In this chap­ter of “Mani­ac Magee,” the focus is on Cobble’s Knot, an enig­mat­ic, intri­cate knot that became a local leg­end in the town of Two Mills. The knot was dis­cov­ered by the orig­i­nal own­er of Cob­ble’s Cor­ner Gro­cery, who strug­gled with his busi­ness until he found the knot hang­ing from a flag­pole while open­ing the store one morn­ing. Rather than cut­ting it down, he decid­ed to cap­i­tal­ize on its mys­te­ri­ous allure by offer­ing a prize for any­one who could untan­gle it, lead­ing to a surge of atten­tion and patrons, albeit not a mas­sive boom in sales.

Over the years, Cobble’s Cor­ner evolved from a gro­cery store to a pizze­ria, yet the allure of the knot remained. The prize for untan­gling the knot changed from just a brief moment at the can­dy counter to a more entic­ing offer of a large piz­za each week for an entire year. This trans­for­ma­tion con­sid­er­ably increased its val­ue and intrigue. Mr. Cob­ble moved the knot inside for safe­keep­ing, allow­ing only chal­lengers to see it.

The chal­lenge of untan­gling Cobble’s Knot attract­ed numer­ous par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing notable char­ac­ters like JJ. Thorndike, who lat­er became a magi­cian, and Fin­gers Hal­loway, who turned into a pick­pock­et. Despite the steady stream of attempts, none suc­ceed­ed, fur­ther cement­ing the knot’s leg­endary sta­tus and the glo­ry that await­ed any­one who could final­ly con­quer it.

Aman­da, a friend of Mani­ac, encour­ages him to attempt unty­ing the knot, excit­ed­ly explain­ing that if he suc­ceeds, he would gain fame and respect in the town. She believes in his abil­i­ties, but there’s a light-heart­ed moment when Mani­ac sus­pects Aman­da’s ulte­ri­or motive might be the piz­za rather than the chal­lenge itself, lead­ing to play­ful ban­ter between the two. Ulti­mate­ly, con­vinced by Amanda’s enthu­si­asm and chal­lenge, Mani­ac agrees to take a shot at untan­gling Cobble’s Knot, set­ting the stage for fur­ther devel­op­ments in the sto­ry.

Blomkvist devot­ed Wednes­day to div­ing deep into Svensson’s mate­ri­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly any­thing relat­ed to Zala. He unearthed a fold­er labeled on Svensson’s com­put­er con­tain­ing doc­u­ments he exam­ined, which includ­ed ref­er­ences to Iri­na P. and a police con­tact named Gul­brand­sen. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Gul­brand­sen was away, leav­ing Blomkvist no clos­er to con­firm­ing any leads.

From an autop­sy report, Blomkvist learned that Iri­na P. had met a grue­some end, and the police’s assump­tion was that the killer was one of her clients. The con­nec­tion Svens­son seemed to imply between Iri­na P. and Zala intrigued Blomkvist, prompt­ing him to ques­tion why Svens­son had filed Iri­na under Zala, though he found no defin­i­tive links.

As he sift­ed through the doc­u­ments, Blomkvist real­ized that Zala resem­bled an elu­sive fig­ure in the crim­i­nal under­world, with notes indi­cat­ing a lack of cred­i­bil­i­ty and prop­er sourc­ing. Doubts crept into his mind regard­ing Salan­der’s inno­cence, despite the loy­al­ty he felt for her, espe­cial­ly giv­en her piv­otal role in sav­ing his life and career. Despite hav­ing knowl­edge of her sig­nif­i­cant hack­ing theft, he remained deter­mined to help her if she were caught, as he believed in her good­ness.

Mean­while, he dis­cussed his inves­tiga­tive plans with Berg­er, reveal­ing a list of indi­vid­u­als he need­ed to inter­view. She offered him her BMW with the con­di­tion that he car­ry Mace for pro­tec­tion giv­en the lev­el of poten­tial dan­ger he might encounter. In response to her con­cerns, Blomkvist assured her he had a plan for safe­ty, reveal­ing that he had car­ried Mace from Salander’s belong­ings.

Blomkvist and Modig shared insights on the where­abouts of Svensson’s com­put­er, not­ing that an appar­ent break occurred on the day of the mur­ders. As the nar­ra­tive of the plot unfolds, Blomkvist dis­cov­ers a new lead when a phone call results in a meet­ing with Björ­ck, who had a con­nec­tion to Svensson’s research, stir­ring sus­pi­cion towards Gog­gles, a dubi­ous hook­er called Miri­am Wu, and ulti­mate­ly lead­ing him towards Zala’s lin­ger­ing shad­ow in their inves­ti­ga­tion.

Through­out these events, Blomkvist grap­ples with the moral impli­ca­tions of his actions against indi­vid­u­als who may have abused oth­ers, point­ing to a thread of cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem he inves­ti­gates .

In this chap­ter of “Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God,” the nar­ra­tive explores the after­math of a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane, high­light­ing the strug­gle for sur­vival in a rav­aged town. Janie and Tea Cake find them­selves in a dis­mal house two days after the storm, and their con­ver­sa­tion reflects a desire to escape the des­o­late sur­round­ings. Tea Cake express­es a strong urge to leave, sug­gest­ing they could return to the state, but Janie is uncer­tain. She tries to con­vince him that stay­ing in the house is safer, as the Red Cross is aid­ing those affect­ed.

Despite Janie’s warn­ings, Tea Cake ven­tures out­side to assess the dam­age and see if he can help. He encoun­ters destruc­tion every­where: hous­es with­out roofs, corpses in need of bur­ial, and a sense of hor­ror pal­pa­ble in the atmos­phere. His inter­ac­tion with two white men almost leads to trou­ble; they intend to draft him into the group clear­ing the dead. Tea Cake becomes part of a grim task force ded­i­cat­ed to find­ing and bury­ing bod­ies scat­tered through­out the wreck­age. The stark con­trast of how the bod­ies are treat­ed based on race—the white bod­ies are giv­en coffins while the black bod­ies are hasti­ly buried with quick-lime—highlights the racial injus­tices in soci­ety.

As the work takes a toll on him, the thought of Janie’s con­cern spurs Tea Cake to return home. He express­es his weari­ness of the chaos and sug­gests they leave the town. Even with Janie’s hes­i­tance due to the dev­as­ta­tion in the ’Glades, Tea Cake insists that con­di­tions would be bet­ter there, under­scor­ing their need for refuge from soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal tur­moil.

The chap­ter cul­mi­nates in Tea Cake’s declin­ing health after drink­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed water, like­ly lead­ing to a seri­ous ill­ness due to rabies. Janie’s nur­tur­ing instincts are evi­dent as she tends to him and wor­ries for his well­be­ing, high­light­ing their bond. As Tea Cake’s ill­ness wors­ens, Janie seeks a doc­tor, empha­siz­ing the grav­i­ty of their sit­u­a­tion. The chap­ter ends with a sense of omi­nous ten­sion as they both face an uncer­tain future amidst the unfold­ing con­se­quences of the hur­ri­cane and soci­etal strife.

In his for­ma­tive years as a thief, Bre­itwieser scoured muse­ums, pil­fer­ing a range of objects from the medieval peri­od to ear­ly mod­ernism, dri­ven by a spon­ta­neous desire for what cap­ti­vat­ed him. While he ini­tial­ly found thrill in diverse artifacts—especially weapons and bronze items—his enthu­si­asm often waned. Now, along­side Anne-Cather­ine in their attic, he con­tem­plates the qual­i­ties that allure them to spe­cif­ic pieces of art, engag­ing also in sim­i­lar dis­cus­sions with Meich­ler at the frame shop, and fur­ther refin­ing his pref­er­ences through stud­ies in his library. He has iden­ti­fied a par­tic­u­lar affin­i­ty for north­ern Euro­pean art­works from the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies, show­ing new­found ded­i­ca­tion with each theft.

The ratio­nale for his aes­thet­ic incli­na­tions remains ambigu­ous. Art’s exis­tence chal­lenges Dar­win­ian prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al selec­tion, which typ­i­cal­ly pri­or­i­tize the sur­vival of the fittest, as art demands resources that do not direct­ly con­tribute to sur­vival essen­tials. Yet, art is omnipresent across cul­tures, pos­si­bly serv­ing as a mat­ing sig­nal or emerg­ing from a state of leisure once sur­vival pres­sures were alle­vi­at­ed post-evo­lu­tion. Human cre­ativ­i­ty flour­ished with reduced threats, unleash­ing imag­i­na­tive explo­rations that sym­bol­ize free­dom.

Soci­o­log­i­cal stud­ies reveal a glob­al pref­er­ence for cer­tain artis­tic themes, such as land­scapes fea­tur­ing trees and water, with blue being the most favored col­or. Artis­tic attrac­tion is sub­jec­tive, influ­enced by indi­vid­ual essence and cul­tur­al con­text. Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research by Semir Zeki has pin­point­ed the medi­al orbital-frontal cor­tex as the source of aes­thet­ic response, sug­gest­ing that beau­ty resides in brain activ­i­ty.

Bre­itwieser is par­tic­u­lar­ly enchant­ed by oil paint­ings renowned for their vibrant, lumi­nous qual­i­ties stem­ming from flax seed and their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance dur­ing the Renais­sance, com­pared to the more mut­ed styles of south­ern regions. He finds more emo­tion­al res­o­nance in less­er-known artists than in cel­e­brat­ed fig­ures like Tit­ian or Da Vin­ci, whom he per­ceives as con­strained by com­mer­cial patron­age.

His pref­er­ence for “cab­i­net paint­ings,” which are small­er and eas­i­er to con­ceal, reflects an appre­ci­a­tion for the aspi­ra­tional, hand­craft­ed beau­ty pre­ced­ing indus­tri­al­iza­tion. Bre­itwieser also sal­vages antiques like tobac­co box­es and wine gob­lets, admir­ing their beau­ty and intri­cate crafts­man­ship before mass pro­duc­tion dimin­ished arti­sanal qual­i­ty. For him, the era right before automa­tion rep­re­sent­ed the pin­na­cle of human cre­ative expres­sion, with his attic hous­ing these cher­ished rem­nants of a past era amidst the relent­less advance­ment of time.

