Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

read­ing in my bare-bones apartment—felt like lux­u­ry com­pared to the grind of
orga­niz­ing. While oth­ers were eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed by pick­up bas­ket­ball games or pub
crawls, I had got­ten the carous­ing out of my sys­tem, and could afford the dis­ci­pline of
spurn­ing social engage­ments for an evening spent por­ing over case law. And after
three years of con­fronting boss­es and bureau­crats and irate cit­i­zens who cared lit­tle for
nuance or com­plex­i­ty, the Socrat­ic method held no fears for me; stand in a class­room
and explain why a sem­i­nal case should have been decid­ed dif­fer­ent­ly? No prob­lem.
I found myself grav­i­tat­ing toward con­sti­tu­tion­al law, rel­ish­ing the debates over
judi­cial phi­los­o­phy, fed­er­al­ism, civ­il lib­er­ties. It was a way to engage with the
foun­da­tion­al issues of the Repub­lic with­out get­ting my hands dirty or com­pro­mis­ing
my ideals. It suit­ed the part of me that was a thinker rather than a doer.
But I also had an ulte­ri­or motive. I noticed that wher­ev­er I went—restaurants,
class­rooms, parties—whenever some­body learned that I’d been an orga­niz­er in Chica­go,
I got a respect­ful nod. And when­ev­er they learned that I had decid­ed to go to law
school, I got an approv­ing nod. That’s smart, they’d say, as if to sug­gest that what­ev­er
role I ulti­mate­ly chose for myself, I would be equipped to han­dle it. That I would be a
force to be reck­oned with.
Not that going to law school made me any less rest­less. Beyond my for­mal
stud­ies, I spent a lot of time think­ing about how the law inter­faces with real life—how
legal out­comes, even when tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, could nonethe­less leave peo­ple feel­ing
the sys­tem was rigged; how what seemed fair in abstract prin­ci­ples could be expe­ri­enced
as oppres­sive by those it affect­ed. I joined a law firm one sum­mer to help with a
vot­ing rights case, and although the work we did was valu­able, the rhythms and
rewards of cor­po­rate life felt sti­fling. My sec­ond sum­mer, I worked at a small civ­il
rights firm, but even there the male part­ners all wore braces and Fer­rag­amo shoes,
seem­ing to mir­ror the habits of their cor­po­rate coun­ter­parts.
Toward the end of law school, mis­giv­ings about choos­ing pub­lic life over orga­niz­ing
kept worm­ing their way into my head. They buzzed loud­est the spring of my first
year, when I attend­ed a series of sym­po­siums on pub­lic inter­est law. Pan­el after
pan­el, sea­soned prac­ti­tion­ers spoke about their efforts to improve the legal sys­tem,
pro­tect the envi­ron­ment, advance social jus­tice. It should have been inspir­ing; instead
it depressed me. Despite their deter­mi­na­tion, most were able to point to few last­ing
vic­to­ries. It seemed like they were always play­ing defense, pre­serv­ing the gains of the
past rather than chart­ing bold new cours­es. And when I looked around the audi­to­ri­um,
I real­ized that I was one of the few Black peo­ple there.
Which raised the ques­tion of whether I was fur­ther dis­tanc­ing myself from the
com­mu­ni­ty I cared most about.
It was about that time that I received a small inher­i­tance from an aunt who had
passed away in Kenya, some­one I’d nev­er met. Seiz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to clear my
head, I took the mon­ey and trav­eled to Europe for the sum­mer, land­ing on impulse in
Spain, where I knew no one and could pre­tend to be just anoth­er tourist. For weeks, I
wan­dered through Barcelona, then along the Cos­ta Bra­va and into the Pyre­nees,
car­ry­ing a back­pack and a dog-eared copy of Don Quixote, soak­ing in the beau­ty and
the his­to­ry and the late-night meals, let­ting every­thing wash over me like the end of a
fever dream.
I took road­side bus­es to small vil­lages, watch­ing the old men gath­er in the town
square each evening, as if in a rit­u­al dat­ing back to the Mid­dle Ages. I stood in
court­yards out­side of cathe­drals, lis­ten­ing to the laugh­ter of chil­dren play­ing as their
par­ents spoke in ani­mat­ed tones, a reminder of a time before Amer­i­ca, before the
fron­tier or the tele­graph or the auto­mo­bile, when life was lived in one place, a
community’s rhythms dic­tat­ed by the sea­sons and the sense of belong­ing con­ferred by
ancient walls.
I won­dered whether such depth of his­to­ry brought com­fort, or whether it wore on
the cit­i­zens like a weight. I was too shy to ask; instead I watched, and read, and lost
myself in the sweep of some­one else’s nar­ra­tive, mar­veling at a world that had exist­ed
long before I was born and would go on long after I was gone.
But despite my efforts to blend into the scenery, soon­er or lat­er some­one invari­ably
rec­og­nized that I was for­eign, and upon learn­ing I was Amer­i­can, would express
opin­ions: about NATO or the death penal­ty or, invari­ably, race. “It is true—

