selves open to those like Bre­itwieser who exploit these gaps.

Their audac­i­ty man­i­fests vivid­ly in an escapade at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel muse­um, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing a cel­e­brat­ed paint­ing by Willem van Mieris. Despite a secu­ri­ty cam­era, Bre­itwieser devis­es a plan to steal the art­work. Posi­tion­ing him­self strate­gi­cal­ly, he fol­lows through on the theft, con­ceal­ing the paint­ing in a shop­ping bag car­ried by Anne-Cather­ine. Man­aged to evade detec­tion, their heist goes unno­ticed until they’re long gone, with only a vague video cap­ture of a man turn­ing away. Ulti­mate­ly, this chap­ter reveals the duo’s obses­sive knowl­edge of art, their bold­ness in thiev­ery, and the sys­temic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties with­in muse­ums they con­tin­ue to exploit.

In this chap­ter from “The Last One at the Wed­ding,” the pro­tag­o­nist describes his vis­it to FCI Cor­bettsville, a min­i­mum-secu­ri­ty cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty in New York designed for non­vi­o­lent offend­ers. With a struc­ture resem­bling col­lege dorms, it offers inmates var­i­ous jobs as well as class­es in diverse sub­jects. On the protagonist’s birth­day, he arrives ear­ly to ensure he can vis­it his daugh­ter, hav­ing researched online the best prac­tices for vis­it­ing.

Upon enter­ing, he encoun­ters strict secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols. He expe­ri­ences a mix­ture of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and imper­son­al bureau­cra­cy, fac­ing chal­lenges when his name is not on the vis­i­ta­tion list. These lists are cru­cial as inmates must approve vis­i­tors before­hand. Despite his efforts, the offi­cer informs him that only Mar­garet can add him to her list, empha­siz­ing that he must return dur­ing des­ig­nat­ed hours after get­ting her con­sent. Frus­trat­ed but under­stand­ing, he tries to per­suade the offi­cer to make an excep­tion, but to no avail.

He then reflects on the var­i­ous emo­tion­al ties and dynam­ics unfold­ing around him as vis­i­tors reunite with inmates. The atmos­phere in the vis­i­ta­tion room includes hope­ful inter­ac­tions, tears, and the solemn real­i­ty of incar­cer­a­tion. After some wait­ing, the offi­cer finds Mar­garet but relays the dis­ap­point­ing news that she has cho­sen not to see him. The pro­tag­o­nist learns of oth­er par­ents in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions but feels the weight of iso­la­tion as he moves for­ward.

As he pre­pares to leave, he acknowl­edges the con­trast between his life out­side and the pal­pa­ble long­ing of those inside the prison, marked by a mix of hope and despair. He express­es grat­i­tude for the love and sup­port from friends and fam­i­ly wait­ing for him, all while grap­pling with the absence of his daugh­ter at his birth­day gath­er­ing. This chap­ter poignant­ly cap­tures the strug­gles of main­tain­ing famil­ial bonds amidst the harsh real­i­ties of the prison sys­tem, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al res­o­nance for the read­er.

The rehearsal din­ner for Mar­garet and Aidan’s wed­ding cel­e­brat­ed Lob­ster Night, com­plete with hand wipes, check­ered red-and-white nap­kins, sou­venir lob­ster crack­ers, and cus­tom-print­ed bibs that read “MARGARET AND AIDAN’S WEDDING: A CLAWS FOR CELEBRATION!” The seat­ing arrange­ment placed me at a table with Tam­my, Mag­gie, Aidan, Errol, and Abi­gail, with an emp­ty chair reserved for Cather­ine Gard­ner, whose atten­dance was uncer­tain.

As Aidan set­tled between Mag­gie and Abi­gail, I expressed my con­do­lences for Gwen­dolyn. Aidan explained that Gerry’s office was try­ing to con­tact Gwendolyn’s fam­i­ly, but they faced dif­fi­cul­ties since Gwen­dolyn was raised by a late grand­moth­er, leav­ing them unsure of who to reach out to. Mag­gie attempt­ed to shift every­one’s focus back to the din­ner. While Tam­my was eager for lob­ster, Abi­gail hes­i­tat­ed, find­ing them intim­i­dat­ing. Aidan encour­aged her, empha­siz­ing New England’s rep­u­ta­tion for the best lob­sters. When the lob­sters arrived, he patient­ly demon­strat­ed how to eat them, engag­ing Abi­gail in con­ver­sa­tions about geog­ra­phy, a sign of his affec­tion.

The atmos­phere was relaxed, fea­tur­ing a jug band play­ing light­heart­ed tunes. Atten­dees enjoyed beer respon­si­bly, like­ly mind­ful of the pre­ced­ing night’s mishap. The tra­di­tion of toast­ing the cou­ple added a fun ele­ment, with Abi­gail applaud­ing enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly after each kiss shared by Mag­gie and Aidan, find­ing joy in the rit­u­al.

Errol’s speech was brief, acknowl­edg­ing the absence of his wife due to health issues but cel­e­brat­ing Mag­gie’s qual­i­ties and her mar­riage with Aidan. His heart­felt words drew a stand­ing ova­tion and emo­tion­al respons­es from many, includ­ing my sis­ter. Short­ly after, Aidan received a text, which momen­tar­i­ly dis­tract­ed him, but he quick­ly returned to engag­ing with Abi­gail about geo­graph­i­cal won­ders.

As the toasts con­tin­ued, I found it chal­leng­ing to con­cen­trate; my thoughts kept revert­ing to a lin­ger­ing mys­tery involv­ing Aidan and an altered pho­to­graph with Dawn Tag­gart. Despite my under­stand­ing that Mag­gie regard­ed the image as manip­u­lat­ed, I was puz­zled over the moti­va­tions behind it and the capa­bil­i­ty of the indi­vid­u­als involved. Mean­while, Ger­ry and Sier­ra shared their mar­riage secrets, while Aidan sat dis­tract­ed, indi­cat­ing pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of his own. Lying beside him was a key, sym­bol­ic of the answers to the ques­tions that haunt­ed me.

Errol Gard­ner appeared as the quin­tes­sen­tial blend of charis­ma and fit­ness, exud­ing con­fi­dence with his tall, tanned frame and sig­na­ture out­fit. Upon meet­ing Frank Sza­tows­ki, he jovial­ly pro­nounced Frank’s last name the­atri­cal­ly, wel­com­ing him exu­ber­ant­ly and inquir­ing about his dri­ve to Osprey Lodge. Frank not­ed the lodge’s grandeur and was hur­ried upstairs by Aidan, Errol’s son. Errol’s office was impres­sive, adorned with fine wood­work, show­cas­ing his exquis­ite taste.

In a con­ge­nial atmos­phere, Frank pre­sent­ed a bot­tle of bour­bon as a gift, ref­er­enc­ing Errol’s love for it pro­filed in *New Eng­land Liv­ing*. Their con­ver­sa­tion flowed, with Errol dis­play­ing a frank­ness about a pri­or inter­view he had dis­liked, yet appre­ci­at­ed the bour­bon get­ting recog­ni­tion. Ger­ry Levin­son, Errol’s old­er friend, joined the gath­er­ing, fur­ther enhanc­ing the warm wel­come. As drinks were poured, Errol toast­ed to the hap­py wed­ding occa­sion and praised Mag­gie, not­ing she was a smart and rare tal­ent.

Frank reflect­ed on his late wife Colleen fond­ly dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, shar­ing mem­o­ries of their ear­ly rela­tion­ship amid his ser­vice in the army. The bour­bon eased his nerves, lead­ing to an open dis­cus­sion about Errol’s wife, Cather­ine, who suf­fered from debil­i­tat­ing migraines, high­light­ing the heavy toll it took on their lives. Despite Errol’s hope for her recov­ery, she had not been able to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­tiv­i­ties.

The mood shift­ed when the name Dawn Tag­gart sur­faced, bring­ing a tense silence. Ger­ry inquired about a mail item Frank had received, prompt­ing him to pro­duce an enve­lope that sparked inter­est and sus­pi­cion regard­ing its con­tent. As they exam­ined a pho­to includ­ed inside, Aidan react­ed with alarm, claim­ing it was a fake. The dis­cus­sion explored the impli­ca­tions of this pho­to, inter­twined with Aidan’s per­son­al expe­ri­ences involv­ing Dawn, a pre­vi­ous encounter under incon­clu­sive terms.