**Chap­ter 19 Sum­ma­ry**

In this chap­ter, Huck and Jim encounter two con men, the Duke and the King, who inter­ro­gate them about their ori­gins, their mon­ey, and the nature of their rela­tion­ship. Huck clev­er­ly omits the fact that he has ten dol­lars and insists that Jim, a run­away slave, is his friend. The men are skep­ti­cal, espe­cial­ly when the Duke ques­tions Jim’s sta­tus and Huck­’s inten­tions. In a moment of impro­vi­sa­tion, Huck con­cocts a back­sto­ry claim­ing that his fam­i­ly died from a plague, leav­ing him, his drunk­en father, and lit­tle broth­er Ike. This trag­ic tale soft­ens the con men’s hearts, espe­cial­ly with Huck pre­tend­ing to weep.

The King and Duke seem impressed by Huck­’s sto­ry­telling but also skep­ti­cal. They respond with false empa­thy, lament­ing the loss of Lit­tle Ike, as Huck cor­rects them on his broth­er’s name. Huck explains that they have been trav­el­ing at night to avoid detec­tion, wor­ried that peo­ple would try to take Jim away from him.

As they nav­i­gate the riv­er, a storm inter­rupts their plans, and the char­ac­ters are forced to wait out the weath­er on shore. When the storm sub­sides, they attempt to get some rest but find the Duke and King have tak­en most of the space on the raft. The roy­al­ty mem­bers demand bet­ter food, crav­ing eggs and bacon, while Huck express­es his con­cern that they can­not enter a town with­out risk­ing Jim’s safe­ty.

The con­ver­sa­tion turns towards the Duke’s and King’s plan to make mon­ey by putting on a show in town, with the Duke claim­ing he can act and sug­gest­ing they could claim Jim as a prop­er­ty. Huck firm­ly oppos­es this idea, fear­ing it would lead to Jim being sold. The ten­sion high­lights Huck­’s pro­tec­tive nature towards Jim, and despite the con men’s charm, Huck main­tains his vig­i­lance against their schemes .

In Chap­ter 19 of “We Solve Mur­ders,” Amy and Rosie find them­selves out­side a remark­ably nice house, with Rosie com­ment­ing on its upscale appear­ance. While Rosie is intrigued, she also express­es skep­ti­cism about law enforce­ment offi­cers afford­ing such lux­u­ry, imply­ing that cops usu­al­ly reside in more mod­est neigh­bor­hoods. Despite Rosie’s enthu­si­asm for a direct approach to search­ing the house, Amy remains wary, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the poten­tial threat to her safe­ty after learn­ing that Kevin might have been paid to kill her. They plan to remain low-pro­file to avoid draw­ing atten­tion.

Their objec­tive is to gath­er any use­ful infor­ma­tion from the house of Sher­iff Justin Scrog­gie, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing his inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Fair­banks. Amy believes cops may bring work files home, which could pro­vide valu­able insights. They arrive to find the house qui­et, lead­ing Amy to con­clude it’s emp­ty, prompt­ing them to make their move quick­ly and dis­creet­ly.

In a moment of impul­siv­i­ty, Amy breaks a back win­dow to enter the house, while Rosie com­ments on her tech­nique. Once inside, Amy sug­gests they split up to search for elec­tron­ic devices that might con­tain use­ful infor­ma­tion. She quick­ly goes upstairs, not­ing the upscale design of the house and the odd­i­ty of some per­son­al items. Mean­while, Rosie, still down­stairs, calls out that she found some­thing.

They recon­vene in a den where Rosie proud­ly points to a com­put­er, show­cas­ing her keen obser­va­tion­al skills. How­ev­er, this tri­umph is over­shad­owed when they dis­cov­er the body of Sher­iff Justin Scrog­gie hang­ing from a ceil­ing joist, bound and life­less. The grim real­iza­tion brings a swift ten­sion to the scene, as Amy rec­og­nizes the unfold­ing com­pli­ca­tions in their inves­ti­ga­tion. Rosie’s remark about being a writer and notic­ing details under­scores the grav­i­ty of their sit­u­a­tion, alter­ing the course of their quest and inten­si­fy­ing the stakes involved in solv­ing the mur­der mys­tery.

In Chap­ter 19 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint reflects on her past as she watch­es an emp­ty hive from her yard. The mem­o­ry of a vis­it to this same place with Patch two years ago resur­faces, evok­ing nos­tal­gia and warmth. As they nav­i­gate the wood­ed area, he men­tions he carved their ini­tials into a near­by oak tree, sig­ni­fy­ing a youth­ful promise. Saint express­es a mix of play­ful irri­ta­tion and affec­tion when he jok­ing­ly acknowl­edges the act as defac­ing nature.

Saint invites Patch to her birth­day din­ner, anx­i­ety bub­bling beneath her casu­al ques­tion. Their con­ver­sa­tion takes a humor­ous turn when Patch dis­cov­ers wolf scat, prompt­ing him to sug­gest they pre­pare for poten­tial dan­ger. Saint feels pride as she retrieves a repli­ca flint­lock pis­tol she has car­ried, thrilled to have a sem­blance of pro­tec­tion as they explore.

The cama­raderie con­tin­ues to build as Saint inquires about the cake she is prepar­ing for her par­ty, even­tu­al­ly reveal­ing it’s a pirate-themed cake dec­o­rat­ed with skull and cross­bones. This lit­tle white lie fills her with embar­rass­ment and excite­ment, but Patch’s delight feels infec­tious, and he promis­es to attend with a gift in hand.

Their play­ful ban­ter trans­forms as they jour­ney into the wilder­ness, encoun­ter­ing thorny net­tles, heavy rain, and the sense of adven­ture. In this moment, lying togeth­er on the ground, Saint asks Patch about the changes she might face now that she is turn­ing a year old­er. Their exchange remains light-heart­ed as he teas­es about her phys­i­cal appear­ance, yet they delve deep­er when Saint reveals the back­sto­ry behind her name, giv­en by her grand­par­ents in hon­or of her deceased moth­er.

As the rain falls soft­ly around them, Saint reflects on her iden­ti­ty tied to her name, and Patch affirms both her beau­ty and intel­li­gence, cre­at­ing an inti­mate bond. This chap­ter cap­tures the nuances of youth, friend­ship, and the long­ing for con­nec­tions that tran­scend the ordi­nary, while the chang­ing world around them serves as a back­drop to their evolv­ing rela­tion­ship.

In Chap­ter 19, the atmos­phere is charged as Lila’s wed­ding rehearsal unfolds at the Break­ers. Patri­cia, Lila’s moth­er, is sober and express­es her fatigue, while atten­dees are arranged by Nan­cy, the event plan­ner, in an order of sig­nif­i­cance. Laugh­ter echoes when Nan­cy advis­es every­one to refrain from touch­ing the venue. After her depar­ture, the ten­sion eas­es. Mar­la intro­duces her son, Oliv­er, to Phoebe, reveal­ing his enthu­si­asm for lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Per­cy Jack­son series. Mean­while, Phoebe feels a dis­con­nec­tion from her dis­tant hus­band as she ignores his call.

Con­ver­sa­tions at the rehearsal din­ner reveal per­son­al strug­gles and con­nec­tions, illus­trat­ed through Mar­la’s inse­cu­ri­ties about her mar­riage and Phoe­be’s bur­geon­ing inti­ma­cy with Jim, Lila’s broth­er. As they nav­i­gate the event, Phoebe observes the cou­ple sign­ing away their pasts in the wed­ding’s rit­u­al. She con­tem­plates poten­tial action with Jim, a younger man whose com­pa­ny feels unex­pect­ed­ly safe amidst emo­tion­al chaos.

As the din­ner unfolds, humor and ten­sion intermingle—Lila is torn between her mother’s overt dis­play with a provoca­tive paint­ing of her­self and her need for auton­o­my on her spe­cial day. Jim’s speech, a touch­ing trib­ute trans­form­ing into a comedic onslaught, brings emo­tions to the fore­front, demon­strat­ing the deep famil­ial bond and love present at the cer­e­mo­ny.

How­ev­er, the set­ting also reveals under­ly­ing tensions—Lila’s agi­ta­tion with Jim’s quirks and the mount­ing frus­tra­tion over the omit­ted palate cleansers once again leads to a rift between Lila and Gary, hint­ing at deep­er issues in their rela­tion­ship. The moment cul­mi­nates in Jim’s poignant speech that speaks of love, grief, and famil­ial bonds, unit­ing every­one despite the chaos.

In the after­math, Lila’s inse­cu­ri­ties and rela­tion­ships are strained as she and Phoebe grap­ple with hon­esty and expec­ta­tions amid famil­ial oblig­a­tions and per­son­al desires, lead­ing to a tense con­ver­sa­tion regard­ing loy­al­ty and love. As emo­tions unrav­el, a dark turn of events occurs with Juice, high­light­ing the frag­ile state of their fam­i­ly. The chap­ter con­cludes with Phoebe reflect­ing on her com­plex inter­ac­tions with Gary as the exter­nal fes­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ue, fore­shad­ow­ing fur­ther emo­tion­al devel­op­ments.

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Chap­ter 19 begins with Tam­lin show­ing the pro­tag­o­nist a spe­cial place in his manor—a beau­ti­ful­ly main­tained gallery filled with diverse art­work, which imme­di­ate­ly stirs deep emo­tions in her. This act of kind­ness prompts her to ques­tion why Tam­lin would go to such lengths for her, to which he responds that it has been a long time since any­one appre­ci­at­ed the fin­er things in the house. The pro­tag­o­nist is sig­nif­i­cant­ly moved by the art­works, which evoke a pow­er­ful response of joy, grief, and humil­i­ty with­in her.

Tam­lin’s ges­ture of unveil­ing the gallery to her sig­ni­fies a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and con­nec­tion between them, reveal­ing his desire to see joy and beau­ty in life despite the dark­ness that sur­rounds them. The pro­tag­o­nist’s day con­tin­ues with the dis­cov­ery of a room pre­pared for her paint­ing, stocked with an array of sup­plies far beyond her expec­ta­tions. This fur­ther empha­sizes Tam­lin’s under­stand­ing and sup­port­ive nature towards her cre­ative expres­sion.