Colonel Gaddafi is pop­u­lar among your Blacks?” “I have heard that the KKK is very
pow­er­ful in Amer­i­ca, yes?” Often there was gen­uine curios­i­ty behind the ques­tions,
but I sensed a gulf between us, a skep­ti­cism of my respons­es or per­haps of America’s
place in the world. It was less judg­men­tal than it was a tad patron­iz­ing, and I found
myself get­ting irri­tat­ed, then defen­sive. I couldn’t bring myself to deny the truth of the
cri­tiques, but I also found myself want­i­ng to explain the oth­er side of the sto­ry, the
pos­si­bil­i­ty and dynamism and real free­dom I had expe­ri­enced back home.
I real­ized that despite my best efforts, no real dis­tance exist­ed between me and my
coun­try. I had final­ly come to under­stand what it meant to be patri­ot, to love a place
not because it was per­fect but because it was yours.
I came back from Europe more deter­mined than ever to do some­thing mean­ing­ful, to
apply the lessons I’d learned as an orga­niz­er but on a broad­er stage. What form that
would take—the law, pol­i­tics, some com­bi­na­tion thereof—I still didn’t know. And
to my sur­prise, a pub­lic per­for­mance of sorts would end up lend­ing a hand.
Some­time dur­ing my sec­ond year at law school, on a lark, I had applied to be
pres­i­dent of the Har­vard Law Review. The posi­tion was con­sid­ered pres­ti­gious, the top
stu­dent job, although to be hon­est it struck me as a bit of an anachro­nism, a nod to the
cachet of yesterday’s elite. More than a cen­tu­ry old and said to be the most cit­ed law
jour­nal in the world, the Har­vard Law Review had always been edit­ed by a stu­dent
pres­i­dent and an elect­ed board of edi­tors, all cho­sen through a process that
empha­sized grades and the pro­duc­tion of a pub­lish­able “note”—a piece of legal
schol­ar­ship.
The elec­tion of the pres­i­dent was an espe­cial­ly elab­o­rate affair, the can­di­dates
sub­ject­ed to a full day of inter­views, cul­mi­nat­ing in a big meet­ing where each liv­ing
edi­tor (a few hun­dred in all) got to vote. It was, quite lit­er­al­ly, white shoe: evi­dence of
a time when most of the candidates—indeed most lawyers of any note—would have
come from the same nar­row class back­ground. Cau­cus rooms would be filled with
smoke as rival fac­tions hashed out their sup­port. Deals would be cut, and loy­al­ties
would be test­ed.
The process had evolved some­what by the late 1980s—the smoke was gone, and the
girls were allowed to run—but it remained a deeply politi­cized, secre­tive,
bare-knuck­led busi­ness. Nobody expect­ed a Black guy named Barack Oba­ma to end up
in the mix.
But over the course of my first two years, I had earned good grades, and my
intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, along with a cer­tain diplo­mat­ic bent, had allowed me to build
bridges between the var­i­ous cliques that made up the social land­scape at Har­vard: the
Alpha Dogs who’d gone to the best prep schools and expect­ed to run the world; the
Grind Crew, the stu­dents who felt out of their ele­ment, less afflu­ent than their peers
and who there­fore refused to play the glad-hand­ing game, choos­ing instead to bust
their hump; the Wonky Woke, the pub­lic inter­est types who envi­sioned them­selves
defend­ing indi­gent clients or sav­ing the north­ern spot­ted owl; and the Mean Reds,
most­ly women, some of col­or, deter­mined to call out any ves­tige of patri­archy or
racism or gen­er­al stupidity—and to make the fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tion just a lit­tle bit
mis­er­able for the fact of their being most­ly white, male, and pre­sumed to be
com­pla­cent.
The fact that I had friends in each camp con­tin­ued to sur­prise me. And when I was
nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent, what began as a lark turned seri­ous. For two weeks, I went
through the ringer—interviews that last­ed hours, can­di­date forums that verged on
attack ads, days when I didn’t both­er going to class or even eat­ing much because I was
so con­sumed by the process.
The long day of vot­ing came and went. I got back to my apart­ment late, cooked
some spaghet­ti, and wait­ed as a cou­ple of my clos­est sup­port­ers test­ed the joint I had
bought for the occa­sion. They had been holed up in the cau­cus room and now lay
exhaust­ed on my bed while I paced the floor; we expect­ed results to be called in to my
land­line any minute. The phone rang.
“Barack?” a voice said. “Con­grat­u­la­tions, man. It’s over…You’re the new pres­i­dent
of the Har­vard Law Review.”
Over the course of the sub­se­quent year, I’d learn more about politics—the art of
man­ag­ing egos, the almost-end­less meet­ings, the del­i­cate bal­let of court­ing
contributors—than from any class­room or text­book. I became a pub­lic fig­ure, at least in
the world of legal edu­ca­tion, inter­viewed by nation­al papers and news pro­grams,
rec­og­nized by strangers on the street. I received mul­ti­ple job offers from pres­ti­gious
law firms as well as let­ters from across the coun­try, some of them look­ing for legal
advice, oth­ers ask­ing me to run for pub­lic office—the pres­i­den­cy included—as if I
were already a full-fledged polit­i­cal com­mod­i­ty.
I had arrived. A star was born.
Except…when I look back at it all now, at the excite­ment and the atten­tion and the
fact that I had put my name for­ward in the first place, I see clear­ly that I was
moti­vat­ed by some­thing more than just the chance to guide a stu­dent pub­li­ca­tion. I
liked the idea of being on stage, of being seen. Deep down, I sup­pose I found the idea
alluring—being a some­body. For a Black kid who nev­er felt like he quite belonged, the
oppor­tu­ni­ty felt intox­i­cat­ing, a val­i­da­tion of all my out­sider hopes, a counter to all my
inher­it­ed fears.
Steve Jobs would report­ed­ly ask job can­di­dates whether they want­ed to be a side­kick
or if they want­ed to make their own dis­tinc­tive dent in the uni­verse. If he’d asked me
back when I was run­ning for the law review pres­i­den­cy, I would have pre­tend­ed I
didn’t care that much. But the truth? I want­ed to make a dent.
Maybe that’s true for any­one with ambi­tion, any­one who sens­es the sweep of his­to­ry
and won­ders if they might have a place in it. Maybe a cer­tain mega­lo­ma­nia is a
pre­req­ui­site, just as it takes a cer­tain delu­sion to sit down and start writ­ing a book, or
to stand under blind­ing lights and ask for people’s votes, or to think that despite our
small­ness in the uni­verse, God has a plan for us, indi­vid­u­al­ly.
Of course, most of the time we dis­guise these grand ambi­tions, if not from oth­ers
then from our­selves. We clothe them in gauzy

Note: The pro­vid­ed text exceeds the max­i­mum words for a sum­ma­ry as request­ed. Please pro­vide a spe­cif­ic seg­ment or chap­ter from the text for a detailed sum­ma­ry with­in the request­ed word lim­it.

and have a kitchen with more than one work­ing burn­er,” he’d add, tap­ping out sce­nar­ios as eas­i­ly as if they were lay­ing bricks to build anoth­er life, brick by brick, in the air between them. Yet now, there was no Willem to build any­thing with, no future to con­struct or remod­el, only pasts to turn over and over, like stones in a riv­er being slow­ly smoothed by the relent­less flow of what had been.

The joy of those ear­ly times—their shared strug­gles and tri­umphs, the sense of embark­ing on the vast adven­ture of life together—had been true and real. But so, too, had been the pain, the scarci­ty, the fears for the future. He’d not trade his cur­rent sor­row for a return to that time, would he? Yet the yearn­ing for even a moment of that past, to see Willem walk­ing through the door of their Lispe­nard Street apart­ment with a smile, was a phys­i­cal ache, a hunger no amount of suc­cess, recog­ni­tion, or mate­r­i­al wealth could sate.

He opens his eyes and looks around the room, at the wood­en bust Richard made for him, at the scale mod­els of the build­ings that had defined sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of their lives, feel­ing as though these objects were the clos­est things to tal­is­mans he had. They were carv­ings of grief, yes, but also of love, of years spent togeth­er, a tes­ta­ment to the irrefutable fact that Willem had lived, they had loved, and he, despite every­thing, was still here, still liv­ing.

With a sud­den clar­i­ty, he real­izes that escap­ing this pain, this relent­less grief, isn’t what he tru­ly desires. What he seeks, painstak­ing­ly, through tears and sleep­less nights, is a way to live with it, to hon­or it along­side every joy he’d ever expe­ri­enced with Willem. Because to deny the pain would be to deny the pro­found­ness of their love, the life they’d shared, how­ev­er briefly.

He resolves then, with a heavy but steady heart, to call JB, to reach out to the friends who, despite his push­ing away, still hov­er at the edges of his life, ready to be there for him. Because Willem’s absence has taught him the unbear­able light­ness of being, but also the unde­ni­able force of the ties that bind, how­ev­er strained or stretched they may be.

