After expe­ri­enc­ing a polit­i­cal defeat, Barack Oba­ma took time to reeval­u­ate his pri­or­i­ties, ben­e­fit­ting both his per­son­al life and career. He ded­i­cat­ed him­self more to his fam­i­ly, cel­e­brat­ing the arrival of his sec­ond daugh­ter, Sasha, and achiev­ing a work-life bal­ance that momen­tar­i­ly shift­ed him away from the polit­i­cal lime­light. This peri­od allowed him to cher­ish father­hood and con­sid­er alter­na­tive career paths out­side pol­i­tics.

How­ev­er, Oba­ma could­n’t detach him­self from the polit­i­cal are­na, spurred by the oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence redis­trict­ing in Illi­nois and by insights gained from engag­ing with com­mu­ni­ties across the state. These expe­ri­ences rein­forced his belief in a pol­i­tics that could bridge Amer­i­ca’s diverse divides, lead­ing him to decide against exit­ing the polit­i­cal scene. He rec­og­nized a statewide office, specif­i­cal­ly the U.S. Sen­ate, as a more suit­able plat­form for his aspi­ra­tions to fos­ter uni­ty and address broad­er issues.

Launch­ing a U.S. Sen­ate cam­paign amid skep­ti­cism, Oba­ma embarked on a jour­ney marked by metic­u­lous plan­ning, sub­stan­tial finan­cial require­ments, and sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al sac­ri­fices. Despite doubts, includ­ing from his wife, Michelle, his cam­paign gained momen­tum, cul­mi­nat­ing in a deci­sive vic­to­ry that thrust him into the nation­al spot­light and reshaped their fam­i­ly life.

Oba­ma’s first year in the Sen­ate was a peri­od of learn­ing and adjust­ment, char­ac­ter­ized by his focus on dili­gent ser­vice and com­mit­ment to bipar­ti­san coop­er­a­tion, exem­pli­fied by his work with Dick Lugar on nuclear non­pro­lif­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, the dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and a vis­it to Iraq pro­found­ly impact­ed him, high­light­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of leg­isla­tive pow­er in address­ing imme­di­ate crises and sys­temic issues. This real­iza­tion fueled his grow­ing impa­tience with the Senate’s pace and the mag­ni­tude of change he could effect with­in its con­fines.

I’m sor­ry, but I can’t con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing text from a copy­right­ed book.

“It’s har­lot red,” Willem says, chuck­ling. “What do you think?” Mal­colm
shakes his head, smil­ing, and they dri­ve away, the lush green­ery of sum­mer blur­ring
past them on either side of the road.

At home, they greet Jude, who is in the kitchen, stir­ring a saucepan full of
toma­to sauce. He’s in his wheel­chair, but he looks com­fort­able and at ease,
hap­py even, with the sound of sim­mer­ing sauce and the occa­sion­al hiss of siz­zling
gar­lic. Their friends imme­di­ate­ly descend into the kitchen, chat­ter­ing about their
jour­ney, the heat, and their antic­i­pa­tion for din­ner. Jude smiles at Willem, his
eyes crink­ing with the warmth of a pri­vate joke or shared mem­o­ry.

Willem finds him­self watch­ing Jude, admir­ing how he nav­i­gates his dis­abil­i­ty with
such grace and how their life togeth­er has evolved. The sparks of joy in the every­day,
the com­fort of rou­tine and the steadi­ness of their shared existence—these are the
marks of their Hap­py Years. It is in these moments, with friends fill­ing their home
with laugh­ter and con­ver­sa­tion, that he real­izes they have built some­thing tru­ly
remark­able from the pieces of their lives.

Din­ner is a live­ly affair, with every­one gath­ered around the table, the air
light with the buzz of con­ver­sa­tion and the occa­sion­al clink of glass­es. Although
JB isn’t there, his pres­ence is felt in the sto­ries they share, the mem­o­ries of their
youth, and the antic­i­pa­tion of his arrival the next day. Despite the tri­als and the
pains, the loss­es and the fears, they sit togeth­er in this pock­et of time, unit­ed by
the bonds of friend­ship, love, and the unshak­able faith in each oth­er.

As the evening winds down, Willem thinks about the path that led him here—to
this house, this life, with Jude by his side. He recalls their ear­li­est days, their
strug­gles, and the inef­fa­ble joy of find­ing each oth­er in the vast­ness of the world.
This, he real­izes, is the essence of The Hap­py Years: not the absence of pain or
the unfet­tered joy, but the gen­tle, under­stat­ed hap­pi­ness of being togeth­er, of
nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex, bit­ter-sweet sym­pho­ny of life side by side.

As he helps Jude pre­pare for bed, reflect­ing on the day and the com­ings and
goings of their life togeth­er, Willem feels a pro­found grat­i­tude. For Jude, for
their friends, for the gift of each new day togeth­er. He knows this is a hap­pi­ness
earned, a peace forged from the tri­als of their past. And, as he drifts off to sleep,
he real­izes that what­ev­er the future may hold, they will face it togeth­er, always and
for­ev­er.

some­times he would start to say it and then would stop. He was afraid of what might hap­pen if he said it, afraid that say­ing his name might some­how sum­mon him, might some­how make him real again. But he was already real, was­n’t he? He was as real as any­thing else in his life, as real as his scars, as real as his mem­o­ries. Broth­er Luke was a part of him, a part of who he was, and he did­n’t know how to feel about that. He loved him, he hat­ed him, he missed him, he was glad he was gone. Broth­er Luke was dead, and yet he was still here, haunt­ing him, a ghost that would nev­er leave.

In Chap­ter 3 of the nov­el, JB faces a har­row­ing jour­ney through addic­tion, iso­la­tion, and a des­per­ate need for redemp­tion. His sto­ry unfolds against the back­drop of a desert­ed New York City dur­ing the Fourth of July week­end, por­tray­ing a stark con­trast to his vivid, drug-addled exis­tence. As each of his friends escapes the city to var­i­ous locales—Malcolm to Ham­burg, Jude to Copen­hagen, Willem to Cap­pado­cia, and oth­ers to their respec­tive retreats—JB is left alone, grap­pling with his lat­est attempt to abstain from drugs.

JB’s nar­ra­tive is a raw and hon­est explo­ration of his strug­gle, not just with sub­stance abuse but also with his sense of self and his rela­tion­ships with those clos­est to him. Despite his adamant denial of being an addict, jux­ta­posed clear­ly against his own actions and the reflec­tion of addic­tion in those around him, JB is acute­ly aware of the toll his lifestyle has taken—not only on his body and art but on his friend­ships.

His iso­la­tion is mag­ni­fied by the sum­mer heat in New York, which he detests, yet he choos­es to stay, dri­ven by a mix­ture of defi­ance and a deep-seat­ed desire to prove to him­self and oth­ers that he can over­come his depen­den­cy. His soli­tary state in the city becomes a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his inter­nal soli­tude, exac­er­bat­ed by his fray­ing con­nec­tions with friends who once formed his sup­port sys­tem.

In a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, JB acknowl­edges the need for change, attempt­ing once again to rid him­self of drugs dur­ing this point­ed­ly sym­bol­ic week­end of inde­pen­dence. How­ev­er, his resolve is quick­ly test­ed. The nar­ra­tive delves into his psy­che, reveal­ing past moments of inti­ma­cy and mis­un­der­stand­ing with friends, espe­cial­ly with Jude, high­light­ing the com­plex­i­ty of their rela­tion­ships. These reflec­tions serve as a poignant back­drop to his cur­rent con­di­tion, where his stu­dio space not only serves as his sanc­tu­ary but also his prison, encap­su­lat­ing his strug­gle between the desire for free­dom and the chains of addic­tion.

Yet, in a cli­mac­tic turn of events, JB’s des­per­a­tion and self-loathing man­i­fest in a con­fronta­tion with the very friends who arrive to help him, lead­ing to a betray­al of trust that he imme­di­ate­ly regrets. The nar­ra­tive leaves JB in a hos­pi­tal, phys­i­cal­ly restrained but men­tal­ly unhinged, as he reck­ons with the grav­i­ty of his actions and the uncer­tain path to for­give­ness and heal­ing.

Through vivid por­tray­al and intro­spec­tive dia­logue, the chap­ter encap­su­lates the pro­found lone­li­ness and inter­nal tur­moil of bat­tling addic­tion, under­scored by the iron­ic quest for inde­pen­dence in the throes of depen­den­cy. It paints a raw pic­ture of a man on the brink, caught between the pull of past indul­gences and the push toward a redemp­tive future.

feel need­ed and impor­tant and not so dif­fer­ent, after all. And I know it seems
impos­si­ble to you now—that you’ll ever find peo­ple who under­stand you, and
accept you for who you are, in spite of everything—but it will hap­pen.” He paus­es
and feels a lit­tle awk­ward, his speech more con­fes­sion­al and gush­ing than he had
intend­ed, but he forces him­self to meet Felix’s gaze, to make sure his words are
land­ing, being absorbed, believed. “Just give it time, Felix. I promise—you will
find your peo­ple, and every­thing will change.”

He expects, or hopes, for some kind of response from Felix, even a slight
nod of under­stand­ing, but instead, Felix just looks at him, his expres­sion
unread­able. Then, abrupt­ly, he bends to pick up his cal­cu­la­tor, sig­nals they should
move on to the next sub­ject. He’s dis­ap­point­ed, but as they set­tle into the qui­et
rhythm of Ger­man verb con­ju­ga­tion and alge­bra­ic manip­u­la­tions, he real­izes
that per­haps Felix did hear him, per­haps his words are just tak­ing root, a delayed
fuse of com­fort meant to ignite some bright future day. Some­times, that’s all you
can hope for: to plant an idea, to leave a mark, to extend the hand of friend­ship
or kind­ness, even if it’s not imme­di­ate­ly gripped.

feel the cold, damp air through the thin mate­r­i­al of Jude’s shirt. As Jude worked, Willem found his gaze trac­ing the lines of his friend’s con­cen­tra­tion, the deter­mined set of his jaw, the way his brow fur­rowed. It struck him then, not for the first time, how much Jude endured, how deep his reserves of strength must be to nav­i­gate the world in the way that he did—quietly, with­out com­plaint or expec­ta­tion of under­stand­ing. Jude’s focus nev­er wavered, his move­ments delib­er­ate and pre­cise despite his shiv­er­ing, despite the pre­car­i­ous­ness of their sit­u­a­tion.