Aidan recount­ed a meet­ing with Dawn, which occurred under chance cir­cum­stances fol­low­ing a flat tire. Their fleet­ing con­nec­tion was marked by ref­er­ences to pop cul­ture that didn’t res­onate, and he had last seen her after a sin­gle din­ner date. As they inves­ti­gat­ed the fam­i­ly’s poten­tial motives for blame, Ger­ry sug­gest­ed a finan­cial angle, sig­ni­fy­ing a threat of a civ­il suit akin to the O. J. Simp­son case. Ten­sions rose sur­round­ing the pres­sures Aidan faced while try­ing to clar­i­fy his inno­cence, cul­mi­nat­ing in rev­e­la­tions about his week­end with Mar­garet dur­ing Dawn’s dis­ap­pear­ance. This inter­twin­ing of per­son­al and legal tur­moil paint­ed a com­plex pic­ture of the predica­ment involv­ing fam­i­ly dynam­ics, expec­ta­tions, and the tri­als of love .

The night before my trip to New Hamp­shire, I vis­it­ed Super­cuts for a trim with Vicky. We’ve devel­oped a close rap­port dur­ing my fre­quent vis­its; she always metic­u­lous­ly cuts my short hair while engag­ing in delight­ful con­ver­sa­tions. Though we are of sim­i­lar age, Vicky appears youth­ful with her long dark hair and bright smile. A devot­ed read­er of his­tor­i­cal romances, she often shares insights about the Tudors and Vikings, con­sis­tent­ly show­cas­ing a new book dur­ing each appoint­ment.

Vicky, who has been mar­ried and divorced twice, proud­ly dis­plays pho­tos of her two chil­dren on her work­sta­tion mir­ror. Her son, Todd, resides in Brook­lyn and works for the Wall Street Jour­nal, while her beloved daugh­ter, Janet, trag­i­cal­ly passed two years ago from a drug over­dose. Janet’s pres­ence still graces Vick­y’s mir­ror through cher­ished mem­o­ries of fam­i­ly mile­stones, under­scor­ing her last­ing impact on Vicky’s life.

In recent weeks, I had con­fid­ed in Vicky about my com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with Mag­gie, our unex­pect­ed rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and the upcom­ing wed­ding. Her atten­tive lis­ten­ing and thought­ful inquiries have made me con­tem­plate invit­ing her to the wed­ding, although I dis­missed the idea since we’ve nev­er social­ized out­side the salon.

That night, Vicky ded­i­cat­ed extra time to my hair­cut in prepa­ra­tion for my trip, offer­ing a hot tow­el treat­ment that felt heav­en­ly. She insist­ed on treat­ing me by waiv­ing the cost, fram­ing it as a wed­ding gift. As I left, I noticed two teenage girls skate­board­ing out­side a Chipo­tle and felt a cre­ative impulse to invite Vicky.

Return­ing to the salon, I found Vicky with a young boy in her chair. Sur­prised by my pres­ence, I pro­posed the idea of her join­ing me in New Hamp­shire. Despite her flat­tered response, she explained that she had pri­or com­mit­ments and could not leave her col­leagues behind dur­ing the busy week­end. Vicky offered to catch up after my trip for lunch, encour­ag­ing me to share wed­ding sto­ries and pho­tos, press­ing her busi­ness card into my hand as a reminder.

Though I had sev­er­al cards already, her ges­ture felt reas­sur­ing, and I promised to call her.

In Chap­ter 9 of “James,” the pro­tag­o­nist embarks on a dar­ing mis­sion against the back­drop of a moon­lit night. He cross­es a mud­dy chan­nel, hold­ing his sup­plies over­head, sig­nal­ing a deci­sive farewell to Jack­son Island. The night trans­forms his per­cep­tion, enrich­ing his thoughts and ground­ing his iden­ti­ty. Arriv­ing at Judge Thatch­er’s home, he nav­i­gates through the shad­ows, evad­ing bark­ing dogs, and enters the unlocked house. The oppres­sive weight of the pis­tol in his bun­dle fills him with dread as he stealth­ily explores the famil­iar library, seek­ing a crit­i­cal doc­u­ment that could aid in find­ing his fam­i­ly.

A sud­den encounter with Judge Thatch­er height­ens the ten­sion. The judge, shocked at the sight before him, ques­tions his pres­ence. The pro­tag­o­nist, now iden­ti­fied as James, con­fronts the judge with his gun, reveal­ing his des­per­ate need for infor­ma­tion regard­ing his wife and daugh­ter, who were sold into slav­ery. Reluc­tant­ly, Thatch­er con­firms they are at the Gra­ham farm in Edi­na, Mis­souri, and the pro­tag­o­nist demands to know its loca­tion on the map. The judge’s fear esca­lates as James asserts pow­er over him, demon­strat­ing a rever­sal of roles that leaves Thatch­er vul­ner­a­ble.

As they trav­el upriv­er in a skiff, James taunts the judge, flip­ping the pow­er dynam­ic as he stress­es Thatch­er’s makeshift enslave­ment under threat. Their con­ver­sa­tion turns bit­ter as James reveals he killed Tom Hop­kins, a man who per­pe­trat­ed vio­lence against slaves, solid­i­fy­ing his resolve against his oppres­sor. The chap­ter clos­es with James secur­ing Thatch­er to a tree, leav­ing him tied but with the poten­tial for escape. As the jour­ney to Edi­na begins, the pro­tag­o­nist con­fronts the fright­en­ing uncer­tain­ties of free­dom and the com­plex­i­ties of pow­er, hope, and revenge .

In Chap­ter 9, ten­sion esca­lates as the envi­ron­ment begins to shake vio­lent­ly. The sound of the bell ring­ing mul­ti­ple times con­founds the char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly Jim and Nor­man, as they ques­tion its mean­ing and the rapid pace of Brock’s work. Despite reas­sur­ances of calm, the chaos inten­si­fies. A mal­func­tion in the machin­ery caus­es a near-fatal inci­dent for Nor­man, lead­ing to a fear-filled real­iza­tion of the dan­ger they face.

The scene shifts abrupt­ly as Jim regains con­scious­ness in freez­ing water, high­light­ing the con­fu­sion and ter­ror that enveloped him. The chaos con­tin­ues as drown­ing becomes a harsh real­i­ty; Jim finds him­self amid float­ing debris and human­i­ty in dis­tress. He search­es des­per­ate­ly for Nor­man, encoun­ter­ing a grim panora­ma of life­less bod­ies, each con­tribut­ing to the theme of despair.

Even­tu­al­ly, Jim spots Nor­man cling­ing to a piece of wood, strug­gling to stay above water, his fear con­trast­ing sharply with Jim’s real­iza­tion of their crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. Echo­ing in the chaos, they call out to each oth­er, inten­si­fy­ing Jim’s sense of dread and inde­ci­sion as he stands immo­bi­lized between sav­ing Nor­man or Huck, who is also in per­il near­by. This moment serves as a reflec­tion on friend­ship and the ago­niz­ing choic­es one must make in dire cir­cum­stances.

The chap­ter cap­tures the imme­di­a­cy of sur­vival amid a calami­ty while deep­en­ing the char­ac­ter dynam­ics between Jim, Nor­man, and Huck. Each voice call­ing out to Jim rep­re­sents a con­nec­tion fraught with urgency, high­light­ing the emo­tion­al weight of choos­ing whom to save in an utter­ly chaot­ic and life-threat­en­ing moment. The vivid imagery and ris­ing ten­sion cre­ate a grip­ping atmos­phere, empha­siz­ing the themes of fear, sur­vival, and loy­al­ty.

**Chap­ter 9 Sum­ma­ry**

In this chap­ter, the pro­tag­o­nist and Huck find tem­po­rary refuge in a canoe, seek­ing warmth and safe­ty. As they lie down, the pro­tag­o­nist checks on Huck, who admits he is cold. Encour­ag­ing Huck to change out of his wet clothes, the pro­tag­o­nist shares his con­cern about his fam­i­ly. Huck attempts to recount his expe­ri­ences, reveal­ing that he had seen the pro­tag­o­nist’s fam­i­ly from a dis­tance and not­ed their sor­row­ful state.