As days turn into weeks, the pro­tag­o­nist immers­es her­self in paint­ing, dri­ven by an insa­tiable desire to cap­ture the beau­ty of the Spring Court and her com­plex feel­ings towards Tam­lin. Their bond deep­ens through shared explo­rations of the land, yet she is con­stant­ly remind­ed of the harsh real­i­ties of his duties as High Lord, which often pull him away to con­front threats.

The nar­ra­tive also delves into the pro­tag­o­nist’s inter­nal strug­gles with her past and iden­ti­ty. Despite the safe­ty and beau­ty of her new envi­ron­ment, she grap­ples with feel­ings of guilt and shame for leav­ing her fam­i­ly behind and ques­tions the authen­tic­i­ty of her own desires and hap­pi­ness. A par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant moment is shared between her and Tam­lin in the rose gar­den, where Tam­lin’s empa­thy and gen­tle reas­sur­ances offer her com­fort.

How­ev­er, a cloud of unease and mys­tery looms over their moments of inti­ma­cy and con­nec­tion, as exter­nal threats and the respon­si­bil­i­ties of Tam­lin’s posi­tion intrude upon their haven. The chap­ter cul­mi­nates in an encounter with an invis­i­ble enti­ty, pos­si­bly a spy or emis­sary from a hos­tile faerie court, hint­ing at deep­er polit­i­cal under­cur­rents and dan­gers threat­en­ing their world. This con­fronta­tion stark­ly high­lights the pre­car­i­ous­ness of their sanc­tu­ary and fore­shad­ows chal­lenges they will inevitably face togeth­er.

The chap­ter beau­ti­ful­ly blends ele­ments of romance, fan­ta­sy, and dra­ma, enriched by the pro­tag­o­nists’ emo­tion­al jour­ney towards under­stand­ing, heal­ing, and con­fronting their pasts. The intri­cate details of their inter­ac­tions, the vivid­ly described set­tings, and the loom­ing exter­nal con­flicts seam­less­ly com­bine to advance the nar­ra­tive and deep­en the read­er’s invest­ment in the char­ac­ters’ fates.

Van Cleve walks into the sheriff’s office, elat­ed by the dis­cov­ery of McCul­lough’s body, turn­ing the town’s atten­tion away from his own con­tro­ver­sies. He sug­gests the sher­iff arrest Margery O’Hare for the mur­der, cit­ing the O’Hare-McCullough fam­i­ly feud and a library book found near the body as evi­dence. Van Cleve accus­es Margery of spread­ing mali­cious ideas to oth­er women, includ­ing his own fam­i­ly, and desta­bi­liz­ing the com­mu­ni­ty through her library work. Despite his enthu­si­asm, the sher­iff appears uncon­vinced, lack­ing defin­i­tive proof of Margery’s guilt.

Margery is arrest­ed at the library amidst a scene of con­fu­sion and fear among her library col­leagues and the town’s peo­ple. The evi­dence against her includes a com­ment from Nan­cy Stone, who claims to have heard Margery near the scene before a gun­shot. Despite attempts by her friends to cov­er or deflect, the sher­iff arrests Margery based on the feud his­to­ry, her pres­ence near the crime scene, and the pecu­liar mur­der weapon – a book from her library.

After Margery’s arrest, the com­mu­ni­ty reacts with a mix of shock, dis­be­lief, and accep­tance, reflect­ing on the long-stand­ing feud and Margery’s non­con­for­mi­ty. Van Cleve, lever­ag­ing his influ­ence, aims to ensure Margery remains incar­cer­at­ed, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing her defense. Mean­while, Margery’s allies scram­ble to under­stand and coun­ter­act the charges against her, fear­ing the impact of Van Cleve’s manip­u­la­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty’s bias­es.

In her cell, Margery expe­ri­ences fear and iso­la­tion, exac­er­bat­ed by the taunts of oth­er pris­on­ers and the dis­com­fort of the jail con­di­tions. Despite the deputy’s attempts to pro­vide some dig­ni­ty, her preg­nan­cy and the grav­i­ty of her sit­u­a­tion over­whelm her, offer­ing a grim out­look for her future amidst a deeply divid­ed com­mu­ni­ty.

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.

NINETEEN
The next morn­ing, Nina has mor­phed back into the more pleas­ant ver­sion of
her­self, hav­ing seem­ing­ly for­got­ten last night. I would think it was all a
ter­ri­fy­ing dream except for the ban­dage wrapped around her right hand. The
white gauze is dot­ted with crim­son.
Although she’s not being direct­ly weird with me, Nina is more fraz­zled
than usu­al this morn­ing. When she goes to dri­ve Cecelia to school, her tires
screech against the pave­ment. When she returns, she just stands in the
mid­dle of the liv­ing room for a moment, star­ing at the walls, until I final­ly
come out of the kitchen and ask if she’s all right.
“I’m fine.” She tugs at the col­lar of her white blouse, which is wrin­kled
even though I am cer­tain I ironed it. “Would you be so kind as to make me
some break­fast, Mil­lie? The usu­al?”
“Of course,” I say.
“The usu­al” for Nina is three eggs, scram­bled in a lot of but­ter and
Parme­san cheese, four slices of bacon, and an Eng­lish muf­fin, also but­tered.
I can’t help but think of the com­ments the oth­er PTA woman made about
Nina’s weight while she was in the oth­er room, although I respect that she
doesn’t scru­ti­nize every calo­rie that goes in her mouth the way they do.
Nina isn’t gluten-free or veg­an. As far as I can tell, she eats what­ev­er she
wants and then some. She even has late-night snacks, as evi­denced by the
dirty plates she leaves behind on the counter for me to wash in the morn­ing.
Not one of those plates has ever made it into the dish­wash­er.
I serve the plate of food to her at the din­ing table with a glass of orange
juice on the side. She scru­ti­nizes the food, and I’m wor­ried I’ve got the
ver­sion of Nina that’s going to tell me that every­thing on this plate is
cooked poor­ly, or else claim that she flat out nev­er asked me for break­fast
in the first place. But instead, she smiles sweet­ly at me. “Thank you,
Mil­lie.”
“You’re wel­come.” I hes­i­tate, hov­er­ing over her. “By the way, Andrew
asked me if I would get you two tick­ets to Show­down on Broad­way.”
Her eyes light up. “He’s so thought­ful. Yes, that would be love­ly.”
“What are some days that work for you?”
She scoops some eggs into her mouth and chews thought­ful­ly. “I’m free
a week from Sun­day, if you can swing it.”
“Sure. And I can watch Cecelia, of course.”
She scoops more eggs into her mouth. Some of it miss­es her lips and
falls onto her white blouse. She doesn’t seem to even notice it’s there and
con­tin­ues shov­el­ing food into her mouth.
“Thank you again, Mil­lie.” She winks at me. “I real­ly don’t know what
we would do with­out you.”
She likes to tell me that. Or that she’s going to fire me. One or the oth­er.
But I sup­pose it’s not her fault. Nina def­i­nite­ly has emo­tion­al prob­lems
like her friends said. I can’t stop think­ing about her alleged stay in a
psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. They don’t lock you up for noth­ing. Some­thing bad
must’ve hap­pened, and part of me is dying to know what it is. But it’s not
like I could ask her. And my attempts to get the sto­ry out of Enzo have been
fruit­less.
Nina has near­ly cleaned her entire plate, hav­ing devoured the eggs,
bacon, and Eng­lish muf­fin in less than five min­utes, when Andrew jogs
down­stairs. I had been a lit­tle wor­ried about him after last night, even
though I heard the water run­ning. Not that it was a like­ly sce­nario, but
maybe, I don’t know, Nina had the faucet on some sort of auto­mat­ic timer
just to make it seem like he was in the bath­room, alive and well. Like I said,
it didn’t seem like­ly, but it also didn’t seem impos­si­ble. In any case, it’s a
relief to find him intact. My breath catch­es a bit at the sight of his dark gray
suit paired with a light blue dress shirt.
Just before Andrew enters the din­ing room, Nina push­es her plate of
food away. She stands up and smooths out her blond hair, which lacks its
usu­al shine, and the dark roots are even more vis­i­ble than before.
“Hel­lo, Andy.” She offers him a daz­zling smile. “How are you this
morn­ing?”
He starts to answer her, but then his eyes dart down to the bit of egg still
cling­ing to her blouse. One side of his lips quirks up. “Nina, you have a
lit­tle egg on you.”
“Oh!” Her cheeks turn pink as she dabs at the egg on her blouse. But it’s
been sit­ting there sev­er­al min­utes, and a stain still mars the del­i­cate white
fab­ric. “Sor­ry about that!”
“It’s okay—you still look beau­ti­ful.” He grabs her shoul­ders and pulls
her in for a kiss. I watch her melt against him and ignore the twinge of
jeal­ousy in my chest. “I’ve got to run to the office, but I’ll see you tonight.”
“I’ll walk you out, dar­ling.”
Nina is so freak­ing lucky. She’s got every­thing. Yes, she did have a stay
at a men­tal insti­tu­tion, but at least she wasn’t in prison. And here she is,
with an incred­i­ble house, tons of mon­ey, and a hus­band who is kind, fun­ny,
wealthy, con­sid­er­ate, and… well, absolute­ly gor­geous.
I close my eyes for a moment and think about what it would be like to
live in Nina’s shoes. To be the woman in charge of this house­hold. To have
the expen­sive cloth­ing and the shoes and the fan­cy car. To have a maid I
could boss around—force her to cook for me and clean for me and live in a
tiny hole in the attic while I had the big bed­room with the king-size bed and
zil­lion-count sheets. And most of all, to have a hus­band like Andrew. To
have him press his lips against mine the way he did to hers. To feel his body
heat against my chest…
Oh my God, I must stop think­ing about this. Now. In my defense, it’s
been a real­ly long time for me. I spent ten years in prison, fan­ta­siz­ing about
some per­fect guy I would meet when I got out, who would save me from
every­thing. And now…
Well, it could hap­pen. It’s pos­si­ble.
I climb the stairs and get to work mak­ing the beds and clean­ing the
bed­rooms. I’ve just fin­ished up and am return­ing down­stairs when the
door­bell rings. I hur­ry over to answer it, and I’m sur­prised to see Enzo at
the door, clutch­ing a giant card­board box in his arms.
“Ciao,” I say, remem­ber­ing the greet­ing he taught me.
Amuse­ment flick­ers over his face. “Ciao. This… for you.”
I under­stand imme­di­ate­ly what must’ve hap­pened. Some­times deliv­ery
peo­ple don’t real­ize they can enter through the gate, so they dump heavy
pack­ages out­side the gate, and I have to heave them into the house. Enzo
must have seen the deliv­ery man leave the pack­age, and now he’s kind­ly
car­ried it in for me.
“Gra­zie,” I say.
He rais­es his eye­brows at me. “You want I…”
It takes me a sec­ond to real­ize what he is ask­ing. “Oh… yes, just put it
on the din­ing table.”
I point to the din­ing table and he car­ries the pack­age over there. I
remem­ber Nina freaked out that time when Enzo came into the house, but
she’s not here and that box looks too heavy for me to lift. After he rests it on
the table, I glance at the return address: Eve­lyn Win­ches­ter. Prob­a­bly
some­body in Andrew’s fam­i­ly.
“Gra­zie,” I say again.
Enzo nods. He’s wear­ing a white T‑shirt and jeans—he looks good. He’s
always out some­where in the neigh­bor­hood, work­ing up a sweat in the yard,
and a lot of the rich women in this neigh­bor­hood love to ogle him.
Truth­ful­ly, I pre­fer Andrew’s looks, and of course, there’s the lan­guage
bar­ri­er. But maybe hav­ing a lit­tle fun with Enzo would be good for me. It
would relieve a lit­tle of that pent-up ener­gy, and maybe I would stop hav­ing
whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate fan­tasies about my boss’s hus­band.
I’m not quite sure how to broach the sub­ject, giv­en he doesn’t seem to
speak any Eng­lish. But I’m pret­ty sure the lan­guage of love is uni­ver­sal.
“Water?” I offer him, while I’m try­ing to fig­ure out exact­ly how to go
about this.
He nods. “Si.”
I run to the kitchen and grab a glass from the cab­i­net. I fill it halfway
with water, then I bring it out to him. He takes it grate­ful­ly. “Gra­zie.”
His biceps bulge as he drinks from the glass. He has a real­ly good body.
I won­der what he’s like in bed. Prob­a­bly fan­tas­tic.
I wring my hands togeth­er as he drinks from the glass of water. “So,
um… are you… busy?”
He low­ers the glass and looks at me blankly. “Eh?”
“Um.” I clear my throat. “Like, do you have much… work?”
“Work.” He nods at a word he under­stands. Seri­ous­ly, I don’t get it.
He’s been work­ing here three years, and he real­ly doesn’t under­stand any
Eng­lish? “Si. Molto occu­pa­to.”
“Oh.”
This isn’t going well. Maybe I should just get right to the point.