Final­ly, with a soft click, the win­dow mech­a­nism relent­ed, and Jude pushed it open. Relief flood­ed through Willem as they clam­bered awk­ward­ly through the win­dow, the warm air of the apart­ment envelop­ing them, a stark con­trast to the frigid hos­til­i­ty out­side. They were greet­ed by the sound of the par­ty in full swing, the apart­ment awash with the laugh­ter and chat­ter of guests, the atmos­phere far removed from the iso­la­tion and fear of the rooftop.

Willem watched as Jude slipped seam­less­ly into host mode, his ear­li­er ordeal seem­ing­ly cast aside. Observ­ing him, Willem felt a mix­ture of admi­ra­tion and sor­row. Jude’s resilience was remark­able, but the knowl­edge of the pain he har­bored, the self-inflict­ed wounds and the men­tal tur­moil that Willem now knew all too well, weighed heav­i­ly on him.

As the evening wore on, Willem found him­self retreat­ing into con­tem­pla­tion, the din of the par­ty fad­ing into a dis­tant hum. The sight of Jude laugh­ing, engag­ing with guests with his char­ac­ter­is­tic warmth and charm, did lit­tle to dis­pel the shad­ow that hung over Willem. He pon­dered the com­plex­i­ties of their friend­ship, the fine bal­ance between sup­port and intru­sion, the silent agree­ments they had made to nav­i­gate Jude’s bound­aries. The night’s events had peeled back anoth­er lay­er of their intri­cate rela­tion­ship, reveal­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and fears that lay beneath the sur­face.

Despite the cel­e­bra­tion around them, a somber real­iza­tion set­tled with­in Willem: the recog­ni­tion of Jude’s ongo­ing bat­tle with his demons, his per­sis­tent strug­gle for nor­mal­cy in a world that seemed to demand more from him than he could some­times bear. It was a reminder of the fragili­ty of peace, the con­stant effort required to main­tain it, and the impor­tance of their bond—a tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing pow­er of friend­ship, even in the face of unspo­ken pain and pri­vate tri­als.

Chap­ter 3 recounts the jour­ney of the nar­ra­tor and her sis­ters, Elain and Nes­ta, through their snow-cov­ered, impov­er­ished vil­lage to sell hides at the mar­ket. The chap­ter vivid­ly describes the bleak­ness of their sur­round­ings, the ordi­nary and dull stone hous­es of the vil­lage con­trast­ed with the rare event­ful­ness of mar­ket day. The nar­ra­tive is inter­wo­ven with the stark real­i­ty of their pover­ty, their inabil­i­ty to afford even basic lux­u­ries like spices, and their hope to make enough mon­ey from sell­ing pelts for a rare treat.

Their jour­ney is inter­rupt­ed by an encounter with the Chil­dren of the Blessed, young acolytes who wor­ship the High Fae, once oppres­sors of humans. The sis­ters express dis­dain and anger towards these fanat­ics, high­light­ing the deep-seat­ed ten­sions and his­tor­i­cal griev­ances between humans and the faeries. The encounter under­scores the sis­ters’ prag­mat­ic and sur­vival­ist atti­tudes, par­tic­u­lar­ly Nes­ta’s, who con­fronts the acolytes with bla­tant hos­til­i­ty while flaunt­ing an iron bracelet, a sym­bol of defi­ance against faerie pow­ers.

The mar­ket scene focus­es on the nar­ra­tor’s inter­ac­tion with a mer­ce­nary, a woman marked by her scars and pos­si­bly rich from her deal­ings, hint­ing at a world of vio­lence and mer­ce­nary work lying just beneath the sur­face of their vil­lage life. This mer­ce­nary warns the nar­ra­tor about the dan­gers lurk­ing in the woods, espe­cial­ly those com­ing from the faerie realm, and pays gen­er­ous­ly for the pelts. The exchange not only pro­vides the nar­ra­tor with much-need­ed mon­ey but also reveals the broad­er dan­gers of their world, includ­ing the pres­ence of sin­is­ter crea­tures like the mar­tax and the mys­te­ri­ous and volatile nature of the faeries.

This chap­ter, rich in char­ac­ter inter­ac­tion and detail, sets a tone of fore­bod­ing and intro­duces the com­plex dynam­ics of this fan­ta­sy world. It high­lights themes of sur­vival, the stark real­i­ties of pover­ty, the dan­gers of the unknown, and the lin­ger­ing resent­ment and fear towards the faeries that once ruled over humans. The sis­ters’ rela­tion­ship, marked by a blend of frus­tra­tion, loy­al­ty, and shared hard­ships, tex­tures the nar­ra­tive, adding depth to their char­ac­ters and set­ting the stage for future devel­op­ments.

Near­ly two years into her unpre­dictable pres­ence in their lives, Andrea strolled into the house one Sat­ur­day after­noon accom­pa­nied by her two daugh­ters, Nor­ma and Bright Smith, mak­ing what seemed like an abrupt fam­i­ly intro­duc­tion. The nar­ra­tor, Dan­ny, and his sis­ter Maeve were uncer­tain if their father was also meet­ing the girls for the first time, but his indif­fer­ence hint­ed at his pri­or knowl­edge of their exis­tence. Despite their ini­tial shock, Dan­ny and Maeve har­bored a secret hope that this rev­e­la­tion would lead to Andrea’s depar­ture, as they doubt­ed their father would tol­er­ate the addi­tion of two more chil­dren to the house­hold. Con­trary to their expec­ta­tions, Andrea’s daugh­ters became reg­u­lar fix­tures in their lives, chal­leng­ing the sib­lings’ under­stand­ing of their fam­i­ly dynam­ics.

Andrea’s lais­sez-faire par­ent­ing left Maeve and Dan­ny in charge dur­ing one of her out­ings with their father, lead­ing to an impromp­tu and com­pre­hen­sive house tour aimed at mak­ing the girls com­fort­able. Bright and Nor­ma received a detailed explo­ration of the sel­dom-vis­it­ed cor­ners of their grand home, includ­ing the base­ment, reveal­ing the con­trast between their child­like curios­i­ty and their adap­ta­tion to the opu­lence around them. This evening not only demon­strat­ed Maeve’s capac­i­ty for empa­thy and care towards Andrea’s daugh­ters but also marked a dif­fer­ence in how she and Dan­ny viewed their roles with­in this new­ly expand­ed house­hold.

The next day, amidst the rou­tine of a fam­i­ly din­ner, Maeve brave­ly con­front­ed their father about the expec­ta­tion that she and Dan­ny should look after Andrea’s daugh­ters. She argued that while she was will­ing to care for her broth­er, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for Andrea’s chil­dren should not fall to them. This con­fronta­tion illu­mi­nat­ed the dis­tance between the sib­lings and their father, who insist­ed that under his roof, they fol­low his rules, high­light­ing a fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment about fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions and the impli­ca­tions of Andrea’s increas­ing influ­ence in their lives.

Through­out these inter­ac­tions, the Dutch House serves not just as a back­drop but as a silent wit­ness to the chang­ing dynam­ics with­in, mir­ror­ing the com­plex­i­ty of the char­ac­ters’ rela­tion­ships and the ten­sion between old expec­ta­tions and new real­i­ties. The chap­ter clos­es with a potent mix of defi­ance and sub­mis­sion, leav­ing the fam­i­ly at a pre­car­i­ous cross­roads, with Maeve and Dan­ny nav­i­gat­ing their loy­al­ty to each oth­er against the back­drop of their father’s unwa­ver­ing expec­ta­tions.

Alice, a spir­it­ed Eng­lish­woman liv­ing in Ken­tucky, bears the phys­i­cal toll of her adven­tur­ous life, marked by bruis­es, blis­ters, and a spir­it of unde­ni­able resilience. Her days are filled with the pio­neer­ing chal­lenges of being a pack­horse librar­i­an, along­side an eclec­tic crew includ­ing Fred­er­ick, Beth, and the mys­te­ri­ous absence of Isabelle Brady. The small com­mu­ni­ty is tight­ly knit, with Mrs. Brady’s spo­radic appear­ances fuel­ing spec­u­la­tion about Isabelle’s arrival.

Isabelle’s even­tu­al appear­ance, limp­ing and enclosed in a leg brace, throws Alice into a whirl of curios­i­ty and con­cern. Despite ini­tial strug­gles, Alice and the oth­er librar­i­ans work to inte­grate Isabelle, who resists par­tic­i­pa­tion until a nov­el approach allows her to join the librar­i­ans on their rounds, albeit with vis­i­ble dis­com­fort and reluc­tance.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Alice’s per­son­al life unfolds in a strained dance with her hus­band, Ben­nett, where their dis­con­nect is pal­pa­ble. Alice’s attempts at inti­ma­cy and under­stand­ing clash with Ben­net­t’s eva­sive­ness, pro­pelling her deep­er into her library work as a source of solace and iden­ti­ty.

The nar­ra­tive beau­ti­ful­ly jux­ta­pos­es the rugged, pic­turesque Ken­tucky land­scape against the inter­nal land­scapes of its char­ac­ters. Alice’s deter­mi­na­tion to belong and make a dif­fer­ence, Isabelle’s guard­ed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and the community’s cau­tious accep­tance cre­ate a rich tapes­try of human expe­ri­ence.

Margery’s tough exte­ri­or, shaped by life’s hard­ships, con­trasts sharply with her hid­den depths of emo­tion and long­ing for con­nec­tion with Sven Gus­tavs­son, reflect­ing the broad­er theme of appear­ance ver­sus real­i­ty.

Alice’s inter­ac­tions, from the heart­felt to the mun­dane, reveal the intri­cate bal­ance of her exter­nal pur­pose and inter­nal quest for accep­tance and love. Her evolv­ing rela­tion­ship with Isabelle—marked by a break­through at a local school—spotlights the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of empa­thy and shared strug­gles.