Huck describes his encounter with a woman he met on the beach, which lends some respite from his dis­com­fort. The woman, whose iden­ti­ty remains uncer­tain, refers to Huck in a way that momen­tar­i­ly con­fus­es him, imply­ing she may sus­pect his true iden­ti­ty as they dis­cuss a mur­der case linked to the pro­tag­o­nist. Huck learns that there is a sub­stan­tial boun­ty on his head and that the towns­folk had sus­pect­ed his father, Pap Finn, at one point. The rev­e­la­tions weigh heav­i­ly on both boys, espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing the fate of Huck­’s fam­i­ly.

As they tran­si­tion to their next move, the boys man­age to access some food and devise a plan to trav­el at night to avoid detec­tion, ensur­ing they nour­ish them­selves dur­ing the day. Their con­ver­sa­tion deep­ens as they dis­cuss Pap’s ani­mos­i­ty, a hatred direct­ed part­ly at the pro­tag­o­nist due to his sta­tus as a slave. Huck seems to sense that Pap’s anger is par­tic­u­lar­ly fix­at­ed on them.

Lat­er, as dusk falls and fog rolls in, the boys embark on their voy­age. The unpre­dictable nature of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er com­pli­cates their jour­ney, with the fog obscur­ing their vis­i­bil­i­ty and the water chal­leng­ing their small ves­sel’s sta­bil­i­ty. Despite their efforts to evade pass­ing river­boats, they encounter one that near­ly col­lides with them, prompt­ing a chaot­ic strug­gle for safe­ty. The ten­sion ris­es, with Huck and the pro­tag­o­nist attempt­ing to main­tain con­trol of their canoe amid the rough waters and the wave’s wake.

Their har­row­ing expe­ri­ence brings both boys togeth­er in shared fear and deter­mi­na­tion, prompt­ing a sig­nif­i­cant moment of spir­i­tu­al reflec­tion as they nav­i­gate the per­ils before them. Despite the dan­gers, they man­age to per­se­vere, illus­trat­ing their resilience amid adver­si­ty.

In Chap­ter 9 of “We Solve Mur­ders,” Amy D’Antonio receives trou­bling news about Andrew Fair­banks, an influ­encer and for­mer client of Max­i­mum Impact Solu­tions. As her client Rosie jok­ing­ly remarks that Fair­banks was “eat­en by a shark,” Amy is inward­ly alarmed. She dis­creet­ly access­es the news report, con­firm­ing her sus­pi­cions about Fairbanks’s grave fate. The weight of the sit­u­a­tion deep­ens as she recalls her con­nec­tion with Jeff Nolan, her past boss who had recruit­ed her dur­ing her time as a gym recep­tion­ist.

As Amy reflects on her unex­pect­ed career shift from the gym to the intrigu­ing world of pri­vate secu­ri­ty, she recalls a vio­lent inci­dent at the gym that led to her recruit­ment. Dur­ing a brawl involv­ing two aggres­sive bankers, she had show­cased her abil­i­ties by dis­arm­ing one of them and keep­ing the oth­er immo­bi­lized. Her resource­ful­ness caught Jef­f’s atten­tion, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to a job offer despite her lack of com­put­er skills, which he promised to teach her.

Now, with Jeff mes­sag­ing her urgent­ly to talk, Amy sens­es a grow­ing ten­sion sur­round­ing the seem­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed fates of Fair­banks, a past col­league Bel­la Sanchez, and Mark Gooch. As she grap­ples with whether she can trust Jeff regard­ing these trou­bling coin­ci­dences, she takes in the serene views of South Carolina’s coast­line, a stark con­trast to her inner tur­moil.

Feel­ing iso­lat­ed, Amy con­fides in Rosie about her predica­ment, express­ing uncer­tain­ty about her future. Rosie, in her char­ac­ter­is­tic upbeat man­ner, reas­sures Amy that every prob­lem has a solu­tion, albeit often lead­ing to dif­fer­ent trou­ble. Their con­ver­sa­tion tran­si­tions into a relaxed note with Rosie pour­ing a drink for them both, indi­cat­ing a momen­tary escape from the loom­ing issues. As they share a drink, Amy pre­pares to recount the events that have led her to this moment, seek­ing clar­i­ty and per­haps a way out of her predica­ment.

In the unset­tling atmos­phere of that first night in Mon­ta Clare, Saint finds her­self on the front porch, her grand­moth­er, Nor­ma, stand­ing sen­tinel at her side as a police cruiser’s lights cut through the dark­ness. The air car­ries a heav­i­ness that cloaks the town, prompt­ing moth­ers to pull their chil­dren indoors and lock out the world. Var­i­ous police from Pecaut and Lenard Creek arrive, armed with an image of Sain­t’s miss­ing friend, whose eye patch marks her absence with painful vivid­ness.

As the hours progress, her grand­moth­er advis­es her to rest, sug­gest­ing that the boy who is miss­ing might soon return, a notion that Saint dis­miss­es. Instead, defy­ing her cur­few, she takes her rust­ed Spy­der and cycles toward Main Street, where the glow of locals gath­er­ing out­side Lacey’s Din­er beck­ons. Eaves­drop­ping on their con­ver­sa­tions, she learns of the police’s ongo­ing search, with dis­cus­sions about a sus­pect near Pike Creek and an ali­bi at the Roan Arnold Ener­gy Cen­ter.

Nav­i­gat­ing through the crowd, she spots the police sta­tion, alive with activ­i­ty that odd­ly pro­vides her solace. Offi­cers con­gre­gate over maps and files, while Chief Nix grap­ples with the over­whelm­ing nature of the sit­u­a­tion as he pinch­es the bridge of his nose, a ges­ture betray­ing his stress. The back­drop of Missouri’s unset­tling sta­tis­tics weighs heav­i­ly: two high school girls and a col­lege stu­dent have van­ished in recent months, gen­er­at­ing an atmos­phere of fear so per­va­sive that Saint is no longer allowed out­side once night falls.

Saint’s grand­moth­er reas­sures her, claim­ing the author­i­ties would ulti­mate­ly appre­hend the per­pe­tra­tor. How­ev­er, a Pecaut offi­cer’s warn­ing punc­tu­ates the scene, high­light­ing the lin­ger­ing dread in the com­mu­ni­ty. The chap­ter cap­tures a moment of col­lec­tive anx­i­ety and a young girl’s deter­mi­na­tion amidst the dark shad­ows flick­er­ing over Mon­ta Clare, as she nav­i­gates a world increas­ing­ly fraught with dan­ger and uncer­tain­ty.

In Chap­ter 9, Phoebe is intro­duced to Lila’s wed­ding par­ty, char­ac­ter­ized by a pecu­liar cama­raderie resem­bling a cult. Lila intro­duces Phoebe to her friends, notably High Bun, whose name does­n’t quite fit her cur­rent long fish­tail braid, and Neck Pil­low, who sports a dia­mond neck­lace. The group shares quirky intro­duc­tions, with humor reflect­ing their unique back­grounds, espe­cial­ly Mar­la, the groom’s sis­ter, and Juice, the groom’s daugh­ter, who prefers her unusu­al nick­name.

As the con­ver­sa­tion unfolds, Phoebe observes Lila’s demeanor transform—less assertive around her wed­ding guests and more reserved. This change makes Phoebe feel pro­tec­tive of her, recall­ing her own wed­ding expe­ri­ences. Despite her desire for humor, Lila remains sub­dued while oth­ers con­tin­ue with snarky ban­ter and hints of famil­iar­i­ty that make Phoebe uncom­fort­able.

Lila spins a sto­ry about how she met Gary, the groom, at her moth­er’s gallery. The group dis­cuss­es this con­nec­tion enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly the coin­ci­dence of Gary being her father’s doc­tor. Dur­ing the sto­ry­telling, there’s a humor­ous exchange about a nude paint­ing, but when ten­sions arise, silence ensues, high­light­ing the awk­ward­ness with­in the group.

Even­tu­al­ly, the women pre­pare to depart, but the dynam­ics shift when dis­cussing car arrange­ments. High Bun and Lila decide to dri­ve a vin­tage con­vert­ible, but the vehi­cle’s old mechan­ics require Phoe­be’s assis­tance since she has some expe­ri­ence with stick shifts. The vibe in the car trans­forms as they head toward Bowen’s Wharf, with mixed feel­ings of antic­i­pa­tion and nos­tal­gia.

Through­out the ride, Phoebe observes the group’s ban­ter, not­ing their con­trast­ing per­son­al­i­ties. As they face traf­fic chaos, con­ver­sa­tions drift toward per­son­al sto­ries and shared his­to­ries, punc­tu­at­ing the atmos­phere with humor despite the dis­com­fort­ing under­cur­rents. Their trip reveals insights into their rela­tion­ships as they endure awk­ward moments and fleet­ing laugh­ter, which inten­si­fies as they approach the wharf and more wed­ding guests.