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
19
“Amren’s right,” Rhys drawled, lean­ing against the thresh­old of the town
house sit­ting room. “You are like dogs, wait­ing for me to come home.
Maybe I should buy treats.”
Cass­ian gave him a vul­gar ges­ture from where he lounged on the couch
before the hearth, an arm slung over the back behind Mor. Though
every­thing about his pow­er­ful, mus­cled body sug­gest­ed some­one at ease,
there was a tight­ness in his jaw, a coiled-up ener­gy that told me they’d been
wait­ing here for a while.
Azriel lin­gered by the win­dow, com­fort­ably ensconced in shad­ows, a
light flur­ry of snow dust­ing the lawn and street behind him. And Amren …
Nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or not. I’d have to
hunt her down to give her back the neck­lace soon—if Rhys’s warn­ings and
her own words were to be believed.
Damp and cold from the mist and wind that chased us down from the
Prison, I strode for the arm­chair across from the couch, which had been
shaped, like so much of the fur­ni­ture here, to accom­mo­date Illyr­i­an wings. I
stretched my stiff limbs toward the fire, and sti­fled a groan at the deli­cious
heat.
“How’d it go?” Mor said, straight­en­ing beside Cass­ian. No gown today
—just prac­ti­cal black pants and a thick blue sweater.
“The Bone Carv­er,” Rhys said, “is a busy­body gos­sip who likes to pry
into oth­er people’s busi­ness far too much.”
“But?” Cass­ian demand­ed, brac­ing his arms on his knees, wings tucked
in tight.
“But,” Rhys said, “he can also be help­ful, when he choos­es. And it seems
we need to start doing what we do best.”
I flexed my numbed fin­gers, con­tent to let them dis­cuss, need­ing a
moment to reel myself back in, to shut out what I’d revealed to the Bone
Carv­er.
And what the Bone Carv­er sug­gest­ed I might actu­al­ly be asked to do with
that book. The abil­i­ties I might have.
So Rhys told them of the Caul­dron, and the rea­son behind the tem­ple
pil­lag­ings, to no short­age of swear­ing and questions—and revealed noth­ing
of what I had admit­ted in exchange for the infor­ma­tion. Azriel emerged
from his wreath­ing shad­ows to ask the most ques­tions; his face and voice
remained unread­able. Cass­ian, sur­pris­ing­ly, kept quiet—as if the gen­er­al
under­stood that the shad­owsinger would know what infor­ma­tion was
nec­es­sary, and was busy assess­ing it for his own forces.
When Rhys was done, his spy­mas­ter said, “I’ll con­tact my sources in the
Sum­mer Court about where the half of the Book of Breath­ings is hid­den. I
can fly into the human world myself to fig­ure out where they’re keep­ing
their part of the Book before we ask them for it.”
“No need,” Rhys said. “And I don’t trust this infor­ma­tion, even with your
sources, with any­one out­side of this room. Save for Amren.”
“They can be trust­ed,” Azriel said with qui­et steel, his scarred hands
clench­ing at his leather-clad sides.
“We’re not tak­ing risks where this is con­cerned,” Rhys mere­ly said. He
held Azriel’s stare, and I could almost hear the silent words Rhys added, It
is no judg­ment or reflec­tion on you, Az. Not at all.
But Azriel yield­ed no tinge of emo­tion as he nod­ded, his hands unfurl­ing.
“So what do you have planned?” Mor cut in—perhaps for Az’s sake.
Rhys picked an invis­i­ble piece of dirt off his fight­ing leathers. When he
lift­ed his head, those vio­let eyes were glacial. “The King of Hybern sacked
one of our tem­ples to get a miss­ing piece of the Caul­dron. As far as I’m
con­cerned, it’s an act of war—an indi­ca­tion that His Majesty has no inter­est
in woo­ing me.”
“He like­ly remem­bers our alle­giance to the humans in the War, any­way,”
Cass­ian said. “He wouldn’t jeop­ar­dize reveal­ing his plans while try­ing to
sway you, and I bet some of Amarantha’s cronies report­ed to him about
Under the Moun­tain. About how it all end­ed, I mean.” Cassian’s throat
bobbed.
When Rhys had tried to kill her. I low­ered my hands from the fire.
Rhys said, “Indeed. But this means Hybern’s forces have already
suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed our lands—without detec­tion. I plan to return the
favor.”
Moth­er above. Cass­ian and Mor just grinned with fer­al delight. “How?”
Mor asked.
Rhys crossed his arms. “It will require care­ful plan­ning. But if the
Caul­dron is in Hybern, then to Hybern we must go. Either to take it back …
or use the Book to nul­li­fy it.”
Some cow­ard­ly, pathet­ic part of me was already trem­bling.
“Hybern like­ly has as many wards and shields around it as we have
here,” Azriel coun­tered. “We’d need to find a way to get through them
unde­tect­ed first.”
A slight nod. “Which is why we start now. While we hunt for the Book.
So when we get both halves, we can move swiftly—before word can spread
that we even pos­sess it.”
Cass­ian nod­ded, but asked, “How are you going to retrieve the Book,
then?”
I braced myself as Rhys said, “Since these objects are spelled to the
indi­vid­ual High Lords, and can only be found by them—through their
pow­er … Then, in addi­tion to her uses regard­ing the han­dling of the Book
of Breath­ings itself, it seems we pos­si­bly have our own detec­tor.”
Now they all looked at me.
I cringed. “Per­haps was what the Bone Carv­er said in regard to me being
able to track things. You don’t know … ” My words fad­ed as Rhys smirked.
“You have a ker­nel of all our power—like hav­ing sev­en thumbprints. If
we’ve hid­den some­thing, if we’ve made or pro­tect­ed it with our pow­er, no
mat­ter where it has been con­cealed, you will be able to track it through that
very mag­ic.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” I tried again.
“No—but there is a way to test it.” Rhys was still smil­ing.
“Here we go,” Cass­ian grum­bled. Mor gave Azriel a warn­ing glare to tell
him not to vol­un­teer this time. The spy­mas­ter just gave her an incred­u­lous
look in return.
I might have lounged in my chair to watch their bat­tle of wills had Rhys
not said, “With your abil­i­ties, Feyre, you might be able to find the half of
the Book at the Sum­mer Court—and break the wards around it. But I’m not
going to take the carver’s word for it, or bring you there with­out test­ing you
first. To make sure that when it counts, when we need to get that book, you
—we do not fail. So we’re going on anoth­er lit­tle trip. To see if you can find
a valu­able object of mine that I’ve been miss­ing for a con­sid­er­ably long
time.”
“Shit,” Mor said, plung­ing her hands into the thick folds of her sweater.
“Where?” I man­aged to say.
It was Azriel who answered. “To the Weaver.”
Rhys held up a hand as Cass­ian opened his mouth. “The test,” he said,
“will be to see if Feyre can iden­ti­fy the object of mine in the Weaver’s
trove. When we get to the Sum­mer Court, Tar­quin might have spelled his
half of the Book to look dif­fer­ent, feel dif­fer­ent.”
“By the Caul­dron, Rhys,” Mor snapped, set­ting both feet on the car­pet.
“Are you out of your—”
“Who is the Weaver?” I pushed.
“An ancient, wicked crea­ture,” Azriel said, and I sur­veyed the faint scars
on his wings, his neck, and won­dered how many such things he’d
encoun­tered in his immor­tal life. If they were any worse than the peo­ple
who shared blood ties with him. “Who should remain unboth­ered,” he
added in Rhys’s direc­tion. “Find anoth­er way to test her abil­i­ties.”
Rhys mere­ly shrugged and looked to me. To let me choose. Always—it
was always my choice with him these days. Yet he hadn’t let me go back to
the Spring Court dur­ing those two visits—because he knew how bad­ly I
need­ed to get away from it?
I gnawed on my low­er lip, weigh­ing the risks, wait­ing to feel any ker­nel
of fear, of emo­tion. But this after­noon had drained any reserve of such
things. “The Bone Carv­er, the Weaver … Can’t you ever just call some­one
by a giv­en name?”
Cass­ian chuck­led, and Mor set­tled back in the sofa cush­ions.
Only Rhys, it seemed, under­stood that it hadn’t entire­ly been a joke. His
face was tight. Like he knew pre­cise­ly how tired I was—how I knew I
should be quak­ing at the thought of this Weaver, but after the Bone Carv­er,
what I’d revealed to it … I could feel noth­ing at all.
Rhys said to me, “What about adding one more name to that list?”
I didn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the sound of that. Mor said as much.
“Emis­sary,” Rhysand said, ignor­ing his cousin. “Emis­sary to the Night