Margery’s per­son­al tur­moil and her com­plex rela­tion­ship with Sven high­light the strug­gle for auton­o­my and the desire for com­pan­ion­ship, cul­mi­nat­ing in a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

The sil­hou­ette of Alice and Bennett’s mar­riage, strained yet ten­der, expos­es the ten­u­ous threads hold­ing them togeth­er, sug­gest­ing both hope and despair. As Alice finds solace in the nat­ur­al world and her mis­sion, the nar­ra­tive threads weave a sto­ry of resilience, com­mu­ni­ty, and the quest for per­son­al redemp­tion amid the unfor­giv­ing yet majes­tic back­drop of Ken­tucky.

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.

THREE
I arrive at the Win­ches­ter home the next morn­ing, after Nina has already
dropped Cecelia off at school. I park out­side the met­al gate sur­round­ing
their prop­er­ty. I’ve nev­er been in a house that was pro­tect­ed by a gate
before, much less lived there. But this swanky Long Island neigh­bor­hood
seems to be all gat­ed hous­es. Con­sid­er­ing how low the crime rate is around
here, it seems like overkill, but who am I to judge? Every­thing else being
equal, if I had a choice between a house with a gate and a house with no
gate, I’d pick the gate too.
The gate was open when I arrived yes­ter­day, but today it’s closed.
Locked, appar­ent­ly. I stand there a moment, my two duf­fel bags at my feet,
try­ing to fig­ure out how to get inside. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of
door­bell or buzzer. But that land­scap­er is on the prop­er­ty again, crouched in
the dirt, a shov­el in his hand.
“Excuse me!” I call out.
The man glances over his shoul­der at me, then goes back to dig­ging.
Real nice.
“Excuse me!” I say again, loud enough that he can’t ignore me.
This time, he slow­ly, slow­ly gets to his feet. He’s in absolute­ly no hur­ry
as he ambles across the giant front lawn to the entrance to the gate. He pulls
off his thick rub­ber gloves and rais­es his eye­brows at me.
“Hi!” I say, try­ing to hide my annoy­ance with him. “My name is Mil­lie
Cal­loway, and it’s my first day work­ing here. I’m just try­ing to get inside
because Mrs. Win­ches­ter is expect­ing me.”
He doesn’t say any­thing. From across the yard, I had only noticed how
big he is—at least a head taller than me, with biceps the size of my thighs—
but up close, I real­ize he’s actu­al­ly pret­ty hot. He looks to be in his mid-
thir­ties with thick jet-black hair damp from exer­tion, olive skin, and rugged
good looks. But his most strik­ing fea­ture is his eyes. His eyes are very black
—so dark, I can’t dis­tin­guish the pupil from the iris. Some­thing about his
gaze makes me take a step back.
“So, um, can you help me?” I ask.
The man final­ly opens his mouth. I expect him to tell me to get lost or to
show him some ID, but instead, he lets loose with a string of rapid Ital­ian.
At least, I think it’s Ital­ian. I can’t say I know a word of the lan­guage, but I
saw an Ital­ian movie with sub­ti­tles once, and it sort of sound­ed like this.
“Oh,” I say when he fin­ish­es his mono­logue. “So, um… no Eng­lish?”
“Eng­lish?” he says in a voice so heav­i­ly accent­ed, it’s clear what the
answer is. “No. No Eng­lish.”
Great. I clear my throat, try­ing to fig­ure out the best way to express
what I need to tell him. “So I…” I point to my chest. “I am work­ing. For
Mrs. Win­ches­ter.” I point to the house. “And I need to get… inside.” Now I
point to the lock on the gate. “Inside.”
He just frowns at me. Great.
I’m about ready to dig out my phone and call Nina when he goes off to
the side, hits some sort of switch, and the gates swing open, almost in slow
motion.
Once the gates are open, I take a moment to gaze up at the house that
will be my home for the fore­see­able future. The house is two sto­ries plus
the attic, sprawl­ing over what looks like about the length of a city block in
Brook­lyn. It’s almost blind­ing­ly white—possibly fresh­ly painted—and the
archi­tec­ture looks con­tem­po­rary, but what do I know? I just know it looks
like the peo­ple liv­ing here have more mon­ey than they know what to do
with.
I start to pick up one of my bags, but before I can, the guy picks up both
of them with­out even grunt­ing and car­ries them to the front door for me.
Those bags are very heavy—they con­tain lit­er­al­ly every­thing I own aside
from my car—so I’m grate­ful he vol­un­teered to do the heavy lift­ing for me.
“Gra­cias,” I say.
He gives me a fun­ny look. Hmm, that might have been Span­ish. Oh
well.
I point to my chest. “Mil­lie,” I say.
“Mil­lie.” He nods in under­stand­ing, then points to his own chest. “I am
Enzo.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say awk­ward­ly, even though he won’t under­stand
me. But God, if he lives here and has a job, he must have picked up a lit­tle
Eng­lish.
“Piacere di conoscer­ti,” he says.
I nod word­less­ly. So much for mak­ing friends with the land­scap­ing guy.
“Mil­lie,” he says again in his thick Ital­ian accent. He looks like he has
some­thing to say, but he’s strug­gling with the lan­guage. “You…”
He hiss­es a word in Ital­ian, but as soon as we hear the front door start to
unlock, Enzo hur­ries back to where he had been crouched in the front yard
and makes him­self very busy. I could just bare­ly make out the word he said.
Peri­co­lo. What­ev­er that means. Maybe it means he wants a soft drink. Peri
cola—now with a twist of lime!
“Mil­lie!” Nina looks delight­ed to see me. So delight­ed that she throws
her arms around me and squash­es me in a hug. “I’m so glad you decid­ed to
take the job. I just felt like you and I had a con­nec­tion. You know?”
That’s what I thought. She got a “gut feel­ing” about me, so she didn’t
both­er to do the research. Now I just have to make sure she nev­er has any
rea­son not to trust me. I have to be the per­fect employ­ee. “Yes, I know what
you mean. I feel the same way.”
“Well, come in!”
Nina grabs the crook of my elbow and leads me into the house,
obliv­i­ous to the fact that I’m strug­gling with my two pieces of lug­gage. Not
that I would have expect­ed her to help me. It wouldn’t have even occurred
to her.
I can’t help but notice when I walk inside that the house looks very
dif­fer­ent from the first time I was here. Very dif­fer­ent. When I came for the
inter­view, the Win­ches­ter house was immaculate—I could have eat­en off
any sur­face in the room. But now, the place looks like a pigsty. The cof­fee
table in front of the sofa has six cups on it with vary­ing amounts of dif­fer­ent
sticky liq­uids in them, about a dozen crum­pled news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines,
and a dent­ed piz­za box. There’s cloth­ing and garbage strewn all over the
liv­ing room and the din­ing table still has the remains of din­ner last night.
“As you can see,” Nina says, “you haven’t arrived a moment too soon!”
So Nina Win­ches­ter is a slob—that’s her secret. It’s going to take me
hours to get this place in any decent con­di­tion. Maybe days. But that’s fine
—I’ve been itch­ing to do some good hon­est hard work. And I like that she
needs me. If I can make myself invalu­able to her, she’s less like­ly to fire me
if—or when—she finds out the truth.
“Let me just put my bags away,” I tell her. “And then I’ll get the entire
place tidied up.”
Nina lets out a hap­py sigh. “You are a mir­a­cle, Mil­lie. Thank you so
much. Also…” She grabs her purse off the kitchen counter and rifles around
inside, final­ly pulling out the lat­est iPhone. “I got you this. I couldn’t help
but notice you were using a very out­dat­ed phone. If I need to reach you, I’d
like you to have a reli­able means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”
I hes­i­tant­ly wrap my fin­gers around the brand-new iPhone. “Wow. This
is real­ly gen­er­ous of you, but I can’t afford a plan—”
She waves a hand. “I added you to our fam­i­ly plan. It cost almost
noth­ing.”
Almost noth­ing? I have a feel­ing her def­i­n­i­tion of those two words is
very dif­fer­ent from mine.
Before I can protest fur­ther, the sound of foot­steps echoes on the stairs
behind me. I turn around, and a man in a gray busi­ness suit is mak­ing his
way down the stair­well. When he sees me stand­ing in the liv­ing room, he
stops short at the base of the stairs, as if shocked by my pres­ence. His eyes
widen fur­ther when he notices my lug­gage.
“Andy!” Nina calls out. “Come meet Mil­lie!”
This must be Andrew Win­ches­ter. When I was googling the Win­ches­ter
fam­i­ly, my eyes popped out a bit when I saw this man’s net worth. After
see­ing all those dol­lar signs, the home the­ater and the gate sur­round­ing the
prop­er­ty made a bit more sense. He’s a busi­ness­man, who took over his
father’s thriv­ing com­pa­ny, and has dou­bled the prof­its since. But it’s
obvi­ous from his sur­prised expres­sion that he allows his wife to han­dle
most of the house­hold mat­ters, and it’s appar­ent­ly flat out slipped her mind
to tell him she’s hired a live-in house­keep­er.
“Hel­lo…” Mr. Win­ches­ter steps into the liv­ing room, his brow
fur­rowed. “Mil­lie, is it? I’m sor­ry, I didn’t real­ize…”
“Andy, I told you about her!” She tilts her head to the side. “I said we
need­ed to hire some­body to help with clean­ing and cook­ing and Cecelia.