Upon arrival, Phoebe rec­og­nizes Gary, who remem­bers her from the hot tub, but their con­nec­tion feels obscured. Juice’s out­burst about her vir­tu­al dog named Human Princess, recent­ly “deceased,” abrupt­ly shifts the tone, reveal­ing emo­tion­al depths among the fam­i­ly mem­bers as they nav­i­gate loss and mem­o­ries.

The chap­ter wraps up with an invi­ta­tion to con­tin­ue their gath­er­ing on the boat, main­tain­ing a mix of fas­ci­na­tion, ten­sion, and unex­pect­ed emo­tion­al rev­e­la­tions among the char­ac­ters .

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

I’m sor­ry, but I can’t con­tin­ue the text you’ve pro­vid­ed.

I’m ready to review the chap­ter you pro­vid­ed. Please upload the chap­ter, and I’ll get start­ed on sum­ma­riz­ing it for you accord­ing to your instruc­tions.

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.

NINE
Nina is at her PTA meet­ing tonight—the one I ruined by throw­ing out her
notes. She is grab­bing a bite to eat with some of the oth­er par­ents, so I’ve
been tasked with mak­ing din­ner for Andrew and Cecelia.
The house is so much qui­eter when Nina isn’t here. I’m not sure why,
but she just has an ener­gy that fills the entire space. Right now I’m alone in
the kitchen, sear­ing a filet mignon in the fry­ing pan before stick­ing it in the
oven, and it’s heav­en­ly silent in the Win­ches­ter house­hold. It’s nice. This
job would be so great if not for my boss.
Andrew has incred­i­ble timing—he comes home just as I’m tak­ing the
steaks out of the oven and let­ting them rest on the kitchen counter. He peeks
into the kitchen. “Smells great—again.”
“Thanks.” I add a lit­tle bit more salt to the mashed pota­toes, which are
already drenched in but­ter and cream. “Can you tell Cecelia to come down?
I called her twice but…” Actu­al­ly, I called up to her three times. She has not
yet answered me.
Andrew nods. “Gotcha.”
Short­ly after Andrew dis­ap­pears into the din­ing room and calls her
name, I hear her quick foot­steps on the stair­case. So that’s how it’s going to
be.
I put togeth­er two plates con­tain­ing the steak, mashed pota­toes, and a
side of broc­coli. The por­tions are small­er on Cecelia’s plate, and I am not
going to enforce whether she eats the broc­coli or not. If her father wants her
to eat it, he can make her do it. But I would be remiss if I didn’t pro­vide
veg­eta­bles. When I was grow­ing up, my moth­er always made sure to have a
serv­ing of veg­eta­bles on a din­ner plate.
I’m sure she’s still won­der­ing where she went wrong with rais­ing me.
Cecelia is wear­ing anoth­er of her over­ly fan­cy dress­es in an imprac­ti­cal
pale col­or. I’ve nev­er seen her wear nor­mal kid cloth­ing, and it just seems
wrong. You can’t play in the dress­es Cecelia wears—they’re too
uncom­fort­able and they show every speck of dirt. She sits down at one of
the chairs at the din­ing table, takes the nap­kin I laid out, and places it down
on her lap dain­ti­ly. For a moment, I’m a bit charmed. Then she opens her
mouth.
“Why did you give me water?” She crin­kles her nose at the glass of
fil­tered water I put at her place set­ting. “I hate water. Get me apple juice.”
If I had spo­ken to some­body like that when I was a child, my moth­er
would have smacked my hand and told me to say “please.” But Cecelia isn’t
my child, and I haven’t man­aged to endear myself to her yet in the time I’ve
been here. So I smile polite­ly, take the water away, and bring her a glass of
apple juice.
When I place the new glass in front of her, she care­ful­ly exam­ines it.
She holds it up to the light, nar­row­ing her eyes. “This glass is dirty. Get me
anoth­er one.”
“It’s not dirty,” I protest. “It just came out of the dish­wash­er.”
“It’s smudged.” She makes a face. “I don’t want it. Give me anoth­er
one.”
I take a deep, calm­ing breath. I’m not going to fight with this lit­tle girl.
If she wants a new glass for her apple juice, I’ll get her a new glass.
As I’m fetch­ing Cecelia her new glass, Andrew comes out to the din­ing
table. He’s removed his tie and unbut­toned the top but­ton on his white dress
shirt. Just the tini­est hint of chest hair peeks out. And I have to look away.
Men are some­thing I am still learn­ing how to nav­i­gate in my post-
incar­cer­a­tion life. And by “learn­ing,” I of course mean that I am com­plete­ly
avoid­ing it. At my last job wait­ress­ing at that bar—my only job since I got
out— cus­tomers would inevitably ask me out. I always said no. There just
isn’t room in my messed-up life right now for some­thing like that. And of
course, the men who asked me were men I wouldn’t have ever want­ed to go
out with.
I went to prison when I was sev­en­teen. I wasn’t a vir­gin, but my only
expe­ri­ences includ­ed clum­sy high school sex. Over my time in jail, I would
some­times feel the tug around attrac­tive male guards. Some­times the tug
was almost painful. And one of the things I looked for­ward to when I got
out was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with a man. Or even just
feel­ing a man’s lips against mine. I want it. Of course I do.
But not now. Some­day.
Still, when I look at a man like Andrew Win­ches­ter, I think about the
fact that I haven’t even touched a man in over a decade—not like that,
any­way. He’s not any­thing like those creeps at the seedy bar where I used to
wait tables. When I do even­tu­al­ly put myself back out there, he’s the sort of
man I’m look­ing for. Except obvi­ous­ly not mar­ried.
An idea occurs to me: if I ever want to release a lit­tle ten­sion, Enzo
might be a good can­di­date. No, he doesn’t speak Eng­lish. But if it’s just one
night, it shouldn’t mat­ter. He looks like he would know what to do with­out
hav­ing to say much. And unlike Andrew, he doesn’t wear a wed­ding ring—
although I can’t help but won­der about this Anto­nia per­son, whose name is
tat­tooed on his arm.
I wrench myself from my fan­tasies about the sexy land­scap­er as I return
to the kitchen to retrieve the two plates of food. Andrew’s eyes light up
when he sees the juicy steak, seared to per­fec­tion. I am real­ly proud of how
it came out.
“This looks incred­i­ble, Mil­lie!” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
I look over at Cecelia, who has the oppo­site response. “Yuck! This is
steak.” Stat­ing the obvi­ous, I guess.
“Steak is good, Cece,” Andrew tells her. “You should try it.”
Cecelia looks at her father then back down at her plate. She prods her
steak gin­ger­ly with her fork, as if she’s anx­ious it might leap off the plate
and into her mouth. She has a pained expres­sion on her face.
“Cece…” Andrew says.
I look between Cecelia and Andrew, not sure what to do. It hits me now
that I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have made steak for a nine-year-old girl. I just
assumed she had to have high­brow taste, liv­ing in a place like this.
“Um,” I say. “Should I…?”
Andrew push­es back his chair and grabs Cecelia’s plate from the table.
“Okay, I’ll make you some chick­en nuggets.”
I fol­low Andrew back into the kitchen, apol­o­giz­ing pro­fuse­ly. He just
laughs. “Don’t wor­ry about it. Cecelia is obsessed with chick­en, and
espe­cial­ly chick­en nuggets. We could be din­ing at the fan­ci­est restau­rant in
Long Island, and she’ll order chick­en nuggets.”
My shoul­ders relax a bit. “You don’t have to do this. I can make her
chick­en nuggets.”
Andrew lays her plate down on the kitchen counter and wags a fin­ger at
me. “Oh, but I do. If you’re going to work here, you need a tuto­r­i­al.”
“Okay…”
He wrench­es the freez­er open and pulls out a giant fam­i­ly pack of
chick­en nuggets. “See, these are the nuggets Cecelia likes. Don’t get any
oth­er brands. Any­thing else is unac­cept­able.” He fum­bles with the Ziploc
seal on the bag and removes one of the frozen nuggets. “Also, they must be
dinosaur-shaped. Dinosaur—got that?”
I can’t sup­press a smile. “Got it.”
“Also”—he holds up the chick­en nugget—“you have to first exam­ine
the nugget for any defor­mi­ties. Miss­ing head, miss­ing leg, or miss­ing tail. If
the dinosaur nugget has any of these crit­i­cal defects, it will be reject­ed.”
Now he pulls a plate from the cab­i­net above the microwave. He lays five
per­fect nuggets on the plate. “She likes to have five nuggets. You put it in
the microwave for exact­ly nine­ty sec­onds. Any less, it’s frozen. Any more,
it’s over­cooked. It’s a very ten­u­ous bal­ance.”
I nod solemn­ly. “I under­stand.”
As the chick­en nuggets rotate in the microwave, he glances around the
kitchen, which is at least twice as large as the apart­ment I was evict­ed from.
“I can’t even tell you how much mon­ey we spent ren­o­vat­ing this kitchen,
and Cecelia won’t eat any­thing that doesn’t come out of the microwave.”
The words “spoiled brat” are at the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say
them. “She knows what she likes.”
“She sure does.” The microwave beeps and he pulls out the plate of
pip­ing hot chick­en nuggets. “How about you? Have you eat­en yet?”
“I’ll just bring some food up to my room.”
He rais­es an eye­brow. “You don’t want to join us?”
Part of me would like to join him. There’s some­thing very engag­ing
about Andrew Win­ches­ter, and I can’t help but want to get to know him
bet­ter. But at the same time, it would be a mis­take. If Nina walked in and
saw the two of us laugh­ing it up at the din­ing table, she wouldn’t like it. I
also have a feel­ing that Cecelia won’t make the evening pleas­ant.
“I’d rather just eat in my room,” I say.
He looks like he’s going to protest, but then he thinks bet­ter of it.
“Sor­ry,” he says. “We’ve nev­er had live-in help before, so I’m not sure