Court—for the human realm.”
Azriel said, “There hasn’t been one for five hun­dred years, Rhys.”
“There also hasn’t been a human-turned-immor­tal since then, either.”
Rhys met my gaze. “The human world must be as pre­pared as we are—
espe­cial­ly if the King of Hybern plans to shat­ter the wall and unleash his
forces upon them. We need the oth­er half of the Book from those mor­tal
queens—and if we can’t use mag­ic to influ­ence them, then they’re going to
have to bring it to us.”
More silence. On the street beyond the bay of win­dows, wisps of snow
brushed past, dust­ing the cob­ble­stones.
Rhys jerked his chin at me. “You are an immor­tal faerie—with a human
heart. Even as such, you might very well set foot on the con­ti­nent and be …
hunt­ed for it. So we set up a base in neu­tral ter­ri­to­ry. In a place where
humans trust us—trust you, Feyre. And where oth­er humans might risk
going to meet with you. To hear the voice of Pry­thi­an after five cen­turies.”
“My family’s estate,” I said.
“Mother’s tits, Rhys,” Cass­ian cut in, wings flar­ing wide enough to
near­ly knock over the ceram­ic vase on the side table next to him. “You
think we can just take over her family’s house, demand that of them?”
Nes­ta hadn’t want­ed any deal­ings with the Fae, and Elain was so gen­tle,
so sweet … how could I bring them into this?
“The land,” Mor said, reach­ing over to return the vase to its place, “will
run red with blood, Cass­ian, regard­less of what we do with her fam­i­ly. It is
now a mat­ter of where that blood will$flow—and how much will spill. How
much human blood we can save.”
And maybe it made me a cow­ard­ly fool, but I said, “The Spring Court
bor­ders the wall—”
“The wall stretch­es across the sea. We’ll fly in off­shore,” Rhys said
with­out so much as a blink. “I won’t risk dis­cov­ery from any court, though
word might spread quick­ly enough once we’re there. I know it won’t be
easy, Feyre, but if there’s any way you could con­vince those queens—”
“I’ll do it.” I said. Clare Beddor’s bro­ken and nailed body flashed in my
vision. Ama­ran­tha had been one of his com­man­ders. Just one—of many.
The King of Hybern had to be hor­ri­ble beyond reck­on­ing to be her mas­ter.
If these peo­ple got their hands on my sis­ters … “They might not be hap­py
about it, but I’ll make Elain and Nes­ta do it.”
I didn’t have the nerve to ask Rhys if he could sim­ply force my fam­i­ly to
agree to help us if they refused. I won­dered if his pow­ers would work on
Nes­ta when even Tamlin’s glam­our had failed against her steel mind.
“Then it’s set­tled,” Rhys said. None of them looked par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py.
“Once Feyre dar­ling returns from the Weaver, we’ll bring Hybern to its
knees.”
Rhys and the oth­ers were gone that night—where, no one told me. But after
the events of the day, I bare­ly fin­ished devour­ing the food Nuala and
Cer­rid­wen brought to my room before I tum­bled into sleep.
I dreamed of a long, white bone, carved with hor­ri­fy­ing accu­ra­cy: my
face, twist­ed in agony and despair; the ash knife in my hand; a pool of
blood leak­ing away from two corpses—
But I awoke to the watery light of win­ter dawn—my stom­ach full from
the night before.
A mere minute after I’d risen to con­scious­ness, Rhys knocked on my
door. I’d bare­ly grant­ed him per­mis­sion to enter before he stalked inside
like a mid­night wind, and chucked a belt hung with knives onto the foot of
the bed.
“Hur­ry,” he said, fling­ing open the doors of the armoire and yank­ing out
my fight­ing leathers. He tossed them onto the bed, too. “I want to be gone
before the sun is ful­ly up.”
“Why?” I said, push­ing back the cov­ers. No wings today.
“Because time is of the essence.” He dug out my socks and boots. “Once
the King of Hybern real­izes that some­one is search­ing for the Book of
Breath­ings to nul­li­fy the pow­ers of the Caul­dron, then his agents will begin
hunt­ing for it, too.”
“You sus­pect­ed this for a while, though.” I hadn’t had the chance to
dis­cuss it with him last night. “The Caul­dron, the king, the Book … You
want­ed it con­firmed, but you were wait­ing for me.”
“Had you agreed to work with me two months ago, I would have tak­en
you right to the Bone Carv­er to see if he con­firmed my sus­pi­cions about
your tal­ents. But things didn’t go as planned.”
No, they most cer­tain­ly hadn’t.
“The read­ing,” I said, slid­ing my feet into fleece-lined, thick-soled
slip­pers. “That’s why you insist­ed on the lessons. So if your sus­pi­cions
were true and I could har­ness the Book … I could actu­al­ly read it—or any
trans­la­tion of what­ev­er is inside.” A book that old might very well be
writ­ten in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent lan­guage. A dif­fer­ent alpha­bet.
“Again,” he said, now strid­ing for the dress­er, “had you start­ed to work
with me, I would have told you why. I couldn’t risk dis­cov­ery oth­er­wise.”
He paused with a hand on the knob. “You should have learned to read no
mat­ter what. But yes, when I told you it served my own purposes—it was
because of this. Do you blame me for it?”
“No,” I said, and meant it. “But I’d pre­fer to be noti­fied of any future
schemes.”
“Duly not­ed.” Rhys yanked open the draw­ers and pulled out my
under­gar­ments. He dan­gled the bits of mid­night lace and chuck­led. “I’m
sur­prised you didn’t demand Nuala and Cer­rid­wen buy you some­thing
else.”
I stalked to him, snatch­ing the lace away. “You’re drool­ing on the
car­pet.” I slammed the bathing room door before he could respond.
He was wait­ing as I emerged, already warm with­in the fur-lined leather.
He held up the belt of knives, and I stud­ied the loops and straps. “No
swords, no bow or arrows,” he said. He’d worn his own Illyr­i­an fight­ing
leathers—that sim­ple, bru­tal sword strapped down his spine.
“But knives are fine?”
Rhys knelt and spread wide the web of leather and steel, beck­on­ing for
me to stick a leg through one loop.
I did as instruct­ed, ignor­ing the brush of his steady hands on my thighs as
I stepped through the oth­er loop, and he began tight­en­ing and buck­ling
things. “She will not notice a knife, as she has knives in her cot­tage for
eat­ing and her work. But things that are out of place—objects that have not
been there … A sword, a bow and arrow … She might sense those things.”
“What about me?”
He tight­ened a strap. Strong, capa­ble hands—so at odds with the fin­ery
he usu­al­ly wore to daz­zle the rest of the world into think­ing he was
some­thing else entire­ly. “Do not make a sound, do not touch any­thing but
the object she took from me.”
Rhys looked up, hands braced on my thighs.
Bow, he’d once ordered Tam­lin. And now here he was, on his knees
before me. His eyes glint­ed as if he remem­bered it, too. Had that been a part
of his game—that façade? Or had it been vengeance for the hor­ri­ble blood
feud between them?
“If we’re cor­rect about your pow­ers,” he said, “if the Bone Carv­er wasn’t
lying to us, then you and the object will have the same … imprint, thanks to
the pre­serv­ing spells I placed on it long ago. You are one and the same. She
will not notice your pres­ence so long as you touch only it. You will be
invis­i­ble to her.”
“She’s blind?”
A nod. “But her oth­er sens­es are lethal. So be quick, and qui­et. Find the
object and run out, Feyre.” His hands lin­gered on my legs, wrap­ping around
the back of them.
“And if she notices me?”
His hands tight­ened slight­ly. “Then we’ll learn pre­cise­ly how skilled you
are.”
Cru­el, con­niv­ing bas­tard. I glared at him.
Rhys shrugged. “Would you rather I locked you in the House of Wind
and stuffed you with food and made you wear fine clothes and plan my
par­ties?”
“Go to hell. Why not get this object your­self, if it’s so impor­tant?”
“Because the Weaver knows me—and if I am caught, there would be a
steep price. High Lords are not to inter­fere with her, no mat­ter the dire­ness
of the sit­u­a­tion. There are many trea­sures in her hoard, some she has kept
for mil­len­nia. Most will nev­er be retrieved—because the High Lords do not
dare be caught, thanks to the laws that pro­tect her, thanks to her wrath. Any
thieves on their behalf … Either they do not return, or they are nev­er sent,
for fear of it lead­ing back to their High Lord. But you … She does not know
you. You belong to every court.”
“So I’m your huntress and thief?”