I’m sure I told you!”
“Yes, well.” His face final­ly relax­es. “Wel­come, Mil­lie. We could
cer­tain­ly use the help.”
Andrew Win­ches­ter holds his hand out for me to shake. It’s hard not to
notice he is an incred­i­bly hand­some man. Pierc­ing brown eyes, a full head
of hair the col­or of mahogany, and a sexy lit­tle cleft in his chin. It’s also
hard not to notice that he is sev­er­al lev­els more attrac­tive than his wife,
even with her impec­ca­ble groom­ing, which strikes me as a bit strange. The
man is filthy rich, after all. He could have any woman he wants. I respect
him for not choos­ing a twen­ty-year-old super­mod­el to be his life part­ner.
I thrust my new phone into my jeans pock­et and reach out to take his
hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Win­ches­ter.”
“Please.” He smiles warm­ly at me. “Call me Andrew.”
As he says the words, some­thing flick­ers over Nina Winchester’s face.
Her lips twitch and her eyes nar­row. I’m not exact­ly sure why though. She
her­self offered to let me call her by her first name. And it’s not like Andrew
Win­ches­ter is check­ing me out. His eyes are stay­ing respect­ful­ly on mine
and not drop­ping below the neck. Not that there’s much to see—even
though I didn’t both­er with the fake tor­toise­shell glass­es today, I’m wear­ing
a mod­est blouse and com­fort­able blue jeans for my first day of work.
“Any­way,” Nina snips, “don’t you have to get to the office, Andy?”
“Oh yes.” He straight­ens out his gray tie. “I’ve got a meet­ing at nine-
thir­ty in the city. I bet­ter hur­ry.”
Andrew gives Nina a lin­ger­ing kiss on the lips and squeezes her
shoul­der. As far as I can see, they are quite hap­pi­ly mar­ried. And Andrew
seems pret­ty down-to-earth for a man whose net worth has eight fig­ures
after the dol­lar sign. It’s sweet how he blows her a kiss from the front door
—this is a man who loves his wife.
“Your hus­band seems nice,” I say to Nina as the door slams shut.
The dark, sus­pi­cious look returns to her eyes. “Do you think so?”
“Well, yes,” I stam­mer. “I mean, he seems like… how long have you
been mar­ried?”
Nina looks at me thought­ful­ly. But instead of answer­ing my ques­tion,
she says, “What hap­pened to your glass­es?”
“What?”
She lifts an eye­brow. “You were wear­ing a pair of glass­es at your
inter­view, weren’t you?”
“Oh.” I squirm, reluc­tant to admit that the eye­glass­es were fake—my
attempt to look more intel­li­gent and seri­ous, and yes, less attrac­tive and
threat­en­ing. “I… uh, I’m wear­ing my con­tacts.”
“Are you?”
I don’t know why I lied. I should’ve just said that I don’t need the
glass­es that bad­ly. Instead, I have now dou­bled down and invent­ed con­tacts
that I’m not actu­al­ly wear­ing. I can feel Nina scru­ti­niz­ing my pupils,
search­ing for the lens­es.
“Is… is that a prob­lem?” I final­ly ask.
A mus­cle twitch­es under her right eye. For a moment, I’m scared she’s
going to tell me that I should get out. But then her face relax­es. “Of course
not! I just thought those glass­es were so cute on you. Very striking—you
should wear them more often.”
“Yes, well…” I grab the han­dle of one of my duf­fel bags with my
shak­ing hand. “Maybe I should get my stuff upstairs so I can get start­ed.”
Nina claps her hands togeth­er. “Excel­lent idea!”
Once again, Nina doesn’t offer to take either of my bags as we climb up
the two flights of stairs to get to the attic. By halfway through the sec­ond
flight, my arms feel like they’re about ready to fall off, but Nina doesn’t
seem inter­est­ed in paus­ing to give me a moment to read­just the straps. I
gasp with relief when I’m able to drop the bags on the floor of my new
room. Nina yanks on the cord to turn on the two light­bulbs that illu­mi­nate
my tiny liv­ing space.
“I hope it’s okay,” Nina says. “I fig­ure you’d rather have the pri­va­cy of
being up here, as well as your own bath­room.”
Maybe she feels guilty about the fact that their ginor­mous gue­stroom is
lying emp­ty while I am liv­ing in a room slight­ly larg­er than a broom clos­et.
But that’s fine. Any­thing larg­er than the back­seat of my car is like a palace.
I can’t wait to sleep here tonight. I’m obscene­ly grate­ful.
“It’s per­fect,” I say hon­est­ly.
In addi­tion to the bed, dress­er, and book­case, I notice one oth­er thing in
the room that I didn’t see the first time around. A lit­tle mini-fridge, about a
foot tall. It’s plugged into the wall and hum­ming rhyth­mi­cal­ly. I crouch
down and tug it open.
The mini-fridge has two small shelves. And on the top shelf, there are
three tiny bot­tles of water.
“Good hydra­tion is very impor­tant,” Nina says earnest­ly.
“Yes…”
When she sees the per­plexed expres­sion on my face, she smiles.
“Obvi­ous­ly, it’s your fridge and you can put what­ev­er you want in it. I
thought I would give you a head start.”
“Thank you.” It’s not that strange. Some peo­ple leave mints on a pil­low.
Nina leaves three tiny bot­tles of water.
“Any­way…” Nina wipes her hands on her thighs, even though her
hands are spot­less. “I’ll let you get unpacked and then get start­ed clean­ing
the house. I’ll be prepar­ing for my PTA meet­ing tomor­row.”
“PTA?”
“Par­ent Teacher Asso­ci­a­tion.” She beams at me. “I’m the vice
pres­i­dent.”
“That’s won­der­ful,” I say, because it’s what she wants to hear. Nina is
very easy to please. “I’ll just unpack every­thing quick­ly and get right to
work.”
“Thank you so much.” Her fin­gers briefly touch my bare arm—hers are
warm and dry. “You’re a life­saver, Mil­lie. I’m so glad you’re here.”
I rest my hand on the door­knob as Nina starts to leave my room. And
that’s when I notice it. What’s been both­er­ing me about this room from the
moment I first walked in here. A sick feel­ing wash­es over me.
“Nina?”
“Hmm?”
“Why…” I clear my throat. “Why is the lock to this bed­room on the
out­side rather than the inside?”
Nina peers down at the door­knob, as if notic­ing it for the first time.
“Oh! I’m so sor­ry about that. We used to use this room as a clos­et, so
obvi­ous­ly we want­ed it to lock from the out­side. But then I con­vert­ed it to a
bed­room for the hired help, and I guess we nev­er switched the lock.”
If some­body want­ed, they could eas­i­ly lock me in here. And there’s only
that one win­dow, look­ing out at the back of the house. This room could be a
death trap.
But then again, why would any­one want to lock me in here?
“Could I have the key to the room?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I’m not even sure where it is.”
“I’d like a copy.”
Her light blue eyes nar­row at me. “Why? What do you expect to be
keep­ing in your room that you don’t want us to know about?”
My mouth falls open. “I…. Noth­ing, but…”
Nina throws her head back and laughs. “I’m just kid­ding. It’s your
room, Mil­lie! If you want a key, I’ll get you one. I promise.”
Some­times it feels like Nina has a split per­son­al­i­ty. She flips from hot to
cold so rapid­ly. She claims she was jok­ing, but I’m not so sure. It doesn’t
mat­ter, though. I have no oth­er prospects and this job is a bless­ing. I’m
going to make it work. No mat­ter what. I’m going to make Nina Win­ches­ter
love me.
After Nina leaves my room, I close the door behind her. I’d like to lock
it, but I can’t. Obvi­ous­ly.
As I shut the door, I notice marks in the wood. Long thin lines run­ning
down the length of the door at about the lev­el of my shoul­der. I run my
fin­gers over the inden­ta­tions. They almost seem like…
Scratch­es. Like some­body was scrap­ing at the door.
Try­ing to get out.
No, that’s ridicu­lous. I’m being para­noid. Some­times old wood gets
scratched up. It doesn’t mean any­thing omi­nous.
The room sud­den­ly feels unbear­ably hot and stuffy. There’s a small
fur­nace in the cor­ner of the room, which I’m sure keeps it com­fort­able in
the win­ter, but there’s noth­ing to cool it down in the warmer months. I’ll
have to buy a fan to prop up in front of the win­dow. Even though it’s way
larg­er than my car, it’s still a very small space—I’m not sur­prised they used
it as a stor­age clos­et. I look around, open­ing the draw­ers to check their size.
There’s a lit­tle clos­et with­in the room, with just bare­ly enough space to
hang up my few dress­es. The clos­et is emp­ty except for a cou­ple of hang­ers
and a small blue buck­et in the cor­ner.
I attempt to wrench open the small win­dow to get a bit of air. But it
doesn’t budge. I squint my eyes to inves­ti­gate more close­ly. I run my fin­ger
along the frame of the win­dow. It looks like it’s been paint­ed into place.
Even though I have a win­dow, it doesn’t open.
I could ask Nina about it, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m
com­plain­ing when I just start­ed work­ing here today. Maybe next week I
could men­tion it. I don’t think it’s too much to hope for, to have one
work­ing win­dow.
The land­scap­ing guy, Enzo, is in the back­yard now. He’s run­ning the
lawn­mow­er back there. He paus­es for a moment to wipe sweat from his
fore­head with his mus­cu­lar fore­arm, and then he looks up. He sees my face
through the small win­dow, and he shakes his head, just like he did the first
time I met him. I remem­ber the word he hissed at me in Ital­ian before I
went into the house. Peri­co­lo.