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
9
I paced my room for a good while. Maybe I’d been mis­tak­en when I’d
spot­ted those burns—maybe they’d been there before. Maybe I hadn’t
some­how sum­moned heat and brand­ed the wood. Maybe I hadn’t slid into
Lucien’s mind as if I were mov­ing from one room to anoth­er.
Just as she always did, Alis appeared to help me change for bed. As I sat
before the van­i­ty, let­ting her comb my hair, I cringed at my reflec­tion. The
pur­ple beneath my eyes seemed per­ma­nent now—my face wan. Even my
lips were a bit pale, and I sighed as I closed my eyes.
“You gave your jew­els to a water-wraith,” Alis mused, and I found her
reflec­tion in the mir­ror. Her brown skin looked like crushed leather, and her
dark eyes gleamed for a moment before she focused on my hair. “They’re a
slip­pery sort.”
“She said they were starving—that they had no food,” I mur­mured.
Alis gen­tly coaxed out a tan­gle. “Not one faerie in that line today would
have giv­en her the mon­ey. Not one would have dared. Too many have gone
to a watery grave because of their hunger. Insa­tiable appetite—it is their
curse. Your jew­els won’t last her a week.”
I tapped a foot on the floor.
“But,” Alis went on, set­ting down the brush to braid my hair into a sin­gle
plait. Her long, spindly fin­gers scratched against my scalp. “She will nev­er
for­get it. So long as she lives, no mat­ter what you said, she is in your debt.”
Alis fin­ished the braid and pat­ted my shoul­der. “Too many faeries have
tast­ed hunger these past fifty years. Don’t think word of this won’t spread.”
I was afraid of that per­haps more than any­thing.
It was after mid­night when I gave up wait­ing, walked down the dark, silent
cor­ri­dors, and found him in his study, alone for once.
A wood­en box wrapped with a fat pink bow sat on the small table
between the twin arm­chairs. “I was just about to come up,” he said, lift­ing
his head to do a quick scan over my body to make sure all was right, all was
fine. “You should be asleep.”
I shut the door behind me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep—not with
the words we’d shout­ed ring­ing in my ears. “So should you,” I said, my
voice as ten­u­ous as the peace between us. “You work too hard.” I crossed
the room to lean against the arm­chair, eye­ing the present as Tam­lin had
eyed me.
“Why do you think I had such lit­tle inter­est in being High Lord?” he said,
ris­ing from his seat to round the desk. He kissed my brow, the tip of my
nose, my mouth. “So much paper­work,” he grum­bled onto my lips. I
chuck­led, but he pressed his mouth to the bare spot between my neck and
shoul­der. “I’m sor­ry,” he mur­mured, and my spine tin­gled. He kissed my
neck again. “I’m sor­ry.”
I ran a hand down his arm. “Tam­lin,” I start­ed.
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” he breathed onto my skin. “To you
or Lucien. I didn’t mean any of them.”
“I know,” I said, and his body relaxed against mine. “I’m sor­ry I snapped
at you.”
“You had every right,” he said, though I tech­ni­cal­ly didn’t. “I was
wrong.”
What he said had been true—if he made excep­tions, then oth­er faeries
would demand the same treat­ment. And what I had done could be con­strued
as under­min­ing. “Maybe I was—”
“No. You were right. I don’t under­stand what it’s like to be starving—or
any of it.”
I pulled back a bit to incline my head toward the present wait­ing there,
more than will­ing to let this be the last of it. I gave a small, wry smile. “For
you?”
He nipped at my ear in answer. “For you. From me.” An apol­o­gy.
Feel­ing lighter than I had in days, I tugged the rib­bon loose, and
exam­ined the pale wood box beneath. It was per­haps two feet high and
three feet wide, a sol­id iron han­dle anchored in the top—no crest or
let­ter­ing to indi­cate what might be with­in. Cer­tain­ly not a dress, but …
Please not a crown.
Though sure­ly, a crown or dia­dem would be in some­thing less …
rudi­men­ta­ry.
I unlatched the small brass lock and flipped open the broad lid.
It was worse than a crown, actu­al­ly.
Built into the box were com­part­ments and sleeves and hold­ers, all full of
brush­es and paints and char­coal and sheets of paper. A trav­el­ing paint­ing
kit.
Red—the red paint inside the glass vial was so bright, the blue as
stun­ning as the eyes of that faerie woman I’d slaugh­tered—
“I thought you might want it to take around the grounds with you. Rather
than lug all those bags like you always do.”
The brush­es were fresh, gleaming—the bris­tles soft and clean.
Look­ing at that box, at what was inside, felt like exam­in­ing a crow-
picked corpse.
I tried to smile. Tried to will some bright­ness to my eyes.
He said, “You don’t like it.”
“No,” I man­aged to say. “No—it’s won­der­ful.” And it was. It real­ly was.
“I thought if you start­ed paint­ing again … ” I wait­ed for him to fin­ish.
He didn’t.
My face heat­ed.
“And what about you?” I asked qui­et­ly. “Will the paper­work help with
any­thing at all?”
I dared meet his eyes. Tem­per flared in them. But he said, “We’re not
talk­ing about me. We’re talking—about you.”
I stud­ied the box and its con­tents again. “Will I even be allowed to roam
where I wish to paint? Or will there be an escort, too?”
Silence.
A no—and a yes, then.
I began shak­ing, but for me, for us, I made myself say, “Tamlin—Tamlin,
I can’t … I can’t live my life with guards around me day and night. I can’t
live with that … suf­fo­ca­tion. Just let me help you—let me work with you.”
“You’ve giv­en enough, Feyre.”

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.