have the equa­tion, you cer­tain­ly can’t have the answer.”
Eve­lyn’s admis­sion illus­trates a piv­otal moment, reflect­ing her real­iza­tion and con­fes­sion about being bisex­u­al and her pro­found love for Celia St. James. This chap­ter delves into a deeply per­son­al rev­e­la­tion, shared between Eve­lyn and the inter­view­er, Monique. The con­ver­sa­tion begins with a casu­al inter­ac­tion about din­ner orders, quick­ly tran­si­tion­ing into a more pro­found dis­cus­sion about Eve­lyn’s past rela­tion­ships and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

As Monique probes about Celi­a’s sex­u­al­i­ty, Eve­lyn remains com­posed, hint­ing at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­clo­sure. Evelyn’s hes­i­tance and even­tu­al con­fes­sion paint a vivid pic­ture of her inter­nal strug­gle and the soci­etal chal­lenges of her time. Her dec­la­ra­tion, “Celia St. James,” fol­lowed by an acknowl­edg­ment of life­long love, marks a turn­ing point in the nar­ra­tive, empha­siz­ing the depth of her feel­ings and the com­plex­i­ty of her iden­ti­ty.

The dia­logue between Eve­lyn and Monique under­scores themes of iden­ti­ty, soci­etal judg­ment, and the impor­tance of self-recog­ni­tion. Eve­lyn’s frus­tra­tion with Monique’s assump­tion about her being gay, instead of bisex­u­al, high­lights the broad­er issue of peo­ple’s incli­na­tion to place oth­ers in pre­de­fined box­es with­out under­stand­ing their true selves. This mir­rors Eve­lyn’s own desire for her sto­ry to be told with pre­ci­sion, reflect­ing her mul­ti­di­men­sion­al iden­ti­ty with­out sim­pli­fi­ca­tion.

Evelyn’s jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery and her strug­gle with soci­etal norms are exten­sive­ly explored. Her jeal­ousy over Celia’s and Don’s actions reveals her emo­tion­al tur­moil and even­tu­al real­iza­tion of her bisex­u­al­i­ty. Her reflec­tion on the dif­fi­cul­ties of accept­ing her love for anoth­er woman amidst soci­etal con­straints pro­vides a glimpse into the inter­nal con­flict and soci­etal pres­sures faced by LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly in past decades.

Monique’s mis­take and sub­se­quent apol­o­gy to Eve­lyn bring to light the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing and allow­ing indi­vid­u­als to define their iden­ti­ties on their own terms. This chap­ter not only advances the plot but also delves into sig­nif­i­cant themes of love, iden­ti­ty, and the pur­suit of under­stand­ing one­self ful­ly, even in the face of soci­etal oppo­si­tion and per­son­al doubt.

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.

19
Two things about being preg­nant: I loved sex and I loved food. Both of those
things were absolute­ly amaz­ing through­out both of my preg­nan­cies.
Oth­er than that, I can’t say there was much that brought me any plea­sure. I
was just so mean. You did not want to hear from me those whole two years. I did
not want to be around almost any­one at all. I was hate­ful. I didn’t want any­one,
not even my mom, to come near me. I was a real mama bear. America’s
sweet­heart and the mean­est woman alive.
I was pro­tec­tive over Jamie Lynn, too. After she com­plained to me about a
costar of hers on her TV show, I showed up on the set to have words with the
actress. What I must have looked like, huge­ly preg­nant, yelling at a teenage (and,
I would lat­er learn, inno­cent) girl, “Are you spread­ing rumors about my sis­ter?”
(To that young actress: I’m sor­ry.)
When I was preg­nant, I want­ed every­one to stay away: Stand back! There’s a
baby here!
It’s true what they say—when you have a baby, no one can pre­pare you. It’s a
mir­a­cle. You’re cre­at­ing anoth­er body. You grow up say­ing: “That person’s
preg­nant.” “That per­son had a baby.” But when you actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence it
your­self, it’s over­whelm­ing. It was such a spir­i­tu­al experience—such an
incred­i­bly pow­er­ful bond.
My moth­er had always talked about how painful child­birth was. She nev­er let
me for­get that she’d been in many hours of ago­niz­ing labor with me. I mean,
everybody’s di�erent. Some women have an easy time of it. I was terri�ed of
giv­ing birth nat­u­ral­ly. When the doc­tor o�ered me a C‑section, I was so relieved.
Sean Pre­ston was born on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2005. Right away you could tell he
was just a sweet, kind lit­tle boy.
Then, three months lat­er, I got preg­nant again. I was thrilled that I’d have
two kids so close in age. Still, it was hard on my body, and there was a lot of
sad­ness and lone­li­ness in that time. I felt like so much of the world was against
me.
The main dan­ger I had to watch out for was the aggres­sion of the paparazzi.
If I stayed out of the pub­lic eye, sure­ly, even­tu­al­ly, I thought, the
pho­tog­ra­phers would leave me alone. But whether I was sit­ting at home or
try­ing to go to a store, pho­tog­ra­phers found me. Every day, and all night, they
were there, wait­ing for me to come out.
What no one in the media seemed to real­ize was that I was hard on myself as
it was. I could be wild, but at heart, I was always a peo­ple-pleas­er. Even at my
low­est, I cared what peo­ple thought. I grew up in the South, where man­ners are
so impor­tant. I still, to this day, regard­less of their age, call men “sir” and women
“ma’am.” Just on the lev­el of civil­i­ty, it was incred­i­bly painful to be treat­ed with
such disregard—such dis­gust.
Every­thing I did with the babies was chron­i­cled. When I drove o� to escape
the paparazzi with Sean Pre­ston on my lap, that was tak­en as proof that I was
un�t. I got cor­nered by the paparazzi with him at the Mal­ibu Coun­try Mart, too
—they kept on tak­ing my pic­ture as, trapped, I held him and cried.
As I was try­ing to get out of a build­ing and into a car in New York, preg­nant
with Jay­den James and car­ry­ing Sean Pre­ston, I was swarmed by pho­tog­ra­phers.
I was told I had to get into the car on the oth­er side, so I said, “Oh,” and made
my way through anoth­er thou­sand cam­era shut­ters and shouts of “Brit­ney!
Brit­ney!” to get in there.
If you watch the video and don’t just look at the still pho­tos, you can see that
while car­ry­ing a cup of water in one hand and my baby in the oth­er arm, my heel
turned and I almost went down—but I didn’t fall. And in catch­ing myself, I
didn’t drop either the water or the baby—who, by the way, was com­plete­ly
unfazed.
“This is why I need a gun,” I said to the cam­era, which prob­a­bly didn’t go
over that well. But I was at my wits’ end. The mag­a­zines seemed to love noth­ing