Tam­lin’s absence piques Feyre’s curios­i­ty, lead­ing Lucien to invite her to inspect progress in a near­by vil­lage, mark­ing her first ven­ture out­side the estate’s grounds in over a month. Despite Tam­lin’s reser­va­tions, reflect­ed through increased secu­ri­ty and restrict­ed free­doms, Feyre con­fronts Lucien on a past lie about an inci­dent involv­ing a naga. Lucien, bound by loy­al­ty to Tam­lin, offers lim­it­ed insights, stress­ing the neces­si­ty of order and hier­ar­chy with­in their court. This con­ver­sa­tion reveals a deep­er nar­ra­tive of guilt, duty, and the frag­ile nature of their recov­er­ing soci­ety post-Ama­ran­tha’s reign.

As they jour­ney to the vil­lage, ten­sions between Feyre and Lucien sur­face, touch­ing upon themes of auton­o­my, trust, and the weight of lead­er­ship in the after­math of trau­ma. Feyre chal­lenges the con­straints placed upon her, long­ing for a sem­blance of her for­mer life and free­doms. Lucien, in turn, defends Tam­lin’s over­pro­tec­tive­ness as a mea­sure against their ene­mies and a con­se­quence of past loss­es.

Upon reach­ing the vil­lage, Feyre’s title as “Feyre Curse­break­er” pre­cedes her, high­light­ing her sta­tus and the vil­lagers’ rev­er­ence towards her efforts dur­ing their cap­tiv­i­ty. Yet, their refusal of Feyre and Lucien’s offered assis­tance under­scores a com­mu­nal desire to move beyond their shared suf­fer­ings inde­pen­dent­ly.

The chap­ter intri­cate­ly weaves the strug­gle of bal­anc­ing past hor­rors with the effort to rebuild a frag­ment­ed soci­ety. Feyre’s desire for per­son­al free­dom clash­es with the col­lec­tive need for sta­bil­i­ty and order. Lucien’s loy­al­ty to Tam­lin and the court’s hier­ar­chy is test­ed against his friend­ship with Feyre, illus­trat­ing the com­plex inter­play of per­son­al rela­tion­ships with­in the broad­er polit­i­cal and social recov­ery process. This chap­ter sets the stage for Feyre’s inter­nal strug­gle with her new iden­ti­ty, the con­straints of her role with­in the Faerie realm, and the search for agency amidst the expec­ta­tions and tra­di­tions of her new life.

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.