F ATHER AND DAUGHTER WAS A huge hit. And as a show of just how
excit­ed Sun­set was about my new per­sona, they cred­it­ed me in the
begin­ning of the movie as “Intro­duc­ing Eve­lyn Hugo.” It was the first,
and only, time my name was under the mar­quee.
On open­ing night, I thought of my moth­er. I knew that if she could
have been there with me, she would have been beam­ing. I did it, I
want­ed to tell her. We’re both out of there.
When the movie did well, I thought Sun­set would cer­tain­ly green-
light Lit­tle Women. But Ari want­ed Ed Bak­er and me in anoth­er movie
as fast as pos­si­ble. We didn’t do sequels back then. Instead, we would
essen­tial­ly just make the same movie again with a dif­fer­ent name and a
slight­ly dif­fer­ent con­ceit.
So we com­menced shoot­ing on Next Door. Ed played my uncle, who
had tak­en me in after my par­ents died. The two of us quick­ly fell into
respec­tive roman­tic entan­gle­ments with the wid­owed moth­er and son
who lived next to us.
Don was shoot­ing a thriller on the lot at the time, and he used to
come vis­it me every day when his set broke for lunch.
I was absolute­ly smit­ten, in love and lust for the very first time.
I found myself bright­en­ing up the moment I set eyes on him, always
find­ing rea­sons to touch him, rea­sons to bring him up in con­ver­sa­tion
when he wasn’t around.
Har­ry was sick of hear­ing about him.
“Ev, hon­ey, I’m seri­ous,” Har­ry said one after­noon in his office
when the two of us were shar­ing a drink. “I’ve had it up to my eye­balls
with this Don Adler talk.” I vis­it­ed Har­ry about once a day back then,
just to check in, see how he was doing. I always made it seem like
busi­ness, but even then I knew he was the clos­est thing I had to a
friend.
Sure, I’d become friend­ly with a lot of the oth­er actress­es at Sun­set.
Ruby Reil­ly, in par­tic­u­lar, was a favorite of mine. She was tall and lean,
with a dyna­mite laugh and an air of detach­ment to her. She nev­er
minced words but she could charm the pants off almost any­body.
Some­times Ruby and I, and some of the oth­er girls on the lot, would
grab lunch and gos­sip about var­i­ous goings-on, but, to be hon­est, I
would have thrown every sin­gle one of them in front of a mov­ing train
to get a part. And I think they would have done the same to me.
Inti­ma­cy is impos­si­ble with­out trust. And we would have been idiots
to trust one anoth­er.
But Har­ry was dif­fer­ent.
Har­ry and I both want­ed the same thing. We want­ed Eve­lyn Hugo
to be a house­hold name. Also, we just liked each oth­er.
“We can talk about Don, or we can talk about when you’re green-
light­ing Lit­tle Women,” I said teas­ing­ly.
Har­ry laughed. “It’s not up to me. You know that.”
“Well, why is Ari drag­ging his feet?”
“You don’t want to do Lit­tle Women right now,” Har­ry says. “It’s
bet­ter if you give it a few months.”
“I most cer­tain­ly do want to do it right now.”
Har­ry shook his head and stood up, pour­ing him­self anoth­er glass
of scotch. He didn’t offer me a sec­ond mar­ti­ni, and I knew it was
because he knew I shouldn’t have had the first one to begin with.
“You could real­ly be big,” Har­ry said. “Everybody’s say­ing so. If
Next Door does as well as Father and Daugh­ter and you and Don keep
going on the way you have been, you could be a big deal.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what I’m bank­ing on.”
“You want Lit­tle Women to come out just when peo­ple are think­ing
you only know how to do one thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You had a huge hit with Father and Daugh­ter. Peo­ple know you can
be fun­ny. They know you’re adorable. They know they liked you in that
pic­ture.”
“Sure.”
“Now you’re gonna do it again. You’re going to show them that you
can re-cre­ate the mag­ic. You’re not just a one-trick pony.”
“All right . . .”
“Maybe you do a pic­ture with Don. After all, they can’t print pic­tures
of the two of you danc­ing at Ciro’s or the Tro­cadero fast enough.”
“But—”
“Hear me out. You and Don do a pic­ture. A mati­nee romance,
maybe. Some­thing where all the girls want to be you, and all the boys
want to be with you.”
“Fine.”
“And just when every­one is think­ing they know you, that they ‘get’
Eve­lyn Hugo, you play Jo. You knock everybody’s socks off. Now the
audi­ence is going to think to them­selves, ‘I knew she was some­thing
spe­cial.’ ”
“But why can’t I just do Lit­tle Women now? And they’ll think that
now?”
Har­ry shook his head. “Because you have to give them time to
invest in you. You have to give them time to get to know you.”
“You’re say­ing I should be pre­dictable.”
“I’m say­ing you should be pre­dictable and then do some­thing
unpre­dictable, and they’ll love you for­ev­er.”
I lis­tened to him, thought about it. “You’re just feed­ing me a line,” I
said.
Har­ry laughed. “Look, this is Ari’s plan. Like it or not. He wants you
in a few more pic­tures before he’s gonna give you Lit­tle Women. But he
is gonna give you Lit­tle Women.”
“All right,” I said. What choice did I have, real­ly? My con­tract with
Sun­set was for anoth­er three years. If I caused too much trou­ble, they
had an option to drop me at any time. They could loan me out, force
me to take projects, put me on leave with­out pay, you name it. They
could do any­thing they want­ed. Sun­set owned me.
“Your job now,” Har­ry said, “is to see if you can make a real go of it
with Don. It’s in both of your best inter­ests.”
I laughed. “Oh, now you want to talk about Don.”
Har­ry smiled. “I don’t want to sit here and lis­ten to you talk about
how dreamy he is. That’s bor­ing. I want to know if the two of you
might be ready to make it offi­cial.”
Don and I had been seen around town, our pho­tos tak­en at every
hot spot in Hol­ly­wood. Din­ner at Dan Tana’s, lunch at the Vine Street
Der­by, ten­nis at the Bev­er­ly Hills Ten­nis Club. And we knew what we
were doing, parad­ing around in pub­lic.
I need­ed Don’s name men­tioned in the same sen­tences as mine,
and Don need­ed to look like he was a part of the New Hol­ly­wood.
Pho­tos of the two of us dou­ble-dat­ing with oth­er stars went a long way
toward solid­i­fy­ing his image as a man-about-town.
But he and I nev­er talked about any of that. Because we were
gen­uine­ly hap­py to be around each oth­er. The fact that it was help­ing
our careers felt like a bonus.
The night of the pre­miere of his movie Big Trou­ble, Don picked me
up wear­ing a slick dark suit and hold­ing a Tiffany box.
“What’s this?” I asked him. I was wear­ing a black-and-pur­ple flo­ral
Chris­t­ian Dior.
“Open it,” Don said, smil­ing.
Inside was a giant plat­inum and dia­mond ring. It was braid­ed on the
sides with a square-cut jew­el in the mid­dle.
I gasped. “Are you . . .”
I knew it had been com­ing, if only because I knew Don want­ed to
sleep with me so bad it was near­ly killing him. I’d been resist­ing him
despite his very overt advances. But it was get­ting hard­er to do. The
more we kissed in dark places, the more we found our­selves alone in
the backs of lim­ou­sines, the hard­er it was for me to push him away.
I’d nev­er had that feel­ing before, phys­i­cal yearn­ing. I’d nev­er felt
what it is to ache to be touched—until Don. I would find myself next to
him, des­per­ate to feel his hands on my bare skin.
And I loved the idea of mak­ing love to some­one. I’d had sex before,
but it had nev­er meant any­thing to me. I want­ed to make love to Don. I
loved him. And I want­ed us to do it right.
And here it was. A mar­riage pro­pos­al.
I put my hand out to touch the ring, to make sure it was all real.
Don shut the box before I could. “I’m not ask­ing you to mar­ry me,” he
said.

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.