Maybe one day, these real­iza­tions, these steps tak­en back towards the world, towards those who remain, will amount to some­thing like heal­ing. Or maybe they won’t. But either way, he’ll keep try­ing, in hon­or of Willem, and in defi­ance of the soli­tude that threat­ens to con­sume him.

He moves to his desk, the resolve steel­ing his spine, and picks up his phone before he can change his mind. Scrolling through his con­tacts, he finds JB’s num­ber, the action mun­dane yet momen­tous, and press­es call. As the line rings, he whis­pers into the silent room, “For you, Willem. Always for you.”

sharp, all the way to the end. They grinned at each oth­er, jubi­lant, and when the break­fast arrived, they ate with an easy hap­pi­ness that remind­ed Willem of why he loved Jude, why he had cho­sen this life with him. As they ate, Willem could­n’t help but think about the chal­lenges they had faced and would con­tin­ue to face. But in that moment, none of it seemed insur­mount­able. They were togeth­er, and that was what mat­tered. Jude had been through so much, yet here he was, resilient, strong, and with Willem. As Willem watched Jude exam­in­ing the per­il­la, a sense of peace set­tled over him. Yes, there were uncer­tain­ties and fears about how their rela­tion­ship might affect his career or how he might nav­i­gate Jude’s com­plex­i­ties, but the fun­da­men­tal truth was unchange­able: they loved each oth­er, and they would face the future as they had always done, togeth­er.

a sin­gu­lar iden­ti­ty; it is always iden­ti­cal to itself. No mat­ter how many times it is divid­ed or mul­ti­plied, x will always remain x, its intrin­sic val­ue nev­er chang­ing, despite any oper­a­tions act­ed upon it. This math­e­mat­i­cal prin­ci­ple, he real­izes as he feels him­self hurtling through the dark­ness, is the one con­stant he’s clung to all his life. No mat­ter the out­er chaos, the pain inflict­ed upon him, his essence, his core self, remains unal­tered. He is, has always been, will always be, himself—irrespective of how oth­ers per­ceive him or what they do to him. As he braces for impact, for anoth­er alter­ation of his phys­i­cal being, he holds onto this thought: despite every­thing, he remains intrin­si­cal­ly the same. He is his own x, unchange­able in his iden­ti­ty; it’s the one cer­tain­ty, the one axiom of equal­i­ty, that can nev­er be dis­proved, no mat­ter the exter­nal forces applied.

In chap­ter one, we meet a group of four friends, JB, Jude, Willem, and Mal­colm, whose lives have inter­twined since their col­lege years at Hood. Fif­teen years after grad­u­a­tion, we see their dynam­ics have evolved yet remain deeply con­nect­ed. The chap­ter begins with JB announc­ing over din­ner that Edie, part of their wider cir­cle from col­lege known as the Back­fat band, is vis­it­ing. Edie, tran­si­tion­ing to a career in Hong Kong as a veg­an con­sul­tant, mis­tak­en­ly believed by the friends to be under­go­ing gen­der tran­si­tion, becomes the source of a mis­un­der­stand­ing and amuse­ment.

The promise of a reunion under this pre­tense brings the group togeth­er, show­cas­ing their per­son­al growth, their career paths, and the com­plex­i­ties of their rela­tion­ships. Jude’s wheel­chair-bound con­di­tion, Malcolm’s feel­ings of exclu­sion, Willem’s career as an actor, and JB’s active con­nec­tion to their past rep­re­sent the diver­si­ty of expe­ri­ences with­in their friend­ship.

As the nar­ra­tive unfolds, we wit­ness the prepa­ra­tion for and atten­dance at the par­ty thrown for Edie. The event serves as a back­drop to explore each character’s per­spec­tive, with par­tic­u­lar focus on Willem’s intro­spec­tion about his life, career, and the nature of his friend­ship with Jude. Willem strug­gles with the super­fi­cial­i­ties of his act­ing career, the expec­ta­tions of adult­hood, and his deep care for Jude, whose mys­te­ri­ous past and suf­fer­ing revealed through self-harm remain large­ly unknown even to his clos­est friends.

Willem’s reflec­tions on adult­hood, suc­cess, and friend­ship high­light a uni­ver­sal yearn­ing for con­nec­tion and under­stand­ing, set against the back­drop of their col­lec­tive and indi­vid­ual his­to­ries. The chap­ter ends with Willem return­ing to Jude’s apart­ment, con­tem­plat­ing the com­plex­i­ty of their bonds, the essence of true friend­ship, and the chal­lenges of car­ing for some­one who guards their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties fierce­ly.

This chap­ter sets the stage for an explo­ration of friend­ship, iden­ti­ty, and the search for mean­ing in the face of past trau­mas and present suc­cess­es, all nav­i­gat­ed through the rich­ly inter­twined lives of these four men.

if he were a child or an invalid because today, he will accept, he is just that weak. And Andy will not speak as he exam­ines his legs, his back, will not ask him why and how this lat­est dam­age has occurred. He will respect his silence for now, under­stand­ing that his friend is in too much pain for ques­tions or recrim­i­na­tions.

Wrapped in a ster­ile silence punc­tu­at­ed only by the soft tear­ing of ban­dage tape and the occa­sion­al clink of met­al instru­ments, he will close his eyes and let the prac­ticed touch of Andy’s hands soothe away the raw­ness of his despair, if only for a moment. The gen­tle pres­sure, the anti­sep­tic smell, the dis­tant sound of the city wak­ing outside—it will all com­bine in a strange com­fort that he can’t explain but is pro­found­ly grate­ful for.

Lat­er, Andy will pre­scribe rest, pain relief, wound care—and he will lis­ten, nod, and agree, know­ing full well the cycle might repeat, know­ing the qui­et under­stand­ing between them is both his sal­va­tion and his ongo­ing sen­tence. He won’t look at Andy as he leaves, feel­ing the weight of his depen­dence yet again, but also a flut­ter of some­thing like love, an emo­tion he’s long since tried to bar­ri­cade against the poten­tial hurts it can bring.

As he steps out of the office, the city ful­ly awake now, he will feel a stab of some­thing akin to hope pierc­ing his usu­al shroud of pain and res­ig­na­tion. The promise of recov­ery, how­ev­er tem­po­rary, will remind him that, despite every­thing, he con­tin­ues to choose life, to walk for­ward into what­ev­er the future holds, with Andy, his con­stant guardian, watch­ing over his fal­ter­ing steps. He will breathe deeply, brace him­self against the cool morn­ing air, and start the long walk home, the city’s rhyth­mic pulse echo­ing his own stub­born heart­beat.

“Dad­dy,” as if she were Flo­ra, or still a child herself—would nod and try to
smile con­vinc­ing­ly, even as he felt his inad­e­qua­cy coil­ing inside him, a dark and
rest­less crea­ture that fed on his dis­ap­point­ments and fail­ures.