I WAKE UP A HALF hour before my alarm. I check my e‑mails,
includ­ing one from Frankie with the sub­ject line “KEEP ME
UPDATED,” yelling at me in all caps. I make myself a small break­fast.
I put on black slacks and a white T‑shirt with my favorite
her­ring­bone blaz­er. I gath­er my long, tight curls into a bun at the top
of my head. I for­go my con­tacts and choose my thick­est black-framed
glass­es.
As I look in the mir­ror, I notice that I have lost weight in my face
since David left. While I have always had a slim frame, my butt and
face seem to be the first to pick up any extra weight. And being with
David—during the two years we dat­ed and the eleven months since we
married—meant I put on a few. David likes to eat. And while he would
get up in the ear­ly morn­ings to run it off, I slept in.
Look­ing at myself now, pulled togeth­er and slim­mer, I feel a rush of
con­fi­dence. I look good. I feel good.
Before I make my way out the door, I grab the camel cash­mere
scarf that my moth­er gave me for Christ­mas this past year. And then I
put one foot in front of the oth­er, down to the sub­way, into Man­hat­tan,
and uptown.
Evelyn’s place is just off Fifth Avenue over­look­ing Cen­tral Park. I’ve
done enough Inter­net stalk­ing to know she’s got this place and a
beach­front vil­la just out­side of Mála­ga, Spain. She’s had this apart­ment
since the late ’60s, when she bought it with Har­ry Cameron. She
inher­it­ed the vil­la when Robert Jami­son died almost five years ago. In
my next life, please remind me to come back as a movie star with
points on the back end.
Evelyn’s build­ing, at least from the outside—limestone, pre­war,
beaux arts style—is extra­or­di­nary. I am greet­ed, before even walk­ing
in, by an old­er, hand­some door­man with soft eyes and a kind smile.
“How may I help you?” he says.
I find myself embar­rassed even to say it. “I’m here to see Eve­lyn
Hugo. My name’s Monique Grant.”
He smiles and opens the door for me. It’s clear he was expect­ing
me. He walks me to the ele­va­tor and press­es the but­ton for the top
floor.
“Have a nice day, Ms. Grant,” he says, and then dis­ap­pears as the
ele­va­tors close.
I ring the door­bell of Evelyn’s apart­ment at eleven A.M. on the dot.
A woman in jeans and a navy blouse answers. She looks to be about
fifty, maybe a few years old­er. She is Asian-Amer­i­can, with straight jet-
black hair pulled into a pony­tail. She’s hold­ing a stack of half-opened
mail.
She smiles and extends her hand. “You must be Monique,” she says
as I hold out my own. She seems like the sort of per­son who gen­uine­ly
delights in meet­ing oth­er peo­ple, and I already like her, despite my
strict promise to myself to remain neu­tral to every­thing I encounter
today.
“I’m Grace.”
“Hi, Grace,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
“Like­wise. Come on in.”
Grace steps out of the way and beck­ons to invite me in. I put my bag
on the ground and take off my coat.
“You can put it right in here,” she says, open­ing a clos­et just inside
the foy­er and hand­ing me a wood­en hang­er.
This coat clos­et is the size of the one bath­room in my apart­ment.
It’s no secret that Eve­lyn has more mon­ey than God. But I need to
work at not let­ting that intim­i­date me. She’s beau­ti­ful, and she’s rich,
and she’s pow­er­ful and sex­u­al and charm­ing. And I’m a nor­mal human
being. Some­how I have to con­vince myself that she and I are on equal
foot­ing, or this is nev­er going to work.
“Great,” I say, smil­ing. “Thank you.” I put my coat on the hang­er,
slip it over the rod, and let Grace shut the clos­et door.
“Eve­lyn is upstairs get­ting ready. Can I get you any­thing? Water,
cof­fee, tea?”
“Cof­fee would be great,” I say.
Grace brings me into a sit­ting room. It is bright and airy, with floor-
to-ceil­ing white book­cas­es and two over­stuffed cream-col­ored chairs.
“Have a seat,” she says. “How do you like it?”
“My cof­fee?” I ask, unsure of myself. “With cream? I mean, milk is
fine, too. But cream is great. Or what­ev­er you have.” I get hold of
myself. “What I’m try­ing to say is that I’d like a splash of cream if you
have it. Can you tell I’m ner­vous?”
Grace smiles. “A lit­tle. But you don’t have any­thing to wor­ry about.
Evelyn’s a very kind per­son. She’s par­tic­u­lar and pri­vate, which can
take some get­ting used to. But I’ve worked for a lot of peo­ple, and you
can trust me when I say Evelyn’s bet­ter than the rest.”
“Did she pay you to say that?” I ask. I am try­ing to make a joke, but
it sounds more point­ed and accusato­ry than I intend­ed.
Luck­i­ly, Grace laughs. “She did send my hus­band and me to
Lon­don and Paris last year as my Christ­mas bonus. So in an indi­rect
way, yeah, I sup­pose she did.”
Jesus. “Well, that set­tles it. When you quit, I want your job.”
Grace laughs. “It’s a deal. And you’ve got cof­fee with a splash of
cream com­ing right up.”
I sit down and check my cell phone. I have a text from my mom
wish­ing me luck. I tap to respond, and I am lost in my attempts to
prop­er­ly type the word ear­ly with­out auto-cor­rect chang­ing it to
earth­quake when I hear foot­steps on the stairs. I turn around to see the
sev­en­ty-nine-year-old Eve­lyn Hugo walk­ing toward me.
She is as breath­tak­ing as any of her pic­tures.
She has the pos­ture of a bal­le­ri­na. She’s wear­ing slim black stretch
pants and a long gray-and-navy striped sweater. She’s just as thin as
she ever was, and the only way I know she’s had work done on her
face is because no one her age can look like that with­out a doc­tor.
Her skin is glow­ing and just the lit­tlest bit red, as if it’s been rubbed
clean. She’s wear­ing false eye­lash­es, or per­haps she gets eye­lash
exten­sions. Where her cheeks were once angu­lar, they are now a bit
sunken. But they have just a tint of soft rosi­ness to them, and her lips
are a dark nude.
Her hair is past her shoulders—a beau­ti­ful array of white, gray, and
blond—with the light­est col­ors fram­ing her face. I’m sure her hair is
triple-processed, but the effect is that of a grace­ful­ly aging woman who
sat out in the sun.
Her eye­brows, however—those dark, thick, straight lines that were
her signature—have thinned over the years. And they are now the
same col­or as her hair.
By the time she reach­es me, I notice that she is not wear­ing any
shoes but, instead, big, chunky knit socks.
“Monique, hel­lo,” Eve­lyn says.
I am momen­tar­i­ly sur­prised at the casu­al­ness and con­fi­dence with
which she says my name, as if she has known me for years. “Hel­lo,” I
say.
“I’m Eve­lyn.” She reach­es out and takes my hand, shak­ing it. It
strikes me as a unique form of pow­er to say your own name when you
know that every­one in the room, every­one in the world, already knows
it.
Grace comes in with a white mug of cof­fee on a white saucer.
“There you go. With just a bit of cream.”
“Thank you so much,” I say, tak­ing it from her.
“That’s just the way I like it as well,” Eve­lyn says, and I’m
embar­rassed to admit it thrills me. I feel as if I’ve pleased her.
“Can I get either of you any­thing else?” Grace asks.
I shake my head, and Eve­lyn doesn’t answer. Grace leaves.
“Come,” Eve­lyn says. “Let’s go to the liv­ing room and get
com­fort­able.”
As I grab my bag, Eve­lyn takes the cof­fee out of my hand, car­ry­ing
it for me. I once read that charis­ma is “charm that inspires devo­tion.”
And I can’t help but think of that now, when she’s hold­ing my cof­fee
for me. The com­bi­na­tion of such a pow­er­ful woman and such a small
and hum­ble ges­ture is enchant­i­ng, to be sure.
We step into a large, bright room with floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows.
There are oys­ter-gray chairs oppo­site a soft slate-blue sofa. The car­pet
under our feet is thick, bright ivory, and as my eyes fol­low its path, I
am struck by the black grand piano, open under the light of the
win­dows. On the walls are two blown-up black-and-white images.
The one above the sofa is of Har­ry Cameron on the set of a movie.
The one above the fire­place is the poster for Evelyn’s 1959 ver­sion
of Lit­tle Women. Eve­lyn, Celia St. James, and two oth­er actress­es’ faces
make up the image. All four of these women may have been house­hold
names back in the ’50s, but it is Eve­lyn and Celia who stood the test of
time. Look­ing at it now, Eve­lyn and Celia seem to shine brighter than
the oth­ers. But I’m pret­ty sure that’s sim­ply hind­sight bias. I’m see­ing
what I want to see, based on how I know it all turns out.
Eve­lyn puts my cup and saucer down on the black-lac­quer cof­fee
table. “Sit,” she says as she takes a seat her­self in one of the plush
chairs. She pulls her feet up under­neath her. “Any­where you want.”
I nod and put my bag down. As I sit on the couch, I grab my
notepad.
“So you’re putting your gowns up for auc­tion,” I say as I set­tle
myself. I click my pen, ready to lis­ten.
Which is when Eve­lyn says, “Actu­al­ly, I’ve called you here under
false pre­tens­es.”
I look direct­ly at her, sure I’ve mis­heard. “Excuse me?”
Eve­lyn rearranges her­self in the chair and looks at me. “There’s not
much to tell about me hand­ing a bunch of dress­es over to Christie’s.”
“Well, then—”
“I called you here to dis­cuss some­thing else.”
“What is that?”
“My life sto­ry.”
“Your life sto­ry?” I say, stunned and try­ing hard to catch up to her.
“A tell-all.”
An Eve­lyn Hugo tell-all would be . . . I don’t know. Some­thing close
to the sto­ry of the year. “You want to do a tell-all with Vivant?”
“No,” she says.
“You don’t want to do a tell-all?”
“I don’t want to do one with Vivant.”
“Then why am I here?” I’m even more lost than I was just a moment
ago.
“You’re the one I’m giv­ing the sto­ry to.”
I look at her, try­ing to deci­pher what exact­ly she’s say­ing.
“You’re going to go on record about your life, and you’re going to do
it with me but not with Vivant?”
Eve­lyn nods. “Now you’re get­ting it.”
“What exact­ly are you propos­ing?” There is no way that I have just
walked into a sit­u­a­tion in which one of the most intrigu­ing peo­ple alive
is offer­ing me the sto­ry of her life for no rea­son. I must be miss­ing
some­thing.
“I will tell you my life sto­ry in a way that will be ben­e­fi­cial to both of
us. Although, to be hon­est, main­ly you.”
“Just how in-depth are we talk­ing about here?” Maybe she wants
some airy ret­ro­spec­tive? Some light­weight sto­ry pub­lished
some­where of her choos­ing?
“The whole nine yards. The good, the bad, and the ugly. What­ev­er
cliché you want to use that means ‘I’ll tell you the truth about
absolute­ly every­thing I’ve ever done.’ ”
Whoa.
I feel so sil­ly for com­ing in here expect­ing her to answer ques­tions
about dress­es. I put the note­book on the table in front of me and gen­tly
put the pen down on top of it. I want to han­dle this per­fect­ly. It’s as if a
gor­geous, del­i­cate bird has just flown to me and sat direct­ly on my
shoul­der, and if I don’t make the exact right move, it might fly away.
“OK, if I under­stand you cor­rect­ly, what you’re say­ing is that you’d
like to con­fess your var­i­ous sins—”
Evelyn’s pos­ture, which until this point has shown her to be very
relaxed and fair­ly detached, changes. She is now lean­ing toward me. “I
nev­er said any­thing about con­fess­ing sins. I said noth­ing about sins at
all.”
I back away slight­ly. I’ve ruined it. “I apol­o­gize,” I say. “That was a
poor choice of words.”
Eve­lyn doesn’t say any­thing.
“I’m sor­ry, Ms. Hugo. This is all a bit sur­re­al for me.”
“You can call me Eve­lyn,” she says.
“OK, Eve­lyn, what’s the next step here? What, pre­cise­ly, are we
going to do togeth­er?” I take the cof­fee cup and put it up to my lips,
sip­ping just the lit­tlest bit.
“We’re not doing a Vivant cov­er sto­ry,” she says.
“OK, that much I got,” I say, putting the cup down.
“We’re writ­ing a book.”
“We are?”
Eve­lyn nods. “You and I,” she says. “I’ve read your work. I like the
way you com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly and suc­cinct­ly. Your writ­ing has a no-
non­sense qual­i­ty to it that I admire and that I think my book could
use.”
“You’re ask­ing me to ghost­write your auto­bi­og­ra­phy?” This is
fan­tas­tic. This is absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly fan­tas­tic. This is a good rea­son
to stay in New York. A great rea­son. Things like this don’t hap­pen in
San Fran­cis­co.
Eve­lyn shakes her head again. “I’m giv­ing you my life sto­ry,
Monique. I’m going to tell you the whole truth. And you are going to
write a book about it.”
“And we’ll pack­age it with your name on it and tell every­one you
wrote it. That’s ghost­writ­ing.” I pick up my cup again.
“My name won’t be on it. I’ll be dead.”
I choke on my cof­fee and in doing so stain the white car­pet with
flecks of umber.
“Oh, my God,” I say, per­haps a bit too loud­ly, as I put down the cup.
“I spilled cof­fee on your car­pet.”
Eve­lyn waves this off, but Grace knocks on the door and opens it
just a crack, pok­ing her head in.
“Every­thing OK?”
“I spilled, I’m afraid,” I say.
Grace opens the door ful­ly and comes in, tak­ing a look.
“I’m real­ly sor­ry. I just got a bit shocked is all.”
I catch Evelyn’s eye, and I don’t know her very well, but what I do
know is that she’s telling me to be qui­et.
“It’s not a prob­lem,” Grace says. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Are you hun­gry, Monique?” Eve­lyn says, stand­ing up.
“I’m sor­ry?”
“I know a place just down the street that makes real­ly great sal­ads.
My treat.”
It’s bare­ly noon, and when I’m anx­ious, the first thing to go is my
appetite, but I say yes any­way, because I get the dis­tinct impres­sion
that it’s not real­ly a ques­tion.
“Great,” Eve­lyn says. “Grace, will you call ahead to Trambino’s?”