9
The label came to me with a con­cept for the “… Baby One More Time” video in
which I would play a futur­is­tic astro­naut. The mock-up I saw had me look­ing
like a Pow­er Ranger. That image didn’t res­onate with me, and I had a feel­ing my
audi­ence wouldn’t relate to it, either. I told the exec­u­tives at the label that I
thought peo­ple would want to see my friends and me sit­ting at school, bored,
and then as soon as the bell rang, boom—we’d start danc­ing.
The way the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er had us mov­ing was so smooth. It helped that
most of the dancers were from New York City. In the pop dance world, there are
two camps. Most peo­ple will say that LA dancers are bet­ter. No dis­re­spect to
them, but my spir­it has always liked New York dancers best—they have more
heart. We rehearsed at Broad­way Dance Cen­ter, where I’d tak­en class­es as a kid,
so I was com­fort­able there. When Jive Records exec­u­tive Bar­ry Weiss came to the
stu­dio, I turned it on for him. In that moment, I showed him what I was capa­ble
of.
The direc­tor for the video, Nigel Dick, was open to my ideas. In addi­tion to
the school bell cuing the start of the danc­ing, I added that it was impor­tant that
there be cute boys. And I thought we should wear school uni­forms to make it
seem more excit­ing when we start­ed danc­ing out­side in our casu­al clothes. We
even got to cast Miss Fe as my teacher. I found it hilar­i­ous to see her in nerdy
glass­es and frumpy teacher clothes.
Mak­ing that video was the most fun part of doing that �rst album.
That’s prob­a­bly the moment in my life when I had the most pas­sion for
music. I was unknown, and I had noth­ing to lose if I messed up. There is so
much free­dom in being anony­mous. I could look out at a crowd who’d nev­er
seen me before and think, You don’t know who I am yet. It was kind of lib­er­at­ing
that I didn’t real­ly have to care if I made mis­takes.
For me, per­form­ing wasn’t about pos­ing and smil­ing. Onstage, I was like a
bas­ket­ball play­er dri­ving down the court. I had ball sense, street sense. I was
fear­less. I knew when to take my shots.
Start­ing in the sum­mer, Jive sent me on a mall tour—to some­thing like twen­ty-
six malls! Doing that form of pro­mo­tion is not much fun. No one knew who I
was yet. I had to try to sell myself to peo­ple who weren’t that inter­est­ed.
My demeanor was innocent—and it wasn’t an act. I didn’t know what I was
doing. I’d just say, “Yeah, hi! My song’s real­ly good! You’ve got to check it out!”
Before the video came out, not a lot of peo­ple knew what I looked like. But
by the end of Sep­tem­ber, the song was on the radio. I was six­teen when, on
Octo­ber 23, 1998, the “… Baby One More Time” sin­gle hit stores. The next
month the video pre­miered, and sud­den­ly I was get­ting rec­og­nized every­where I
went. On Jan­u­ary 12, 1999, the album came out and sold over ten mil­lion copies
very quick­ly. I debuted at num­ber one on the Bill­board 200 chart in the US. I
became the �rst woman to debut with a num­ber one sin­gle and album at the
same time. I was so hap­py. And I could feel my life start to open up. I didn’t have
to per­form in malls any­more.
Things were mov­ing fast. I toured with NSYNC, includ­ing my old Mick­ey
Mouse Club friend Justin Tim­ber­lake, in tour bus­es. I was always with my
dancers or Feli­cia or one of my two man­agers, Lar­ry Rudolph and John­ny
Wright. I acquired a secu­ri­ty guard named Big Rob, who was unbe­liev­ably sweet
to me.
I became a reg­u­lar on MTV’s Total Request Live. Rolling Stone sent David
LaChapelle to Louisiana to shoot me for the April cov­er sto­ry “Inside the Heart,
Mind & Bed­room of a Teen Dream.” When the mag­a­zine came out, the pho­tos
were con­tro­ver­sial because the cov­er shot of me in my under­wear hold­ing a
Tele­tub­by played up how young I was. My moth­er seemed con­cerned, but I
knew that I want­ed to work with David LaChapelle again.

Chap­ter 9 sped through the final days of May, mark­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of school activ­i­ties, exams, and the buzzing antic­i­pa­tion of sum­mer break at Albe­mar­le Acad­e­my. With the arrival of June, the intense heat and relent­less sun­light trans­formed the Old Vil­lage into a swel­ter of closed win­dows and air-con­di­tioned inte­ri­ors, where even the sim­plest chores felt like mon­u­men­tal tasks. Amidst this oppres­sive weath­er, Patri­cia found her­self pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on noti­fy­ing her book club about the new guest, James Har­ris, until it was too late.

On the evening of the book club, as Patri­cia bat­tled with her guilt and inde­ci­sion, the heat seemed to leech all ener­gy from her. By the time James Har­ris arrived, unex­pect­ed by all but Patri­cia, the meet­ing took an unfore­seen turn. Intro­duc­tion awk­ward­ness aside, the group’s dynam­ic shift­ed with the pres­ence of a new, male per­spec­tive. James Har­ris, with his unas­sum­ing man­ner and hints of a secre­tive finan­cial arrange­ment with Patri­cia, min­gled awk­ward­ly into the pre­dom­i­nant­ly female gath­er­ing.

The con­ver­sa­tion veered between per­son­al anec­dotes, real estate ven­tures, and the com­mu­ni­ty’s curios­i­ty about James Har­ris’s back­ground, inter­spersed with dis­cus­sions on their month­ly read, “The Bridges of Madi­son Coun­ty.” The group’s attempt to stick to lit­er­ary dis­course crum­bled when Kit­ty the­o­rized about the book’s male pro­tag­o­nist lead­ing a sin­is­ter dou­ble life—a sug­ges­tion that mir­rored their wari­ness towards their new vis­i­tor.

The evening took a sur­re­al turn with the appear­ance of Patri­ci­a’s moth­er-in-law, Miss Mary, in a state of undress and con­fu­sion, con­fronting James Har­ris with accu­sa­tions and mis­tak­en iden­ti­ties. The inci­dent cast a pall over the gath­er­ing, abrupt­ly con­clud­ing the meet­ing and leav­ing Patri­cia to con­tend with the after­math and her embar­rass­ment alone.

Through this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tive weaves the ten­sion of intro­duc­ing an out­sider into a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty, the dis­com­forts of sum­mer in the South, and the unset­tling real­iza­tion that appear­ances may har­bor deep­er, pos­si­bly dark­er lay­ers.

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.