His job wasn’t help­ing, either. He had just spent the day pre­sent­ing his
firm’s pro­pos­al for a new com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter in Red Hook to the city council—a
pro­pos­al he had worked on, almost exclu­sive­ly, for the past six months. The
build­ing he had designed was one he believed in deeply: it was sus­tain­able and
beau­ti­ful, respect­ful of its land­scape while still being mod­ern and aes­thet­i­cal­ly
ambi­tious. But as soon as he had fin­ished, he knew they wouldn’t choose it: it
was too expen­sive, too avant-garde. So instead of his design, they would end up
with some ghast­ly lit­tle struc­ture designed by anoth­er firm, one that had no
feel­ing, no spir­it, a piece of archi­tec­ture that was resigned to its own medi­oc­rity
before it even exist­ed. He could already see it: the tacky faux-brick exte­ri­or; the
small, ill-placed win­dows; the depress­ing, flu­o­res­cent-lit rooms dec­o­rat­ed in the
most hos­pitable shades of beige and taupe and gray-green. It would be cheap, and
util­i­tar­i­an, and dis­mal­ly unimag­i­na­tive, and the peo­ple of Red Hook would pass
it each day and accept that it was the best their neigh­bor­hood could aspire to.
The thought was enough to make him want to give up archi­tec­ture entire­ly.

Instead of going straight home after the meet­ing, he walked around the city
for hours, aim­less­ly, his dis­ap­point­ment churn­ing inside him, his feel­ings of fail­ure
mount­ing with each step he took. He found him­self in SoHo, and then in
Chi­na­town, and final­ly, almost with­out real­iz­ing it, on Lispe­nard Street, stand­ing
in front of the build­ing where Jude and Willem would now be call­ing home.

He hes­i­tat­ed, then pushed the buzzer, and a moment lat­er, the door opened
and he was step­ping inside, the famil­iar scent of Jude’s cook­ing greet­ing him. He
climbed the stairs, know­ing he would find Willem and Jude togeth­er, their nights
spent in shared com­pa­ny, their lives entwined in ways he couldn’t help but envy.

As he knocked on the door of their apart­ment, he felt a mix­ture of antic­i­pa­tion
and dread. He knew they would wel­come him, that they would make room for
him on their sofa and offer him a plate of what­ev­er they were eat­ing, and for a
few hours, he would be part of their world, a world that felt both for­eign and
incred­i­bly sooth­ing. But lat­er, when he returned to his par­ents’ house, to his
soli­tary room and his unmade future, he knew the pangs of lone­li­ness would be
all the more acute for hav­ing been abat­ed, how­ev­er briefly.

Chap­ter 1 intro­duces us to a for­est enveloped in snow and ice, where the pro­tag­o­nist, brav­ing cold and hunger, has ven­tured fur­ther from home than usu­al in the harsh win­ter in search of food for her fam­i­ly. The scarci­ty of ani­mals has dri­ven her to the brink of des­per­a­tion, as her family’s food sup­plies have dwin­dled to noth­ing.

Observ­ing from her look­out in a tree, she reflects on the dan­ger­ous wildlife and the even more per­ilous faeries of Pry­thi­an that lurk beyond the mor­tal realm, crea­tures of leg­end and hor­ror that moti­vate her cau­tion. With the day wan­ing, she’s aware that her time to hunt is lim­it­ed, not just by light but by the threat of preda­to­ry wolves that have been sight­ed more fre­quent­ly by the vil­lagers. Despite the mys­ti­cal and fear­ful accounts of faeries, her imme­di­ate con­cern is feed­ing her fam­i­ly, who are on the brink of star­va­tion.

As she pre­pares to aban­don her post, fate presents her with a glim­mer of hope: a doe, a rare sight that could alle­vi­ate her fam­i­ly’s hunger. How­ev­er, her hunt becomes com­pli­cat­ed by the appear­ance of an enor­mous wolf, silent and dead­ly, that could either be a mor­tal beast or some­thing far more fear­some from the faerie lands. The pro­tag­o­nist faces a moment of deci­sion, jug­gling the imme­di­ate need to feed her fam­i­ly and the poten­tial threat the wolf pos­es, not just to her quar­ry but to her vil­lage should it be more than an ordi­nary ani­mal.

Con­flict­ed but res­olute, she decides to tar­get the wolf with a spe­cial arrow made of moun­tain ash and iron, mate­ri­als believed to be lethal to faeries, based on old songs and tales from her child­hood. Leg­ends tell of the faeries’ sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to iron and the rare moun­tain ash, which is said to counter their mag­ic long enough for a mor­tal to strike a fatal blow. She braces for the shot, bank­ing on her skill with the bow and the hope that the wolf is alone. Her deci­sion is not just about sur­vival but a stand against the hor­rors faeries have wrought upon mor­tals.

With courage and a swift deci­sion, she shoots the wolf as it advances on the doe, hit­ting her tar­get pre­cise­ly and hop­ing to pro­tect more than just her imme­di­ate need for food, but secur­ing a safer perime­ter for her vil­lage against the mys­ter­ies and dan­gers that roam the woods bor­der­ing the faerie lands of Pry­thi­an.

In Chap­ter 1, the nar­ra­tor recalls the day their father, for the first time, brought Andrea to the Dutch House, sig­nal­ing changes that would unfold in their lives. The nar­ra­tor and their sis­ter Maeve are intro­duced to Andrea by their father. The Dutch House, with its his­to­ry and grandeur, sym­bol­izes both opu­lence and the com­plex­i­ties of fam­i­ly dynam­ics. Maeve and the nar­ra­tor share a bond strength­ened by the mys­ter­ies and the con­tem­pla­tions their home pro­vokes, espe­cial­ly regard­ing past inhab­i­tants and their own fam­i­ly’s evolv­ing sto­ry.

The inter­ac­tion with Andrea is polite but car­ries under­cur­rents of change. The sib­lings’ reac­tion to Andrea, observ­ing her through the lens of their deep con­nec­tion to the Dutch House, fore­shad­ows the sig­nif­i­cant role she will play in their lives. The chap­ter weaves togeth­er per­son­al mem­o­ries, his­tor­i­cal con­text, and the imme­di­ate expe­ri­ences of meet­ing Andrea, cre­at­ing a rich, mul­ti-lay­ered intro­duc­tion to the sto­ry’s themes of fam­i­ly, mem­o­ry, and the ways in which a home can encap­su­late both.

As the sib­lings and Andrea nav­i­gate this ini­tial meet­ing, the nar­ra­tive delves into the his­to­ry of the Dutch House and its for­mer inhab­i­tants, high­light­ing the estate’s grand past and its grad­ual decline. The Van­Hoe­beeks, the orig­i­nal own­ers, and the var­i­ous char­ac­ters who came after, con­tribute to the house­’s legacy—a lega­cy now being encoun­tered anew by Andrea. These reflec­tions on the past inter­sect with cur­rent dynam­ics, as Maeve and the nar­ra­tor assess their place in the ongo­ing sto­ry of the Dutch House.