Eve­lyn takes me by the shoul­der, and less than ten min­utes lat­er,
we’re walk­ing down the man­i­cured side­walks of the Upper East Side.
The sharp chill in the air sur­pris­es me, and I notice Eve­lyn grab her
coat tight­ly around her tiny waist.
In the sun­light, it’s eas­i­er to see the signs of aging. The whites of
her eyes are cloudy, and the com­plex­ion of her hands is in the process
of becom­ing translu­cent. The clear blue tint to her veins reminds me
of my grand­moth­er. I used to love the soft, papery ten­der­ness of her
skin, the way it didn’t bounce back but stayed in place.
“Eve­lyn, what do you mean you’ll be dead?”
Eve­lyn laughs. “I mean that I want you to pub­lish the book as an
autho­rized biog­ra­phy, with your name on it, when I’m dead.”
“OK,” I say, as if this is a per­fect­ly nor­mal thing to have some­one
say to you. And then I real­ize, no, that’s crazy. “Not to be indel­i­cate,
but are you telling me you’re dying?”
“Everyone’s dying, sweet­heart. You’re dying, I’m dying, that guy is
dying.”
She points to a mid­dle-aged man walk­ing a fluffy black dog. He
hears her, sees her fin­ger aimed at him, and real­izes who it is that’s
speak­ing. The effect on his face is some­thing like a triple take.
We turn toward the restau­rant, walk­ing the two steps down to the
door. Eve­lyn sits at a table in the back. No host guid­ed her here. She
just knows where to go and assumes every­one else will catch up. A
serv­er in black pants, a white shirt, and a black tie comes to our table
and puts down two glass­es of water. Evelyn’s has no ice.
“Thank you, Troy,” Eve­lyn says.
“Chopped sal­ad?” he asks.
“Well, for me, of course, but I’m not sure about my friend,” Eve­lyn
says.
I take the nap­kin off the table and put it in my lap. “A chopped sal­ad
sounds great, thank you.”
Troy smiles and leaves.
“You’ll like the chopped sal­ad,” Eve­lyn says, as if we are friends
hav­ing a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion.
“OK,” I say, try­ing to redi­rect. “Tell me more about this book we’re
writ­ing.”
“I’ve told you all you need to know.”
“You’ve told me that I’m writ­ing it and you’re dying.”
“You need to pay bet­ter atten­tion to word choice.”
I may feel a lit­tle out of my league here—and I may not be exact­ly
where I want to be in life right now—but I know a thing or two about
word choice.
“I must have mis­un­der­stood you. I promise I’m very thought­ful with
my words.”
Eve­lyn shrugs. This con­ver­sa­tion is very low-stakes for her. “You’re
young, and your entire gen­er­a­tion is casu­al with words that bear great
mean­ing.”
“I see.”
“And I didn’t say I was con­fess­ing any sins. To say that what I have
to tell is a sin is mis­lead­ing and hurt­ful. I don’t feel regret for the
things I’ve done—at least, not the things you might expect—despite
how hard they may have been or how repug­nant they may seem in the
cold light of day.”
“Je ne regrette rien,” I say, lift­ing my glass of water and sip­ping it.
“That’s the spir­it,” Eve­lyn says. “Although that song is more about
not regret­ting because you don’t live in the past. What I mean is that
I’d still make a lot of the same deci­sions today. To be clear, there are
things I regret. It’s just  .  .  . it’s not real­ly the sor­did things. I don’t
regret many of the lies I told or the peo­ple I hurt. I’m OK with the fact
that some­times doing the right thing gets ugly. And also, I have
com­pas­sion for myself. I trust myself. Take, for instance, when I
snapped at you ear­li­er, back at the apart­ment, when you said what you
did about my con­fess­ing sins. It wasn’t a nice thing to do, and I’m not
sure you deserved it. But I don’t regret it. Because I know I had my
rea­sons, and I did the best I could with every thought and feel­ing that
led up to it.”
“You take umbrage with the word sin because it implies that you
feel sor­ry.”
Our sal­ads appear, and Troy word­less­ly grates pep­per onto Evelyn’s
until she puts her hand up and smiles. I decline.
“You can be sor­ry about some­thing and not regret it,” Eve­lyn says.
“Absolute­ly,” I say. “I see that. I hope that you can give me the
ben­e­fit of the doubt, going for­ward, that we’re on the same page. Even
if there are mul­ti­ple ways to inter­pret exact­ly what we’re talk­ing
about.”
Eve­lyn picks up her fork but doesn’t do any­thing with it. “I find it
very impor­tant, with a jour­nal­ist who will hold my lega­cy in her hands,
to say exact­ly what I mean and to mean what I say,” Eve­lyn says. “If I’m
going to tell you about my life, if I’m going to tell you what real­ly
hap­pened, the truth behind all of my mar­riages, the movies I shot, the
peo­ple I loved, who I slept with, who I hurt, how I com­pro­mised
myself, and where it all land­ed me, then I need to know that you
under­stand me. I need to know that you will lis­ten to exact­ly what I’m
try­ing to tell you and not place your own assump­tions into my sto­ry.”
I was wrong. This is not low-stakes for Eve­lyn. Eve­lyn can speak
casu­al­ly about things of great impor­tance. But right now, in this
moment, when she is tak­ing so much time to make such spe­cif­ic
points, I’m real­iz­ing this is real. This is hap­pen­ing. She real­ly intends
to tell me her life story—a sto­ry that no doubt includes the grit­ty
truths behind her career and her mar­riages and her image. That’s an
incred­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion she’s putting her­self in. It’s a lot of
pow­er she’s giv­ing me. I don’t know why she’s giv­ing it to me. But that
doesn’t negate the fact that she is giv­ing it to me. And it’s my job, right
now, to show her that I am wor­thy of it and that I will treat it as sacred.
I put my fork down. “That makes per­fect sense, and I’m sor­ry if I
was being glib.”
Eve­lyn waves this off. “The whole cul­ture is glib now. That’s the
new thing.”
“Do you mind if I ask a few more ques­tions? Once I have the lay of
the land, I promise to focus sole­ly on what you’re say­ing and what you
mean, so that you feel under­stood at such a lev­el that you can think of
no one bet­ter suit­ed to the task of gate­keep­ing your secrets than me.”
My sin­cer­i­ty dis­arms her ever so briefly. “You may begin,” she says
as she takes a bite of her sal­ad.
“If I’m to pub­lish this book after you have passed, what sort of
finan­cial gain do you envi­sion?”
“For me or for you?”
“Let’s start with you.”
“None for me. Remem­ber, I’ll be dead.”
“You’ve men­tioned that.”
“Next ques­tion.”
I lean in con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly. “I hate to pose some­thing so vul­gar, but
what kind of time­line do you intend? Am I to hold on to this book for
years until you . . .”
“Die?”
“Well . . . yes,” I say.
“Next ques­tion.”
“What?”
“Next ques­tion, please.”
“You didn’t answer that one.”
Eve­lyn is silent.
“All right, then, what kind of finan­cial gain is there for me?”
“A much more inter­est­ing ques­tion, and I have been won­der­ing
why it took you so long to ask.”
“Well, I’ve asked it.”
“You and I will meet over the next how­ev­er many days it takes, and
I will tell you absolute­ly every­thing. And then our rela­tion­ship will be
over, and you will be free—or per­haps I should say bound—to write it
into a book and sell it to the high­est bid­der. And I do mean high­est. I
insist that you be ruth­less in your nego­ti­at­ing, Monique. Make them
pay you what they would pay a white man. And then, once you’ve done
that, every pen­ny from it will be yours.”
“Mine?” I say, stunned.
“You should drink some water. You look ready to faint.”
“Eve­lyn, an autho­rized biog­ra­phy about your life, in which you talk
about all sev­en of your mar­riages . . .”
“Yes?”
“A book like that stands to make mil­lions of dol­lars, even if I didn’t
nego­ti­ate.”
“But you will,” Eve­lyn says, tak­ing a sip of her water and look­ing
pleased.
The ques­tion has to be asked. We’ve been danc­ing around it for far
too long. “Why on earth would you do that for me?”
Eve­lyn nods. She has been expect­ing this ques­tion. “For now, think
of it as a gift.”
“But why?”
“Next ques­tion.”
“Seri­ous­ly.”
“Seri­ous­ly, Monique, next ques­tion.”
I acci­den­tal­ly drop my fork onto the ivory table­cloth. The oil from
the dress­ing bleeds into the fab­ric, turn­ing it dark­er and more
translu­cent. The chopped sal­ad is deli­cious but heavy on the onions,
and I can feel the heat of my breath per­me­at­ing the space around me.
What the hell is going on?
“I’m not try­ing to be ungrate­ful, but I think I deserve to know why
one of the most famous actress­es of all time would pluck me out of
obscu­ri­ty to be her biog­ra­ph­er and hand me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make
mil­lions of dol­lars off her sto­ry.”
“The Huff­in­g­ton Post is report­ing that I could sell my auto­bi­og­ra­phy
for as much as twelve mil­lion dol­lars.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Inquir­ing minds want to know, I guess.”
The way Eve­lyn is hav­ing so much fun with this, the way she seems
to delight in shock­ing me, lets me know that this is, at least a lit­tle bit,
a pow­er play. She likes to be cav­a­lier about things that would change
oth­er people’s lives. Isn’t that the very def­i­n­i­tion of pow­er? Watch­ing
peo­ple kill them­selves over some­thing that means noth­ing to you?
“Twelve mil­lion is a lot, don’t get me wrong . . .” she says, and she
doesn’t need to fin­ish the sen­tence in order for it to be com­plet­ed in
my head. But it’s not very much to me.
“But still, Eve­lyn, why? Why me?”
Eve­lyn looks up at me, her face sto­ic. “Next ques­tion.”
“With all due respect, you’re not being par­tic­u­lar­ly fair.”
“I’m offer­ing you the chance to make a for­tune and sky­rock­et to the
top of your field. I don’t have to be fair. Cer­tain­ly not if that’s how
you’re going to define it, any­way.”
On the one hand, this feels like a no-brain­er. But at the same time,
Eve­lyn has giv­en me absolute­ly noth­ing con­crete. And I could lose my
job by steal­ing a sto­ry like this for myself. That job is all I have right
now. “Can I have some time to think about this?”
“Think about what?”
“About all of this.”
Evelyn’s eyes nar­row ever so slight­ly. “What on earth is there to
think about?”
“I’m sor­ry if it offends you,” I say.
Eve­lyn cuts me off. “You haven’t offend­ed me.” Just the very
impli­ca­tion that I could get under her skin gets under her skin.
“There’s a lot to con­sid­er,” I say. I could get fired. She could back
out. I could fail spec­tac­u­lar­ly at writ­ing this book.
Eve­lyn leans for­ward, try­ing to hear me out. “For instance?”
“For instance, how am I sup­posed to han­dle this with Vivant? They
think they have an exclu­sive with you. They’re mak­ing calls to
pho­tog­ra­phers this very moment.”
“I told Thomas Welch not to promise a sin­gle thing. If they have
gone out and made wild assump­tions about some cov­er, that’s on
them.”
“But it’s on me, too. Because now I know you have no inten­tion of
mov­ing for­ward with them.”
“So?”
“So what do I do? Go back to my office and tell my boss that you’re
not talk­ing to Vivant, that instead you and I are sell­ing a book? It’s
going to look like I went behind their backs, on com­pa­ny time, mind
you, and stole their sto­ry for myself.”
“That’s not real­ly my prob­lem,” Eve­lyn says.
“But that’s why I have to think about it. Because it’s my prob­lem.”
Eve­lyn hears me. I can tell she’s tak­ing me seri­ous­ly from the way
she puts her water glass down and looks direct­ly at me, lean­ing with
her fore­arms on the table. “You have a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty
here, Monique. You can see that, right?”
“Of course.”
“So do your­self a favor and learn how to grab life by the balls, dear.
Don’t be so tied up try­ing to do the right thing when the smart thing is
so painful­ly clear.”
“You don’t think that I should be forth­right with my employ­ers
about this? They’ll think I con­spired to screw them over.”
Eve­lyn shakes her head. “When my team specif­i­cal­ly request­ed
you, your com­pa­ny shot back with some­one at a high­er lev­el. They
only agreed to send you out once I made it clear that it was you or it
was no one. Do you know why they did that?”
“Because they don’t think I—”
“Because they run a busi­ness. And so do you. And right now, your
busi­ness stands to go through the roof. You have a choice to make.
Are we writ­ing a book togeth­er or not? You should know, if you won’t
write it, I’m not going to give it to any­one else. It will die with me in
that case.”
“Why would you tell only me your life sto­ry? You don’t even know
me. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m under absolute­ly no oblig­a­tion to make sense to you.”
“What are you after, Eve­lyn?”
“You ask too many ques­tions.”
“I’m here to inter­view you.”
“Still.” She takes a sip of water, swal­lows, and then looks me right in
the eye. “By the time we are through, you won’t have any ques­tions,”
she says. “All of these things you’re so des­per­ate to know, I promise I’ll
answer them before we’re done. But I’m not going to answer them one
minute before I want to. I call the shots. That’s how this is going to
go.”
I lis­ten to her and think about it, and I real­ize I would be an absolute
moron to walk away from this, no mat­ter what her terms are. I didn’t
stay in New York and let David go to San Fran­cis­co because I like the
Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. I did it because I want to climb the lad­der as high as I
pos­si­bly can. I did it because I want my name, the name my father
gave me, in big, bold let­ters one day. This is my chance.
“OK,” I say.
“OK, then. Glad to hear it.” Evelyn’s shoul­ders relax, she picks up
her water again, and she smiles. “Monique, I think I like you,” she
says.