9
APRIL
Whirl­wind.
It’s hard not to use that word to describe my rela­tion­ship with Eddie, but every time it comes into
my head, I remem­ber Bea, meet­ing Eddie on vaca­tion.
She called it a whirl­wind, too.
But maybe that’s just what being with Eddie is like. Maybe every woman who’s ever come into
his life gets swept up in the same way because once he’s decid­ed he wants you, it’s the only way he
knows how to behave.
I give Eddie the sec­ond chance he want­ed, but set it on my terms. No dates in Moun­tain Brook.
Neu­tral ter­ri­to­ry. He thinks it’s because I’m wor­ried about the oth­er peo­ple in Thorn­field Estates
find­ing out. I don’t want them to know about us yet—and I don’t want to risk anoth­er fuck­up like the
thing with Chris—but it’s not because I’m wor­ried about my job. My dog-walk­ing days are tick­ing
down so steadi­ly I can prac­ti­cal­ly hear the click.
No, I don’t want any­one to know yet because I like hav­ing this secret. The biggest piece of gos­sip
in the neigh­bor­hood, and it’s mine.
They’ll find out even­tu­al­ly, I know, but I’m deter­mined that when they do, I’ll be so deeply
entrenched there won’t be shit they can do about it.
So as Feb­ru­ary slides into March, March into April, we go to fan­cy restau­rants with menus I can
bare­ly read. We walk through parks, our shoul­ders and hips touch­ing. We go to movies, and sit in the
back, like teenagers. His hand is always on me, rest­ing against my palm, trac­ing the line of my
col­lar­bone, a warm weight on my low­er back so that I can feel his touch even when we’re apart.
That’s the strangest part to me, real­ly. Not the dates, not the idea that some­one like Eddie
Rochester might want to spend time with me. It’s how much I want him, too.
I’m not used to that.
Want­i­ng things? Sure. That’s been a con­stant in my life, my eyes catch­ing the sparkle of some­thing
expen­sive on a wrist, around a neck; pic­tures of dream hous­es taped to my bed­room wall instead of
what­ev­er pre­pu­bes­cent boy girls my age were sup­posed to be inter­est­ed in.
But I’ve been dodg­ing men’s hands since I was twelve, so wish­ing a man would touch me is a
nov­el expe­ri­ence.
I think I like it.
The first time he kissed me, it was beside his car out­side a restau­rant. His mouth tast­ed like the
red wine we’d shared, and his hands hold­ing my face hadn’t made me feel trapped, but … safe. And
beau­ti­ful.
I’d liked the clear dis­ap­point­ment in his eyes when I pulled back. Because, of course, I pulled
back. Tim­ing is every­thing here, and I’m not about to fuck up some­thing this big by being an easy
con­quest for him.
So, any inti­ma­cy is lim­it­ed to kiss­es for now and the occa­sion­al heat­ed touch­es, his palms slid­ing
over my upper arms, my thighs, my fin­gers rest­ing on the hard mus­cles of his stom­ach but not going
low­er.
He hasn’t had to wait for any­thing in a long time, I think, so he can damn well wait for me.
But it isn’t just the kiss­ing, the desire I feel for him that has my head spin­ning. It’s how much he
notices things. Notices me.
On our third date—sandwiches at a place in Vestavia—I pick a bot­tle of cream soda from the
cool­er, and before I can stop myself, I’m telling him the sto­ry of a fos­ter dad I had ear­ly on, when I
was ten. He was obsessed with cream soda, bought giant cas­es of it from Cost­co, but nev­er let me or
the oth­er kid in the house at that time, Jason, touch any of it—which, of course, meant that cream soda
was all I ever want­ed to drink.
It sur­prised me, how eas­i­ly the sto­ry poured out. It hadn’t been that exact sto­ry, of course. I’d left
out the fos­ter care part, just say­ing “my dad,” but it was the most truth­ful I’d been about my past with
any­one in years.
And Eddie hadn’t pried or looked at me with pity. He’d just squeezed my hand, and when I went
to his house the next day, the fridge was stocked with the dark glass bot­tles.
Not the cheap shit Mr. Leonard bought, but the good stuff they only sell in fan­cy delis and high-end
gro­cery stores.
I’ve gone so long try­ing not to be seen that there’s some­thing intox­i­cat­ing about let­ting him real­ly
see me.
John knows some­thing is going on, his beady eyes are even more sus­pi­cious than usu­al as they
fol­low me around the apart­ment, but even that doesn’t both­er me now. I like keep­ing this secret from
him, too, the smug smile I wear, the dif­fer­ent hours I’m keep­ing.
But all of that—kissing Eddie, fuck­ing with John—is noth­ing com­pared to how I feel now,
crouched in front of Bear’s crate as I put him back after his walk, lis­ten­ing to Mrs. Reed on her cell
phone.
“Eddie is dat­ing some­one.”
I allow myself a small smile. I’d been wait­ing for this, but it’s even more sat­is­fy­ing than I’d
imag­ined, the thrill rush­ing through me sim­i­lar to how I feel when I swipe a ring or put a watch in my
pock­et.
Actu­al­ly, it might even be bet­ter.
“I know!” I hear Mrs. Reed exclaim from behind me. There’s a pause, and I won­der who’s on the
oth­er end of the phone. Emi­ly, maybe? They go back and forth between friends and ene­mies, but this
week, they’re on the friends’ side of things. All it will take is one snide com­ment about someone’s
yoga pants being too tight, or a pas­sive-aggres­sive dig at the lack of kids, and then they’ll be feud­ing
again—but for now, they’re besties.
And talk­ing about me.
Except they don’t know that it’s me, and that’s the fun part, the part I’ve been wait­ing weeks for
now.
I smile as I turn back to Mrs. Reed, hand­ing over Bear’s leash.
She takes it, then says, “Girl, let me call you back,” into the phone. Def­i­nite­ly Emi­ly, then. They
do that “girl” thing with each oth­er con­stant­ly when they’re friends again.
Putting her phone back on the counter, she grins at me. “Jane,” she prac­ti­cal­ly purrs, and I know
what’s com­ing. She’s done this before about Tripp Ingra­ham, squeez­ing me for any stray info, any­thing
I’ve picked up from being around him. It kills me that she thinks she’s sub­tle when she does it.
So when she asks, “Have you noticed any­one new around the Rochester house?” I give her the
same bland smile as always and shrug.
“I don’t think so.”
It’s a stu­pid answer, and I take plea­sure in the way Mrs. Reed blinks at me, unsure what to do
with it, before mov­ing past her with a wave of my fin­gers. “See you next week!” I call cheer­ful­ly.
There are Chanel sun­glass­es on a table by the door, plus a neat­ly fold­ed stack of cash, but I don’t
even look at them.
Instead, the sec­ond I’m on the side­walk, I pull out my phone to text Eddie.
If Eddie was sur­prised that I actu­al­ly ini­ti­at­ed a date—and that I sug­gest­ed we “eat at home”—he
didn’t show it. He had texted me back with­in min­utes, and when I’d shown up at his house at sev­en
that evening, he already had din­ner on.
I didn’t ask if he’d actu­al­ly cooked it him­self or if he’d picked up some­thing from the lit­tle
gourmet shop in the vil­lage that did that kind of thing, whole rows of half-assed fan­cy food you could
throw in the oven or in some gor­geous cop­per pot and pass off as your own.
It didn’t mat­ter.
What mat­tered is that he could’ve just ordered take­out, but instead, he’d put some effort into the
night, effort that told me I was right to take the next step.
I wait until after din­ner, until we’re back in the liv­ing room. He’s lit a few can­dles, lamps spilling
warm pools of gold­en light on the hard­wood, and he pours me a glass of wine before get­ting a
whiskey for him­self. I can taste it on his lips, smoky and expen­sive, when he kiss­es me.
I think of that first day we were in here, drink­ing cof­fee, danc­ing around each oth­er. These new
ver­sions of us—dressed nicer (I’m wear­ing my least fad­ed skin­ny black jeans and an imi­ta­tion silk
H&M top I found at Good­will), alco­hol instead of cof­fee, the danc­ing very different—seem lay­ered
over that ear­li­er Jane and Eddie.
Jane and Eddie. I like how it sounds, and I’m going to be Jane for­ev­er now, I decide. This is
where all the run­ning, all the lying, was lead­ing. It was all worth it because now I’m here with this
beau­ti­ful man in this beau­ti­ful house.
Just one last thing to do.
Turn­ing away from him, I twist the wine­glass in my hands. I can’t see out the giant glass doors,
only my own reflec­tion, and Eddie’s, as he leans against the mar­ble-topped island sep­a­rat­ing the
liv­ing room from the kitchen.
“This has been the loveli­est night,” I say, mak­ing sure to put the right note of wist­ful­ness in my
voice. “I’m real­ly going to miss this place.”
It’s not hard to sound sad as I say it—even the idea of leav­ing makes my chest tight­en. It’s anoth­er
strange feel­ing, anoth­er one I’m not used to. Want­i­ng to stay some­where. Is it just because I’m tired of
run­ning, or is it some­thing else? Why here? Why now?
I don’t know, but I know that this place, this house, this neigh­bor­hood, feels safe to me in a way

In “Chival­ry or Vil­lainy,” the ninth chap­ter of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” Jane Clay­ton finds her­self in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion aboard the Kin­caid, iso­lat­ed and at the mer­cy of the vile Niko­lai Rokoff. After being marooned on Jun­gle Island, her hus­band, Tarzan, is now nowhere to aid her. Jane, trapped on the ship, receives unwel­come vis­its from Rokoff, who pro­pos­es to “save” her from her “sav­age” hus­band, Tarzan, in exchange for her affections—an offer she vehe­ment­ly rejects, demon­strat­ing her unwa­ver­ing loy­al­ty to Tarzan and her moral integri­ty.

Rokoff, infu­ri­at­ed by Jane’s rejec­tion, threat­ens the life of their son, aim­ing to bend Jane to his will. How­ev­er, Sven Ander­ssen, the Kin­caid’s cook, becomes an unex­pect­ed ally for Jane. Despite his lim­it­ed Eng­lish and seem­ing­ly sim­ple-mind­ed demeanor, Sven reveals a sur­pris­ing depth of courage and cun­ning. He over­hears Rokof­f’s threats and plans, decid­ing to aid Jane due to her kind­ness towards him, con­trast­ed with Rokof­f’s cru­el­ty.

Late one night, Sven secret­ly pre­pares to escape with Jane and her baby. Dis­guis­ing his true inten­tions with his usu­al non­sen­si­cal remarks about the weath­er, he clev­er­ly smug­gles Jane and the child off the ship and into a small boat, guid­ing them away under the cov­er of dark­ness. Their des­ti­na­tion is unknown to Jane, adding to her anx­i­ety and fear for her child’s safe­ty despite the relief of escap­ing Rokof­f’s clutch­es.

Nav­i­gat­ing through the dark, treach­er­ous waters of the Ugam­bi Riv­er, they encounter the wild sounds and dan­gers of the jun­gle. Their jour­ney leads them to a vil­lage where Sven has pre­arranged for their arrival. Despite the harsh liv­ing con­di­tions and the pres­ence of curi­ous vil­lagers, Jane finds a moment of peace, cher­ish­ing the baby she fought so hard to pro­tect. Sven’s unex­pect­ed hero­ism and the kind­ness from the vil­lagers high­light themes of courage, resilience, and the unex­pect­ed forms that help can take in dire sit­u­a­tions.

This chap­ter not only advances the plot by mov­ing Jane and her child away from imme­di­ate dan­ger but also deep­ens the explo­ration of char­ac­ter rela­tion­ships under extreme stress. Jane’s strength and deter­mi­na­tion are matched by Sven’s sur­pris­ing com­plex­i­ty and the sim­ple yet pro­found human­i­ty of the African vil­lagers, set­ting the stage for the unfold­ing of fur­ther adven­tures and chal­lenges in the wild heart of the jun­gle.