Three months pri­or to the cur­rent events, the small town of Bai­leyville is expe­ri­enc­ing an unsea­son­ably warm Sep­tem­ber. Alice Van Cleve and her hus­band, Ben­nett, attend a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing at the local hall, a gath­er­ing filled with the sti­fling heat and the close prox­im­i­ty of the towns­peo­ple. Alice, still adjust­ing to her new life in Amer­i­ca after mar­ry­ing an Amer­i­can and mov­ing from Eng­land, finds the meet­ing – and her new life – over­whelm­ing­ly dull and pre­dictable, filled with end­less ser­mons and meet­ings that con­trast sharply with the adven­tures she envi­sioned.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Mrs. Brady intro­duces the idea of estab­lish­ing a mobile library as part of the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion efforts to com­bat the impacts of the Great Depres­sion. The ini­tia­tive, inspired by Pres­i­dent and Mrs. Roo­sevelt, aims to enhance lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing. Despite the skep­ti­cism and tra­di­tion­al views of the towns­folk regard­ing wom­en’s roles, Mrs. Brady seeks vol­un­teers to oper­ate the mobile library on horse­back, aim­ing to reach the coun­ty’s most remote areas.

Alice, feel­ing suf­fo­cat­ed by her monot­o­nous life and under­whelmed by her mar­riage, sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty in vol­un­teer­ing for the mobile library. Despite Ben­net­t’s objec­tions and the com­mu­ni­ty’s doubts about her suit­abil­i­ty due to her unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with the area, Alice is deter­mined to con­tribute and break the monot­o­ny of her life. Margery O’Hare, a woman already involved in the project, assures the com­mu­ni­ty she can guide Alice. When Alice vol­un­teers, she chal­lenges the tra­di­tion­al expec­ta­tions of her role as a wife in Bai­leyville and takes a step toward inject­ing some pur­pose and excite­ment into her life.

Through­out the chap­ter, the nar­ra­tive explores Alice’s dis­il­lu­sion­ment with her mar­ried life, the expec­ta­tions placed upon her, and her long­ing for inde­pen­dence and adven­ture. The pro­posed mobile library project presents Alice with a chance to carve out a role for her­self that is dis­tinct from the one pre­scribed to her by her mar­riage and her new 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.