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 19
On book club night, Grace brought frozen fruit sal­ad, Kit­ty brought
two bot­tles of white wine, and they all sat in Slick’s crowd­ed liv­ing
room, sur­round­ed by Slick’s col­lec­tion of Lenox Gar­den bird
fig­urines, and Beanie Babies, and wall plaques bear­ing devo­tion­al
quo­ta­tions, and all the things Slick bought off the Home Shop­ping
Net­work, and Patri­cia pre­pared to lie to her friends.
“And so, in con­clu­sion,” Maryellen said, bring­ing her case against
the author of The Stranger Beside Me to a close, “Ann Rule is a
world-class dope. She knew Ted Bundy, she worked next to Ted
Bundy, she knew the police were look­ing for a good-look­ing young
man named Ted who drove a VW Bug, and she knew that her good-
look­ing young friend Ted Bundy drove a VW Bug, but even when her
bud­dy is arrest­ed she says she’ll ‘sus­pend judg­ment.’ I mean, what
does she need? For him to ring her door­bell and say ‘Ann, I’m a ser­i­al
killer’?”
“It’s worse when it’s some­one close to you,” Slick said. “We want
the peo­ple we know to be who we think they are, and to stay how we
know them. But Tiger has a lit­tle friend named Eddie Bax­ley right up
the street and we love Eddie but when we found out his par­ents let
him watch R‑rated hor­ror movies, we had to tell Tiger that he was no
longer allowed to play at their house. It was hard.”
“That’s not the point at all,” Maryellen said. “The point is, if the
evi­dence says your best friend Ted talks like a duck, and walks like a
duck, and dri­ves the same car as a duck, then he’s prob­a­bly a duck.”
Patri­cia decid­ed she wouldn’t get a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty. She
stopped toy­ing with her frozen fruit sal­ad, put her fork on the plate,
took a deep breath, and told her lie:
“James Har­ris deals drugs.”
She’d thought long and hard about what to tell them, because if
she told them what she real­ly thought they’d send her to the fun­ny
farm. But the one crime guar­an­teed to mobi­lize the women of the
Old Vil­lage, and the Mt. Pleas­ant police depart­ment, was drugs.
There was a war on them, after all, and she didn’t care how they got
the police pok­ing into James Harris’s busi­ness. She just want­ed him
gone. Now she deliv­ered the sec­ond part of her lie:
“He’s sell­ing drugs to chil­dren.”
No one said a word for at least twen­ty sec­onds.
Kit­ty downed her entire glass of wine in a sin­gle gulp. Slick got
very, very still, eyes wide. Maryellen looked con­fused, as if she
couldn’t tell if Patri­cia was mak­ing fun of her or not, and Grace
slow­ly shook her head from side to side.
“Oh, Patri­cia,” Grace said, in a dis­ap­point­ed voice.
“I saw him with a young girl,” Patri­cia said, forg­ing ahead. “In the
back of his van in the woods at Six Mile. That girl has been tak­en
from her moth­er by Social Ser­vices because of the mark they found
on her inner thigh, a bruise with a punc­ture mark over her femoral
artery, like what street drug users call a track mark from inject­ing.
Grace, Ben­nett said Mrs. Sav­age had the same kind of mark on her
inner thigh when she went to the hos­pi­tal.”
“That was con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion,” Grace said.
“You told it to me,” Patri­cia said.
“Because she had bit­ten your ear,” Grace said. “I thought you
should know she was an IV drug user. I didn’t mean for you to
broad­cast it all over the Vil­lage.”
This wasn’t going the way she want­ed. Patri­cia had spent hours
putting this sto­ry togeth­er, going through all the true crime books
they’d read togeth­er, prac­tic­ing how to lay out the facts. She need­ed
to stop bick­er­ing with Grace and stick to her notes.
“When James Har­ris got here he had a bag in his house with
eighty-five thou­sand dol­lars in it,” Patri­cia said, talk­ing fast. “The
first after­noon I met him I helped him open his bank account
because he didn’t have ID. But he must have a driver’s license, so
why didn’t he want to show it at the bank? Because maybe he’s
want­ed for some­thing. Maybe he’s done this some­where before. Also,
Mrs. Greene copied down a par­tial license plate num­ber of a van in
Six Mile that shouldn’t have been there, and it turned out to be his
license plate. And I think I was the last per­son to see Francine before
she dis­ap­peared, and she was going into his house.”
None of their expres­sions had changed and she’d used up all her
facts.
“His sto­ry changes about where he’s from,” she tried. “Noth­ing
about him adds up.”
She saw her friend­ships die, right there in front of her. She could
see it clear­ly. They’d say they believed her, and end the book club
meet­ing awk­ward­ly. First, there would be the unre­turned phone
calls, the excus­es to go talk to some­one else when they ran into each
oth­er at par­ties, the can­celed invi­ta­tions for Korey or Blue to spend
the night. One by one, they’d turn their backs.
“Patri­cia,” Grace said. “I warned you when you came to see me. I
begged you not to make a fool out of your­self.”
“I know what I saw, Grace,” Patri­cia said, although she felt less and
less sure.
Patri­cia felt her­self los­ing con­trol of the con­ver­sa­tion. She tried to
find a place to put her frozen fruit sal­ad plate, but the cof­fee table
was crowd­ed with a bowl of mar­ble ros­es, glass pyra­mids of var­i­ous
sizes, two brass game­cocks frozen in com­bat, and a stack of over­size
books with titles like Bless­ings. She decid­ed to just hold it in her
hand and focus on the per­son she thought she could best sway. If one
of them would believe her, the rest would fol­low.
“Maryellen,” she said. “You just called Ann Rule a dope because if
the evi­dence says your best friend talks like a duck, and walks like a
duck, and dri­ves the same car as a duck, then he’s prob­a­bly a duck.”
“There’s a dif­fer­ence between a com­pelling chain of evi­dence and
accus­ing some­one of a crime based on a bunch of coin­ci­dences,”
Maryellen said. “So let me get your evi­dence straight. Mrs. Greene
says there may or may not be a man in the woods molest­ing the
chil­dren of Six Mile.”
“Giv­ing them drugs,” Patri­cia cor­rect­ed.
“Okay, giv­ing them drugs,” Maryellen said. “Mrs. Greene may or
may not have seen a van with the license plate num­ber, but not even
the full num­ber, of James Harris’s van which no longer belongs to
James Har­ris because he sold it to some­one else.”
“I don’t know what hap­pened to it,” Patri­cia said.
“Putting the van aside,” Maryellen con­tin­ued, “you want us to
believe that the sim­ple fact he went out to Six Mile, even though he
wasn’t there at the time any­one died or any­thing hap­pened, means
he’s some­how involved in some­thing?”
“I saw him out there,” Patri­cia said. “I saw him doing some­thing to
a lit­tle girl in the back of his van. I. Saw. Him.”
No one said any­thing.
“What did you see him do?” Slick asked.
“I went out to vis­it one of the chil­dren who seemed sick,” Patri­cia
said. “Mrs. Greene went with me. The lit­tle girl was miss­ing from her
bed­room. We went look­ing for her in the woods, and I saw his white
van. He was in the back with the child. He was…” She bare­ly
hes­i­tat­ed. “…inject­ing her with some­thing. The doc­tor said she had a
track mark on her leg.”
“Then why don’t you tell the police?” Slick asked.
“I did!” Patri­cia said, loud­er than she meant. “They couldn’t find
the van, they couldn’t find him, and they think the moth­er gave her
daugh­ter the drugs. Or her boyfriend.”
“So why aren’t they look­ing at the boyfriend more close­ly?”
Maryellen asked.
“Because she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Patri­cia said, try­ing to
keep calm.
Maryellen gave a shrug.
“This just goes to show that the North Charleston police and the
Mt. Pleas­ant police have very dif­fer­ent stan­dards.”
“It’s not a joke!” Patri­cia shout­ed.
Her voice echoed harsh­ly in the cramped liv­ing room. Slick
jumped, Grace’s spine stiff­ened, Maryellen winced.
“Do we have any more wine?” Kit­ty asked.
“I’m so sor­ry,” Slick said. “I think it’s all gone.”
“A child is being hurt,” Patri­cia said. “Don’t any of you care?”
“Of course we care,” Kit­ty said. “But we’re a book club, not the
police. What are we sup­posed to do?”
“We’re the only ones who’ve noticed some­thing might be wrong,”
Patri­cia said.
“You, not us,” Grace said. “Don’t lump me in with your
fool­ish­ness.”
“Ed would laugh this right out of court,” Maryellen said.
“The police wrote me off,” Patri­cia said. “I need your help to go to
them again. I need y’all to think through this with me, to help me put
it togeth­er. Maryellen, you know how the police work. Kit­ty, you
were in Six Mile. You saw how it was. Tell them.”
“I mean,” Kit­ty said, try­ing to help, “some­thing wasn’t right out
there. Every­one was on edge. We almost got jumped by a street gang.
But accus­ing one of our neigh­bors of being a drug deal­er…”
“Here’s how I see it,” Patri­cia said. “In Six Mile, they think that
some­one is doing some­thing to the chil­dren, giv­ing them some­thing
that makes them go crazy and hurt them­selves. Now over here in the
Old Vil­lage, we’ve had Mrs. Sav­age go crazy and attack me. And then
there’s Francine. I saw her go into his house, and then she
dis­ap­peared. She may have stum­bled on his drugs, or his mon­ey, or
some­thing, and he had to get rid of her. But every­thing is con­nect­ed
through him. It’s all hap­pen­ing around him. How many coin­ci­dences
do you need before you wake up?”
“Patri­cia,” Grace said, speak­ing slow­ly. “If you could hear your­self
you’d feel ter­ri­bly embar­rassed.”
“What if I’m right?” Patri­cia said. “And he’s out there giv­ing drugs
to these chil­dren and we’re too scared of being embar­rassed to do
any­thing? It could be our chil­dren. Think about how many young
women would still be alive today if peo­ple hadn’t tak­en Ted Bundy at
face val­ue and start­ed ask­ing ques­tions ear­li­er. Think if Ann Rule
had put the pieces togeth­er soon­er. How many lives could she have
saved? I mean, you have to agree, some­thing strange is going on
here.”
“No, we don’t,” Grace said.
“Some­thing strange is going on,” Patri­cia con­tin­ued. “Chil­dren in
first grade are killing them­selves. I got attacked in my own yard. Mrs.
Sav­age has the same mark on her body Des­tiny Tay­lor did. Francine
is miss­ing. In every book we read, no one ever thought any­thing bad
was hap­pen­ing until it was too late. This is where we live, it’s where
our chil­dren live, it’s our home. Don’t you want to do absolute­ly
every­thing you can to keep it safe?”
Anoth­er silence stretched out, and then Kit­ty spoke.
“What if she’s right?”
“Excuse me?” Grace asked.
“We’ve all known Patri­cia for­ev­er,” Kit­ty said. “If she says she saw
him in the back of his van doing some­thing to a young girl, I believe
her. I mean, come on, one thing I’ve learned from all these books: it
pays to be para­noid.”
Grace stood up. “I val­ue our friend­ship, Patri­cia,” she said. “And I
am ready to be your friend when you come back to your sens­es. But
any­one cater­ing to this delu­sion is not being help­ful.”
Slick stood up and went to her book­case filled with titles like
Satan, You Can’t Have My Chil­dren and pulled out a Bible. She
flipped to a pas­sage and read it out loud:
“‘There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives,
to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among
mankind. The leech has two daugh­ters: Give and Give. Three things
are nev­er sat­is­fied; four nev­er say, “Enough.”’ Proverbs 30:15.”
She turned more pages, then read, “Eph­esians 6:12, ‘For we do not
wres­tle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the
author­i­ties, against the cos­mic pow­ers over this present dark­ness,
against the spir­i­tu­al forces of evil in the heav­en­ly places.’”
Then she looked at them all with a wide smile on her face.
“I knew my test would come,” she said. “I knew that one day my
Lord would set me against Satan, and try my faith in a bat­tle against
his snares, and this is just so excit­ing, Patri­cia.”
“Are you putting us on?” Maryellen asked.
“Satan wants our chil­dren,” Slick said. “We have to believe the
right­eous and smite the wicked. Patri­cia is right­eous because she is
my friend. If she says James Har­ris is among the wicked, then it is
our Chris­t­ian duty to smite him.
“The only thing smit­ed is your brains,” Maryellen said, turn­ing to
Grace. “But she’s not wrong.”
Grace said, “Par­don?”
“New Jer­sey was the kind of place where no one watched out for
each oth­er,” Maryellen said. “Our neigh­bors were nice but they
would nev­er write down the license plate num­ber of a strange car.
They would nev­er tell you they saw a stranger watch­ing your house.
There are a lot of things that are dif­fer­ent down here, but not once do
I regret liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty where we keep an eye out for each
oth­er. Let’s see if we can make a more con­vinc­ing argu­ment than
Patri­cia, and if so, I’ll run it by Ed. If Ed thinks it holds up, then
maybe we’ve done some good.”
Patri­cia felt a wave of grat­i­tude toward her.
“I will not be a part of some kind of lynch mob,” Grace said.
“We’re not a lynch mob, we’re a book club,” Kit­ty said. “We’ve
always been there for each oth­er. This is where Patri­cia is now? It’s
kind of weird, but okay. We’d do the same for you.”
“If that sit­u­a­tion ever occurs,” Grace said, “don’t.”
And she walked out of Slick’s house.
—
The next morn­ing Patri­cia had just decid­ed to clean the den clos­et
before doing more research on vam­pires when the phone rang. She
answered.
“Patri­cia. It’s Grace Cavanaugh.”
“I’m so sor­ry about what hap­pened at book club,” Patri­cia said,
who hadn’t real­ized until this moment how des­per­ate­ly she want­ed
to hear Grace’s voice. “I won’t talk about it with you any­more if you
don’t want me to.”
“I found his van,” Grace said.
The change to anoth­er page was so fast Patri­cia couldn’t fol­low.
“What van?” she asked.
“James Harris’s,” Grace said. “You see, I remem­bered that in
Silence of the Lambs that man hides his car con­tain­ing a head in a
mini-stor­age unit. And I remem­bered that I’ve known you for almost
sev­en years and I should afford you the ben­e­fit of the doubt.”
“Thank you,” Patri­cia said.
“The only mini-stor­age estab­lish­ment in Mt. Pleas­ant is Pak Rat
over on High­way 17,” Grace con­tin­ued. “They spell pack wrong
because they think it’s cute. It’s not. Ben­nett knows Carl, the man
who runs it. So I called Carl’s wife, Zenia, last night, I’m not sure
you’ve ever met her but we’re both in hand­bell choir. I told her what
I was look­ing for and she was hap­py to call over and see what she
could find and it turns out there is a James Har­ris who rents a unit,
and the atten­dant said he’d seen him going in and out of it a few
times in a white van. He saw him in it last week. So he still owns it.”
“Grace,” Patri­cia said. “That’s won­der­ful news.”
“Not if he’s hurt­ing chil­dren,” Grace said.
“No, of course not,” Patri­cia said, feel­ing chas­tised and tri­umphant
at the same time.
“If you real­ly think this man is up to no good,” Grace said, “you
need more than this before we go to Ed. We don’t want to go off half-
cocked.”