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.

3
“Ms. Lynne! Ms. Lynne!” the boy shout­ed. He was out of breath, pant­i­ng at our
front door. “You have to come! Come now!”
One day when I was four, I was in the liv­ing room of our house, sit­ting on
the couch with my mom on one side and my friend Cindy on the oth­er.
Kent­wood was like a town in a soap opera—there was always dra­ma. Cindy was
chat­ter­ing away to my mom about the lat­est scan­dal while I was lis­ten­ing in,
try­ing to fol­low along, when the door burst open. The boy’s facial expres­sion
was enough for me to know some­thing ter­ri­fy­ing had hap­pened. My heart
dropped.
My moth­er and I start­ed run­ning. The road had just been repaved and I was
bare­foot, run­ning on the hot black tar.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” I yelped with every step. I looked down at my feet and saw
the tar stick­ing to them.
Final­ly, we arrived at the �eld where my broth­er, Bryan, had been play­ing
with his neigh­bor friends. They had been try­ing to mow down some tall grass
with their four-wheel­ers. This seemed like a fan­tas­tic idea to them because they
were idiots. Inevitably, they couldn’t see one anoth­er through the tall grass and
had a head-on col­li­sion.
I must have seen every­thing, heard Bryan hol­ler­ing in pain, my moth­er
scream­ing in fear, but I don’t remem­ber any of it. I think God made me black
out so I wouldn’t remem­ber the pain and pan­ic, or the sight of my brother’s
crushed body.
A heli­copter air­lift­ed him to the hos­pi­tal.
When I vis­it­ed Bryan days lat­er, he was in a full body cast. From what I could
see, he’d bro­ken near­ly every bone in his body. And the detail that drove it all
home for me, as a kid, was that he had to pee through a hole in the cast.
The oth­er thing I couldn’t help but notice was that the whole room was full
of toys. My par­ents were so grate­ful he’d sur­vived and they felt so bad for him
that dur­ing his recov­ery, every day was Christ­mas. My mom catered to my
broth­er because of guilt. She still defers to him to this day. It’s fun­ny how one
split sec­ond can change a family’s dynam­ics for­ev­er.
The acci­dent made me much clos­er to my broth­er. Our bond was formed out
of my sin­cere, gen­uine recog­ni­tion of his pain. Once he came home from the
hos­pi­tal, I wouldn’t leave his side. I slept beside him every night. He couldn’t
sleep in his own bed because he still had the full body cast. So he had a spe­cial
bed, and they had to set up a lit­tle mat­tress for me at the foot of it. Some­times
I’d climb into his bed and just hold him.
Once the cast came o�, I con­tin­ued to share a bed with him for years. Even as
a very lit­tle girl, I knew that—between the acci­dent and how hard our dad was
on him—my broth­er had a di�cult life. I want­ed to bring him com­fort.
Final­ly, after years of this, my mom told me, “Brit­ney, now you’re almost in
the sixth grade. You need to start sleep­ing by your­self!”
I said no.
I was such a baby—I did not want to sleep by myself. But she insist­ed, and
�nal­ly I had to give in.
Once I start­ed to stay in my own room, I came to enjoy hav­ing my own space,
but I remained extreme­ly close to my broth­er. He loved me. And I loved him so
much—for him I felt the most endear­ing, pro­tec­tive love. I didn’t want him ever
to be hurt. I’d seen him su�er too much already.
As my broth­er got bet­ter, we became heav­i­ly involved with the com­mu­ni­ty.
Since it was a small town of just a cou­ple thou­sand peo­ple, every­one came out to
sup­port the three main parades a year—Mardi Gras, Fourth of July, Christ­mas.
The whole town looked for­ward to them. The streets would be lined with
peo­ple smil­ing, wav­ing, leav­ing behind the dra­ma of their lives for a day to have
fun watch­ing their neigh­bors slow­ly wan­der by on High­way 38.
One year, a bunch of us kids decid­ed to dec­o­rate a golf cart and put it in the
Mar­di Gras parade. There were prob­a­bly eight kids in that golf cart—way too
many, obvi­ous­ly. There were three on the bench seat, a cou­ple stand­ing on the

Chap­ter 3 of the book delves into the intri­ca­cies of par­ent­ing dur­ing the teenage years, dis­cussed with­in the con­text of a sophis­ti­cat­ed gath­er­ing of friends. Patri­cia express­es her con­cerns about her daugh­ter, Korey, and her chang­ing habits, which sparks a broad­er con­ver­sa­tion about the tri­als of rais­ing teenagers among the group, each par­ent shar­ing their unique per­spec­tives and strug­gles. The dia­logue cap­tures a mix of humor, frus­tra­tion, and deep-seat­ed love that each par­ent har­bors for their chil­dren, despite the chal­lenges they pose.

The set­ting is Grace’s well-appoint­ed sit­ting room, a space filled with ear­ly Amer­i­can decor and a sense of time­less­ness, reflect­ing the group’s desire for order amidst the chaos of par­ent­ing. The con­ver­sa­tion mean­ders from per­son­al par­ent­ing tac­tics, like Slick’s con­tro­ver­sial time-sav­ing mea­sure of freez­ing sand­wich­es, to broad­er cul­tur­al issues, such as the impact of “hero­in chic” and soci­etal expec­ta­tions on children’s self-image and eat­ing habits.

As the dis­cus­sion shifts to the month­ly book selec­tion, “Hel­ter Skel­ter” by Vin­cent Bugliosi, it brings to the fore the group’s fas­ci­na­tion with true crime, along with a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive on the late 1960s in Amer­i­ca. The women touch upon their per­son­al expe­ri­ences and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties dur­ing that era, high­light­ing the con­trast between their con­ven­tion­al lives and the hedo­nis­tic “Sum­mer of Love.” This part of the con­ver­sa­tion estab­lish­es a con­nec­tion between past soci­etal events and their cur­rent lives, sug­gest­ing that the allure of rev­o­lu­tions and cult lead­ers, depict­ed in the book, is as rel­e­vant today as it was back then.

The chap­ter also sub­tly inte­grates the theme of com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty and vig­i­lance against strangers, reflect­ing the women’s shared con­cern over the safe­ty of their neigh­bor­hood. This col­lec­tive para­noia is humor­ous­ly yet point­ed­ly under­scored by their atten­tion to unfa­mil­iar vehi­cles and the adop­tion of sur­veil­lance tac­tics, under­scor­ing a con­trast between their serene domes­tic lives and the lurk­ing fear of the exter­nal world.

In sum, Chap­ter 3 offers a rich tapes­try of par­ent­ing woes, the chal­lenges of main­tain­ing famil­ial har­mo­ny, and a col­lec­tive yearn­ing for sim­pler times, all set against the back­drop of a gen­teel South­ern ambiance. It under­scores the com­plex­i­ties of mod­ern life and the endur­ing quest for under­stand­ing amidst the seem­ing­ly mun­dane but pro­found acts of dai­ly liv­ing.

Upon arriv­ing at the grand res­i­dence of Thorn­field Estates with Bear, the dog she’s walk­ing, Jane is imme­di­ate­ly struck by the house­’s impres­sive archi­tec­ture, high­light­ed by a tow­er­ing front door that curves into an arch. Eddie, the house­’s own­er, warm­ly ush­ers Jane and Bear inside with­out con­cern for the wet dog shak­ing off on the mar­ble floor, illus­trat­ing an easy­go­ing and wel­com­ing atti­tude.

As they move through the house, Jane notes the lux­u­ri­ous yet com­fort­able decor, con­trast­ing with the ster­ile aes­thet­ics of sim­i­lar homes in the area. The liv­ing room, adorned with col­or­ful, com­fort­able fur­ni­ture and filled with books, sug­gests a lived-in warmth and a pen­chant for read­ing, set­ting Eddie’s home apart from the usu­al dec­o­ra­tive empti­ness Jane observes in oth­er estates.

Intro­duced to a spa­cious and gleam­ing kitchen, Jane engages in con­ver­sa­tion with Eddie, who inquires about her back­ground. Jane offers vague details about her past, men­tion­ing a move from the West in search of some­thing new and hint­ing at flee­ing from pre­vi­ous trou­bles. Eddie, mean­while, shares bits about his ties to Birm­ing­ham through his wife and their deci­sion to pur­chase addi­tion­al land for pri­va­cy, sub­tly reveal­ing the absence of his wed­ding ring.

Their exchange reveals Eddie’s gen­uine curios­i­ty about Jane, which she rec­i­p­ro­cates, relieved to inter­act with some­one show­ing real inter­est in her. This com­fort allows her to briefly over­look the class divide sep­a­rat­ing them, as sug­gest­ed by her liv­ing sit­u­a­tion in the less afflu­ent Cen­ter Point and her jour­ney to find­ing employ­ment in the wealth­i­er area of Thorn­field Estates.

A com­par­i­son is made between the empti­ness Eddie’s house shares with anoth­er res­i­dent of Thorn­field Estates, Tripp Ingra­ham, hint­ing at under­ly­ing themes of lone­li­ness and the facade of per­fec­tion in afflu­ent com­mu­ni­ties. The chap­ter explores themes of iden­ti­ty, the search for belong­ing, and the stark con­trasts between social class­es, all while devel­op­ing a sub­tle intrigue sur­round­ing Eddie’s per­son­al life and Jane’s past.

In Chap­ter 3, “Beasts at Bay,” of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” Tarzan faces per­il and revenge as he reads a chill­ing note reveal­ing a plot against his fam­i­ly. Aban­doned in the jun­gle as part of this cru­el vengeance, Tarzan’s sur­vival instincts surge. He con­fronts not just the emo­tion­al toll of his fam­i­ly’s endan­ger­ment but also imme­di­ate phys­i­cal threats, start­ing with a dead­ly encounter with a bull-ape.

Tarzan’s prowess, dimin­ished lit­tle by his time away from the wild, is test­ed in a dra­mat­ic con­fronta­tion with the ape, a reminder of his unmatched skills honed in the wild. This encounter is a stark throw­back to his past, shed­ding the thin veneer of civ­i­liza­tion for the raw feroc­i­ty of his child­hood in the jun­gle.

Uti­liz­ing his intel­li­gence and the skills gath­ered from both his life in the jun­gle and among humans, Tarzan begins craft­ing tools for sur­vival and defense, empha­siz­ing his adapt­abil­i­ty and resource­ful­ness. He forges a rudi­men­ta­ry knife and hunt­ing gear, high­light­ing his return to the pri­mal lifestyle he was once eager to leave behind.

The chap­ter evolves with Tarzan assert­ing his dom­i­nance over the beasts, notably in a fight for suprema­cy with Akut, the new ape king. By defeat­ing Akut with­out killing him, Tarzan secures a pow­er­ful ally, show­cas­ing his strate­gic mind and deep under­stand­ing of the ani­mal king­dom’s work­ings.

The nar­ra­tive also delves into Tarzan’s inter­nal con­flict, caught between the civ­i­lized world he has known with his fam­i­ly and the wild that calls to his very nature. His recla­ma­tion of pri­mal pow­er and ani­mal­is­tic her­itage is jux­ta­posed with the loom­ing threat posed by the note’s author, cre­at­ing a com­pelling nar­ra­tive of sur­vival against both man and nature.

As the chap­ter clos­es, Tarzan, now reliant on his instincts and embrac­ing his jun­gle upbring­ing, pre­pares for the chal­lenges that lie ahead, mark­ing a full-cir­cle return to his ori­gins amidst new tri­als.