ONE
MILLIE
“Tell me about your­self, Mil­lie.”
Nina Win­ches­ter leans for­ward on her caramel-col­ored leather sofa, her
legs crossed to reveal just the slight­est hint of her knees peek­ing out under
her silky white skirt. I don’t know much about labels, but it’s obvi­ous
every­thing Nina Win­ches­ter is wear­ing is painful­ly expen­sive. Her cream
blouse makes me long to reach out to feel the mate­r­i­al, even though a move
like that would mean I’d have no chance of get­ting hired.
To be fair, I have no chance of get­ting hired any­way.
“Well…” I begin, choos­ing my words care­ful­ly. Even after all the
rejec­tions, I still try. “I grew up in Brook­lyn. I’ve had a lot of jobs doing
house­work for peo­ple, as you can see from my resume.” My care­ful­ly
doc­tored resume. “And I love chil­dren. And also…” I glance around the
room, look­ing for a dog­gy chew toy or a cat lit­ter box. “I love pets as
well?”
The online ad for the house­keep­er job didn’t men­tion pets. But bet­ter to
be safe. Who doesn’t appre­ci­ate an ani­mal lover?
“Brook­lyn!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter beams at me. “I grew up in Brook­lyn, too.
We’re prac­ti­cal­ly neigh­bors!”
“We are!” I con­firm, even though noth­ing could be fur­ther from the
truth. There are plen­ty of cov­et­ed neigh­bor­hoods in Brook­lyn where you’ll
fork over an arm and a leg for a tiny town­house. That’s not where I grew
up. Nina Win­ches­ter and I couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent, but if she’d like to
believe we’re neigh­bors, then I’m only too hap­py to go along with it.
Mrs. Win­ches­ter tucks a strand of shiny, gold­en-blond hair behind her
ear. Her hair is chin-length, cut into a fash­ion­able bob that de-empha­sizes
her dou­ble chin. She’s in her late thir­ties, and with a dif­fer­ent hair­style and
dif­fer­ent cloth­ing, she would be very ordi­nary-look­ing. But she has used her
con­sid­er­able wealth to make the most of what she’s got. I can’t say I don’t
respect that.
I have gone the exact oppo­site direc­tion with my appear­ance. I may be
over ten years younger than the woman sit­ting across from me, but I don’t
want her to feel at all threat­ened by me. So for my inter­view, I select­ed a
long, chunky wool skirt that I bought at the thrift store and a poly­ester white
blouse with puffy sleeves. My dirty-blond hair is pulled back into a severe
bun behind my head. I even pur­chased a pair of over­sized and unnec­es­sary
tor­toise­shell glass­es that sit perched on my nose. I look pro­fes­sion­al and
utter­ly unat­trac­tive.
“So the job,” she says. “It will be most­ly clean­ing and some light
cook­ing if you’re up for it. Are you a good cook, Mil­lie?”
“Yes, I am.” My ease in the kitchen is the only thing on my resume that
isn’t a lie. “I’m an excel­lent cook.”
Her pale blue eyes light up. “That’s won­der­ful! Hon­est­ly, we almost
nev­er have a good home-cooked meal.” She tit­ters. “Who has the time?”
I bite back any kind of judg­men­tal response. Nina Win­ches­ter doesn’t
work, she only has one child who’s in school all day, and she’s hir­ing
some­body to do all her clean­ing for her. I even saw a man in her enor­mous
front yard doing her gar­den­ing for her. How is it pos­si­ble she doesn’t have
time to cook a meal for her small fam­i­ly?
I shouldn’t judge her. I don’t know any­thing about what her life is like.
Just because she’s rich, it doesn’t mean she’s spoiled.
But if I had to bet a hun­dred bucks either way, I’d bet Nina Win­ches­ter
is spoiled rot­ten.
“And we’ll need occa­sion­al help with Cecelia as well,” Mrs. Win­ches­ter
says. “Per­haps tak­ing her to her after­noon lessons or play­dates. You have a
car, don’t you?”
I almost laugh at her ques­tion. Yes, I do have a car—it’s all I have right
now. My ten-year-old Nis­san is stink­ing up the street in front of her house,
and it’s where I am cur­rent­ly liv­ing. Every­thing I own is in the trunk of that
car. I have spent the last month sleep­ing in the back­seat.
After a month of liv­ing in your car, you real­ize the impor­tance of some
of the lit­tle things in life. A toi­let. A sink. Being able to straight­en your legs
out while you’re sleep­ing. I miss that last one most of all.
“Yes, I have a car,” I con­firm.
“Excel­lent!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter claps her hands togeth­er. “I’ll pro­vide you
with a car seat for Cecelia, of course. She just needs a boost­er seat. She’s
not quite at the weight and height lev­el to be with­out the boost­er yet. The
Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics rec­om­mends…”
While Nina Win­ches­ter drones on about the exact height and weight
require­ments for car seats, I take a moment to glance around the liv­ing
room. The fur­nish­ing is all ultra-mod­ern, with the largest flat-screen
tele­vi­sion I’ve ever seen, which I’m sure is high def­i­n­i­tion and has
sur­round-sound speak­ers built into every nook and cran­ny of the room for
opti­mal lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. In the cor­ner of the room is what appears to be
a work­ing fire­place, the man­tle lit­tered with pho­tographs of the Win­ches­ters
on trips to every cor­ner of the world. When I glance up, the insane­ly high
ceil­ing glows under the light of a sparkling chan­de­lier.
“Don’t you think so, Mil­lie?” Mrs. Win­ches­ter is say­ing.
I blink at her. I attempt to rewind my mem­o­ry and fig­ure out what she
had just asked me. But it’s gone. “Yes?” I say.
What­ev­er I agreed to has made her very hap­py. “I’m so pleased you
think so too.”
“Absolute­ly,” I say more firm­ly this time.
She uncross­es and re-cross­es her some­what stocky legs. “And of
course,” she adds, “there’s the mat­ter of reim­burse­ment for you. You saw
the offer in my adver­tise­ment, right? Is that accept­able to you?”
I swal­low. The num­ber in the adver­tise­ment is more than accept­able. If I
were a car­toon char­ac­ter, dol­lar signs would have appeared in each of my
eye­balls when I read that adver­tise­ment. But the mon­ey almost stopped me
from apply­ing for the job. Nobody offer­ing that much mon­ey, liv­ing in a
house like this one, would ever con­sid­er hir­ing me.
“Yes,” I choke out. “It’s fine.”
She arch­es an eye­brow. “And you know it’s a live-in posi­tion, right?”
Is she ask­ing me if I’m okay with leav­ing the splen­dor of the back­seat
of my Nis­san? “Right. I know.”
“Fab­u­lous!” She tugs at the hem of her skirt and ris­es to her feet.
“Would you like the grand tour then? See what you’re get­ting your­self
into?”
I stand up as well. In her heels, Mrs. Win­ches­ter is only a few inch­es
taller than I am in my flats, but it feels like she’s much taller. “Sounds
great!”
She guides me through the house in painstak­ing detail, to the point
where I’m wor­ried I got the ad wrong and maybe she’s a real­tor think­ing
I’m ready to buy. It is a beau­ti­ful house. If I had four or five mil­lion dol­lars
burn­ing a hole in my pock­et, I would snap it up. In addi­tion to the ground
lev­el con­tain­ing the gigan­tic liv­ing room and the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed kitchen,
the sec­ond floor of the house fea­tures the Win­ches­ters’ mas­ter bed­room, her
daugh­ter Cecelia’s room, Mr. Winchester’s home office, and a guest
bed­room that could be straight out of the best hotel in Man­hat­tan. She
paus­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly in front of the sub­se­quent door.
“And here is…” She flings the door open. “Our home the­ater!”
It’s a legit movie the­ater right inside their home—in addi­tion to the
over­sized tele­vi­sion down­stairs. This room has sev­er­al rows of sta­di­um
seat­ing, fac­ing a floor-to-ceil­ing mon­i­tor. There’s even a pop­corn machine
in the cor­ner of the room.
After a moment, I notice Mrs. Win­ches­ter is look­ing at me, wait­ing for a
response.
“Wow!” I say with what I hope is appro­pri­ate enthu­si­asm.
“Isn’t it mar­velous?” She shiv­ers with delight. “And we have a full
library of movies to choose from. Of course, we also have all the usu­al
chan­nels as well as stream­ing ser­vices.”
“Of course,” I say.
After we leave the room, we come to a final door at the end of the
hall­way. Nina paus­es, her hand lin­ger­ing on the door­knob.
“Would this be my room?” I ask.
“Sort of…” She turns the door­knob, which creaks loud­ly. I can’t help
but notice the wood of this door is much thick­er than any of the oth­ers.
Behind the door­way, there’s a dark stair­well. “Your room is upstairs. We
have a fin­ished attic as well.”
This dark, nar­row stair­case is some­what less glam­orous than the rest of
the house—and would it kill them to stick a light­bulb in here? But of
course, I’m the hired help. I wouldn’t expect her to spend as much mon­ey
on my room as she would on the home the­ater.
At the top of the stairs is a lit­tle nar­row hall­way. Unlike on the first
floor of the house, the ceil­ing is dan­ger­ous­ly low here. I’m not tall by any
means, but I almost feel like I need to stoop down.
“You have your own bath­room.” She nods at a door on the left. “And
this would be your room right here.”
She flings open the last door. It’s com­plete­ly dark inside until she tugs
on a string and the room lights up.
The room is tiny. There’s no two ways about it. Not only that, but the
ceil­ing is slant­ed with the roof of the house. The far side of the ceil­ing only
comes about up to my waist. Instead of the huge king-size bed in the
Win­ches­ters’ mas­ter bed­room with their armoire and chest­nut van­i­ty table,
this room con­tains a small sin­gle cot, a half-height book­case, and a small
dress­er, lit by two naked bulbs sus­pend­ed from the ceil­ing.
This room is mod­est, but that’s fine with me. If it were too nice, it
would be a cer­tain­ty I have no shot at this job. The fact that this room is
kind of crap­py means maybe her stan­dards are low enough that I have a
tee­ny, tiny chance.
But there’s some­thing else about this room. Some­thing that’s both­er­ing
me.
“Sor­ry it’s small.” Mrs. Win­ches­ter pulls a frown. “But you’ll have a lot
of pri­va­cy here.”
I walk over to the sin­gle win­dow. Like the room, it’s small. Bare­ly
larg­er than my hand. And it over­looks the back­yard. There’s a land­scap­er
down there—the same guy I saw out at the front—hacking at one of the
hedges with an over­sized set of clip­pers.
“So what do you think, Mil­lie? Do you like it?”
I turn away from the win­dow to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smil­ing face.
I still can’t quite put my fin­ger on what’s both­er­ing me. There’s some­thing
about this room that’s mak­ing a lit­tle ball of dread form in the pit of my
stom­ach.
Maybe it’s the win­dow. It looks out on the back of the house. If I were
in trou­ble and try­ing to get somebody’s atten­tion, nobody would be able to
see me back here. I could scream and yell all I want­ed, and nobody would
hear.
But who am I kid­ding? I would be lucky to live in this room. With my
own bath­room and an actu­al bed where I could straight­en my legs out all
the way. That tiny cot looks so good com­pared to my car, I could cry.
“It’s per­fect,” I say.
Mrs. Win­ches­ter seems ecsta­t­ic about my answer. She leads me back
down the dark stair­well to the sec­ond floor of the house, and when I exit
that stair­well, I let out a breath I didn’t real­ize I was hold­ing. There was
some­thing about that room that was very scary, but if I some­how man­age to
get this job, I’ll get past it. Eas­i­ly.
My shoul­ders final­ly relax and my lips are form­ing anoth­er ques­tion
when I hear a voice from behind us:
“Mom­my?”
I stop short and turn around to see a lit­tle girl stand­ing behind us in the
hall­way. The girl has the same light blue eyes as Nina Win­ches­ter, except a
few shades paler, and her hair is so blond that it’s almost white. The girl is
wear­ing a very pale blue dress trimmed in white lace. And she’s star­ing at
me like she can see right through me. Right through my soul.
Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids
who can read minds and wor­ship the dev­il and live in the corn­fields or
some­thing? Well, if they were cast­ing for one of those movies, this girl
would get the part. They wouldn’t even have to audi­tion her. They would
take one look at her and be like, Yes, you are creepy girl num­ber three.
“Cece!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter exclaims. “Are you back already from your
bal­let les­son?”
The girl nods slow­ly. “Bella’s mom dropped me off.”
Mrs. Win­ches­ter wraps her arms around the girl’s skin­ny shoul­ders, but
the girl’s expres­sion nev­er changes and her pale blue eyes nev­er leave my
face. Is there some­thing wrong with me that I am scared this nine-year-old
girl is going to mur­der me?
“This is Mil­lie,” Mrs. Win­ches­ter tells her daugh­ter. “Mil­lie, this is my
daugh­ter, Cecelia.”
Lit­tle Cecelia’s eyes are two lit­tle pools of the ocean. “It’s nice to meet
you, Mil­lie,” she says polite­ly.
I’d say there’s at least a twen­ty-five per­cent chance she’s going to
mur­der me in my sleep if I get this job. But I still want it.
Mrs. Win­ches­ter pecks her daugh­ter on the top of her blond head, and
then the lit­tle girl scur­ries off to her bed­room. She doubt­less has a creepy
doll house in there where the dolls come to life at night. Maybe one of the
dolls will be the one to kill me.
Okay, I’m being ridicu­lous. That lit­tle girl is prob­a­bly extreme­ly sweet.
It’s not her fault she’s been dressed in a creepy Vic­to­ri­an ghost-child’s
out­fit. And I love kids, in gen­er­al. Not that I’ve inter­act­ed with them much
over the last decade.
Once we get back down to the first floor, the ten­sion leaves my body.
Mrs. Win­ches­ter is nice and nor­mal enough—for a lady this rich—and as
she chat­ters about the house and her daugh­ter and the job, I’m only vague­ly
lis­ten­ing. All I know is this will be a love­ly place to work. I would give my
right arm to get this job.
“Do you have any ques­tions, Mil­lie?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “No, Mrs. Win­ches­ter.”
She clucks her tongue. “Please, call me Nina. If you’re work­ing here, I
would feel so sil­ly with you call­ing me Mrs. Win­ches­ter.” She laughs. “Like
I’m some sort of rich old lady.”
“Thank you… Nina,” I say.
Her face glows, although that could be the sea­weed or cucum­ber peel or
what­ev­er rich peo­ple apply to their faces. Nina Win­ches­ter is the sort of
woman who has reg­u­lar spa treat­ments. “I have a good feel­ing about this,
Mil­lie. I real­ly do.”
It’s hard not to get caught up in her enthu­si­asm. It’s hard not to feel that
glim­mer of hope as she squeezes my rough palm in her baby smooth one. I
want to believe that in the next few days, I’ll get a call from Nina
Win­ches­ter, offer­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to come work at her house and
final­ly vacate Casa Nis­san. I want to believe that so bad­ly.
But what­ev­er else I can say about Nina, she’s no dum­my. She’s not
going to hire a woman to work and live in her home and take care of her
child with­out doing a sim­ple back­ground check. And once she does…
I swal­low a lump in my throat.
Nina Win­ches­ter bids a warm good­bye to me at the front door. “Thank
you so much for com­ing by, Mil­lie.” She reach­es out to clasp my hand in
hers one more time. “I promise you’ll be hear­ing from me soon.”
I won’t. This will be the last time I set foot in that mag­nif­i­cent house. I
should nev­er have come here in the first place. I should have tried for a job
I had a chance of get­ting instead of wast­ing both of our time here. Maybe
some­thing in the fast-food indus­try.
The land­scap­er who I saw from the win­dow in the attic is back on the
front lawn. He’s still got those giant clip­pers and he’s shap­ing one of the
hedges right in front of the house. He’s a big guy, wear­ing a T‑shirt that
shows off impres­sive mus­cles and just bare­ly hides the tat­toos on his upper
arms. He adjusts his base­ball cap and his dark, dark eyes lift briefly from
the clip­pers to meet mine across the lawn.