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.

19
The casseroles start show­ing up the next day.
First, it’s Car­o­line McLaren with chick­en Divan and a big hug. “Oh god, this is all just so awful,”
she says, before tap­ping the foil cov­er­ing her glass dish and say­ing, “And this can’t go through a
dish­wash­er.”
Emi­ly and Camp­bell are just a cou­ple of hours behind her. They bring three big paper bags full of
things from the gourmet store in the vil­lage, the place that makes the fan­cy din­ners you can pass off as
your own.
As I stack the foil con­tain­ers in the freez­er, Emi­ly and Camp­bell sit at the island, sip­ping the iced
cof­fees they’d brought with them, which is kind of a shame because I already feel like drink­ing today.
I know they’re just dying to ask a thou­sand ques­tions, and I could use the for­ti­fi­ca­tion.
“How’s Eddie hold­ing up?” Emi­ly asks when I close the freez­er and turn back to them. Out­side,
it’s start­ed to rain, and I think back to that first day I met Eddie, the gray skies, the slick roads.
“Not great,” I reply. “I think he’s still in shock, real­ly.”
“We all are,” Camp­bell says, stab­bing her straw into her drink. “I mean … it just nev­er occurred
to any of us that they’d been mur­dered. I’ve nev­er known any­one who was mur­dered.”
For the first time, I notice that her eyes are red, and that Emi­ly isn’t wear­ing any make­up, and shit.
Shit.
I was so sure they were com­ing over here to get the dirt, but Bea and Blanche were their friends.
Two women they’d loved whose deaths had seemed trag­ic, but at least acci­den­tal. Find­ing out that
some­one had killed them had to be awful, and here I am, think­ing they just want gos­sip.
“How are the two of you?” I ask, lean­ing against the counter, and they glance at each oth­er.
“Oh, hon­ey, this isn’t about us,” Emi­ly says, wav­ing her hand, but Camp­bell says, “Not great,
either.”
Anoth­er shared glance, and then Emi­ly sighs, nod­ding. “It’s just a lot to absorb. That some­one
want­ed them dead, that we’ve sud­den­ly got the police around, ask­ing ques­tions…”
I’m start­ing to get too famil­iar with that feel­ing of my stom­ach drop­ping, the icy wave that breaks
over me every time some new, ugly bit of infor­ma­tion is revealed.
“They’re ask­ing you ques­tions?”
Camp­bell sighs as she ris­es. “Not yet, but I’ve got an inter­view sched­uled with them lat­er this
week. Em?”
Emi­ly nods again. “Yeah, Fri­day for me.”
I think of the two of them, sit­ting in a police sta­tion, answer­ing ques­tions about Bea and Blanche.
About me.
Because the detec­tives are going to ask, aren’t they? Where did I come from, how soon did Eddie
and I start dat­ing?
They’re going to look into whether I was around last sum­mer or not, and sud­den­ly I want both of
them to leave, want to hud­dle in a ball on the sofa until this some­how mag­i­cal­ly all goes away.
But then Emi­ly reach­es across the counter and squeezes my hand. “I just hate that you have to deal
with all this.”
My gut reac­tion is to snarl at her, to search her face for some sign that she’s actu­al­ly lov­ing this,
but when I look at her, there isn’t any. Her gaze is gen­uine­ly warm and sym­pa­thet­ic, and I think back
on all those times, sit­ting at lunch tables by myself, self-con­scious­ly tug­ging at the hem of a Sal­va­tion
Army T‑shirt, know­ing it nev­er mat­tered what shoes peo­ple were talk­ing about, or what CD every­one
want­ed, I was nev­er going to be able to have those things.
I’d always thought it was just the mon­ey that I want­ed, but look­ing at Emi­ly now, I know I’ve
want­ed this, too. Peo­ple to care about me. Peo­ple to accept me.
And while it is weird as shit that, of all peo­ple, it would be this crew of Step­ford Wives who let
me in, they had.
And I was grate­ful for it.
“Thanks,” I reply, squeez­ing back.
My phone starts ring­ing on the counter, and as I glance at it, both Emi­ly and Camp­bell stand up.
“Get that, hon­ey,” Emi­ly says. “We can show our­selves out.”
I hear them make their way to the front door as I look at the screen.
A 205 num­ber, which means Birm­ing­ham.
Which could mean the police.
If they’d found some­thing bad, they’d be over here, I tell myself as I slide my fin­ger across the
screen to answer the call. Sound nor­mal. Sound calm.
“Hel­lo?”
My voice only cracks a lit­tle on that last syl­la­ble.
“Jane.” Not the police, not Detec­tive Lau­rent. John fuck­ing Rivers.
“What do you want?”
I can prac­ti­cal­ly see him smirk­ing on the oth­er end. “Good to talk to you, too.”
“John, I don’t—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“I know you’re busy doing what­ev­er it is Moun­tain Brook house­wives do, so I’ll make it quick.
The church is rais­ing mon­ey for a new sound sys­tem, and I thought you’d like to con­tribute.”
I’m still so shak­en up by every­thing else going on that at first, I don’t see the threat beneath his
words. It takes a sec­ond for my brain to turn them over and see what’s real­ly being said.
“I thought we were good after the oth­er day,” I reply, the fin­gers of my oth­er hand curled around
the edge of the counter.
He paus­es, and I hear him swal­low some­thing. I imag­ine him stand­ing in the kitchen of his
apart­ment, drink­ing Moun­tain Dew, and fight back a shud­der of revul­sion because he’s not sup­posed
to be here. I was sup­posed to be able to leave him behind for­ev­er, but he keeps ris­ing back up, the
world’s most pathet­ic ghost.
“Well, we were. But that detec­tive from Phoenix called again, which was just a real has­sle for
me, Jane. And I was going to ignore it, but then I saw in the paper where you and your boyfriend got

The Last of the “Kin­caid” unrav­els the ini­tial phase of the return voy­age to Jun­gle Island for Tarzan, Jane Clay­ton, and their entourage, which includes both crew mem­bers and the dis­tinc­tive beasts that have been part of their extra­or­di­nary jour­ney. As the day breaks, Tarzan is eager to set sail back home, entrust­ing the Kin­caid under the watch­ful guid­ance of its remain­ing crew, who, reas­sured by Lord Greystoke’s promis­es of no pros­e­cu­tion for their involve­ments with pri­or mis­deeds, eager­ly prep the ship for depar­ture. The atmos­phere aboard is tense yet seem­ing­ly under con­trol as the beasts, led by Shee­ta and the apes of Akut, are released on deck, their pri­mal instincts bare­ly restrained under the stern vig­i­lance of Tarzan and Mugam­bi.

The nar­ra­tive beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tures the poignant farewell to the African con­ti­nent, with Tarzan exhibit­ing a rare moment of peace with his depar­ture, dri­ven by the urgency to find his lost child, a moti­va­tion that over­shad­ows his inher­ent attach­ment to the land. The voy­age seems painful­ly slow to Tarzan, under­scor­ing his des­per­a­tion and the emo­tion­al tur­moil of a griev­ing father. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, an omi­nous under­tone is present in the cab­in of Alexan­der Paul­vitch, where a tick­ing mech­a­nism hints at impend­ing dis­as­ter.

This tran­quil voy­age is abrupt­ly shat­tered by an explo­sive cat­a­stro­phe that engulfs the Kin­caid, throw­ing the ship into chaos. The explo­sion, whose cause remains a mys­tery to all but a know­ing few, sets the stage for a dra­mat­ic fight for sur­vival. The beasts, dri­ven by fear and con­fu­sion, run amok, pos­ing a grave threat until Tarzan man­ages to restore a sem­blance of order. How­ev­er, the ship is irrev­o­ca­bly doomed, with fire rav­aging its struc­ture, prompt­ing an imme­di­ate evac­u­a­tion.

In a dra­mat­ic turn of events, the sur­vivors make their escape to Jun­gle Island, leav­ing behind the Kin­caid to its fiery demise. The beasts, sens­ing free­dom and famil­iar­i­ty, swift­ly aban­don the humans, drawn irre­sistibly back to the wild. Tarzan watch­es them leave with a bit­ter­sweet accep­tance, rec­og­niz­ing the pri­mal divide that sep­a­rates his wild allies from the civ­i­lized world rep­re­sent­ed by Jane and the crew mem­bers.

The chap­ter mas­ter­ful­ly inter­twines themes of adven­ture, loy­al­ty, and the eter­nal con­flict between civ­i­liza­tion and the wild, cul­mi­nat­ing in a heart­felt good­bye to the faith­ful beasts that stood by Tarzan’s side. The poignant depar­ture from Africa, the explo­sive sab­o­tage aboard the Kin­caid, and the even­tu­al return to Jun­gle Island encap­su­late the unpre­dictable essence of Tarzan’s world, where dan­ger lurks in the shad­ow of cama­raderie and betray­al.