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
1
I vom­it­ed into the toi­let, hug­ging the cool sides, try­ing to con­tain the sounds
of my retch­ing.
Moon­light leaked into the mas­sive mar­ble bathing room, pro­vid­ing the
only illu­mi­na­tion as I was qui­et­ly, thor­ough­ly sick.
Tam­lin hadn’t stirred as I’d jolt­ed awake. And when I hadn’t been able to
tell the dark­ness of my cham­ber from the end­less night of Amarantha’s
dun­geons, when the cold sweat coat­ing me felt like the blood of those
faeries, I’d hur­tled for the bathing room.
I’d been here for fif­teen min­utes now, wait­ing for the retch­ing to sub­side,
for the lin­ger­ing tremors to spread apart and fade, like rip­ples in a pool.
Pant­i­ng, I braced myself over the bowl, count­ing each breath.
Only a night­mare. One of many, asleep and wak­ing, that haunt­ed me
these days.
It had been three months since Under the Moun­tain. Three months of
adjust­ing to my immor­tal body, to a world strug­gling to piece itself togeth­er
after Ama­ran­tha had frac­tured it apart.
I focused on my breathing—in through my nose, out through my mouth.
Over and over.
When it seemed like I was done heav­ing, I eased from the toilet—but
didn’t go far. Just to the adja­cent wall, near the cracked win­dow, where I
could see the night sky, where the breeze could caress my sticky face. I
leaned my head against the wall, flat­ten­ing my hands against the chill
mar­ble floor. Real.
This was real. I had sur­vived; I’d made it out.
Unless it was a dream—just a fever-dream in Amarantha’s dun­geons, and
I’d awak­en back in that cell, and—
I curled my knees to my chest. Real. Real.
I mouthed the words.
I kept mouthing them until I could loosen my grip on my legs and lift my
head. Pain splin­tered through my hands—
I’d some­how curled them into fists so tight my nails were close to
punc­tur­ing my skin.
Immor­tal strength—more a curse than a gift. I’d dent­ed and fold­ed every
piece of sil­ver­ware I’d touched for three days upon return­ing here, had
tripped over my longer, faster legs so often that Alis had removed any
irre­place­able valu­ables from my rooms (she’d been par­tic­u­lar­ly grumpy
about me knock­ing over a table with an eight-hun­dred-year-old vase), and
had shat­tered not one, not two, but five glass doors mere­ly by acci­den­tal­ly
clos­ing them too hard.
Sigh­ing through my nose, I unfold­ed my fin­gers.
My right hand was plain, smooth. Per­fect­ly Fae.
I tilt­ed my left hand over, the whorls of dark ink coat­ing my fin­gers, my
wrist, my fore­arm all the way to the elbow, soak­ing up the dark­ness of the
room. The eye etched into the cen­ter of my palm seemed to watch me, calm
and cun­ning as a cat, its slit­ted pupil wider than it’d been ear­li­er that day.
As if it adjust­ed to the light, as any ordi­nary eye would.
I scowled at it.
At who­ev­er might be watch­ing through that tat­too.
I hadn’t heard from Rhys in the three months I’d been here. Not a
whis­per. I hadn’t dared ask Tam­lin, or Lucien, or anyone—lest it’d
some­how sum­mon the High Lord of the Night Court, some­how remind him
of the fool’s bar­gain I’d struck Under the Moun­tain: one week with him
every month in exchange for his sav­ing me from the brink of death.
But even if Rhys had mirac­u­lous­ly for­got­ten, I nev­er could. Nor could
Tam­lin, Lucien, or any­one else. Not with the tat­too.
Even if Rhys, at the end … even if he hadn’t been exact­ly an ene­my.
To Tam­lin, yes. To every oth­er court out there, yes. So few went over the
bor­ders of the Night Court and lived to tell. No one real­ly knew what
exist­ed in the north­ern­most part of Pry­thi­an.
Moun­tains and dark­ness and stars and death.
But I hadn’t felt like Rhysand’s ene­my the last time I’d spo­ken to him, in
the hours after Amarantha’s defeat. I’d told no one about that meet­ing, what
he’d said to me, what I’d con­fessed to him.
Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel any­thing at
all.
I squeezed my fin­gers into a fist, block­ing out that eye, the tat­too. I
uncoiled to my feet, and flushed the toi­let before padding to the sink to
rinse out my mouth, then wash my face.
I wished I felt noth­ing.
I wished my human heart had been changed with the rest of me, made
into immor­tal mar­ble. Instead of the shred­ded bit of black­ness that it now
was, leak­ing its ichor into me.
Tam­lin remained asleep as I crept back into my dark­ened bed­room, his
naked body sprawled across the mat­tress. For a moment, I just admired the
pow­er­ful mus­cles of his back, so lov­ing­ly traced by the moon­light, his
gold­en hair, mussed with sleep and the fin­gers I’d run through it while we
made love ear­li­er.
For him, I had done this—for him, I’d glad­ly wrecked myself and my
immor­tal soul.
And now I had eter­ni­ty to live with it.
I con­tin­ued to the bed, each step heav­ier, hard­er. The sheets were now
cool and dry, and I slipped in, curl­ing my back to him, wrap­ping my arms
around myself. His breath­ing was deep—even. But with my Fae ears …
some­times I won­dered if I heard his breath catch, only for a heart­beat. I
nev­er had the nerve to ask if he was awake.
He nev­er woke when the night­mares dragged me from sleep; nev­er woke
when I vom­it­ed my guts up night after night. If he knew or heard, he said
noth­ing about it.
I knew sim­i­lar dreams chased him from his slum­ber as often as I fled
from mine. The first time it had hap­pened, I’d awoken—tried to speak to
him. But he’d shak­en off my touch, his skin clam­my, and had shift­ed into
that beast of fur and claws and horns and fangs. He’d spent the rest of the
night sprawled across the foot of the bed, mon­i­tor­ing the door, the wall of
win­dows.
He’d since spent many nights like that.

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.

C AN YOU COME INTO MY office?”
I look around at the desks beside me and then back at Frankie,
try­ing to con­firm to whom, exact­ly, she’s talk­ing. I point to myself. “Do
you mean me?”
Frankie has very lit­tle patience. “Yes, Monique, you. That’s why I
said, ‘Monique, can you come into my office?’ ”
“Sor­ry, I just heard the last part.”
Frankie turns. I grab my notepad and fol­low her.
There is some­thing very strik­ing about Frankie. I’m not sure that
you’d say she was con­ven­tion­al­ly attractive—her fea­tures are severe,
her eyes very wide apart—but she is nev­er­the­less some­one you can’t
help but look at and admire. With her thin, six-foot-tall frame, her
short-cropped Afro, and her affin­i­ty for bright col­ors and big jew­el­ry,
when Frankie walks into a room, every­one takes notice.
She was part of the rea­son I took this job. I have looked up to her
since I was in jour­nal­ism school, read­ing her pieces in the very pages
of the mag­a­zine she now runs and I now work for. And if I’m being
hon­est, there is some­thing very inspir­ing about hav­ing a black woman
run­ning things. As a bira­cial woman myself—light brown skin and
dark brown eyes cour­tesy of my black father, an abun­dance of face
freck­les cour­tesy of my white mother—Frankie makes me feel more
sure that I can one day run things, too.
“Take a seat,” Frankie says as she sits down and ges­tures toward an
orange chair on the oppo­site side of her Lucite desk.
I calm­ly sit and cross my legs. I let Frankie talk first.
“So, puz­zling turn of events,” she says, look­ing at her com­put­er.
“Eve­lyn Hugo’s peo­ple are inquir­ing about a fea­ture. An exclu­sive
inter­view.”
My gut instinct is to say Holy shit but also Why are you telling me
this? “About what in par­tic­u­lar?” I ask.
“My guess is it’s relat­ed to the gown auc­tion she’s doing,” Frankie
says. “My under­stand­ing is that it’s very impor­tant to her to raise as
much mon­ey for the Amer­i­can Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion as pos­si­ble.”
“But they won’t con­firm that?”
Frankie shakes her head. “All they will con­firm is that Eve­lyn has
some­thing to say.”
Eve­lyn Hugo is one of the biggest movie stars of all time. She
doesn’t even have to have some­thing to say for peo­ple to lis­ten.
“This could be a big cov­er for us, right? I mean, she’s a liv­ing
leg­end. Wasn’t she mar­ried eight times or some­thing?”
“Sev­en,” Frankie says. “And yes. This has huge poten­tial. Which is
why I hope you’ll bear with me through the next part of this.”
“What do you mean?”
Frankie takes a big breath and gets a look on her face that makes
me think I’m about to get fired. But then she says, “Eve­lyn specif­i­cal­ly
request­ed you.”
“Me?” This is the sec­ond time in the span of five min­utes that I have
been shocked that some­one was inter­est­ed in speak­ing with me. I
need to work on my con­fi­dence. Suf­fice it to say, it’s tak­en a beat­ing
recent­ly. Although why pre­tend it was ever real­ly soar­ing?
“To be hon­est, that was my reac­tion, too,” Frankie says.
Now I’ll be hon­est, I’m a lit­tle offend­ed. Although, obvi­ous­ly, I can
see where she’s com­ing from. I’ve been at Vivant for less than a year,
most­ly doing puff pieces. Before that, I was blog­ging for the Dis­course,
a cur­rent events and cul­ture site that calls itself a news­magazine but is,
effec­tive­ly, a blog with punchy head­lines. I wrote main­ly for the
Mod­ern Life sec­tion, cov­er­ing trend­ing top­ics and opin­ion pieces.
After years of free­lanc­ing, the Dis­course gig was a life­saver. But
when Vivant offered me a job, I couldn’t help myself. I jumped at the
chance to join an insti­tu­tion, to work among leg­ends.
On my first day of work, I walked past walls dec­o­rat­ed with icon­ic,
cul­ture-shift­ing covers—the one of women’s activist Deb­bie Palmer,
naked and care­ful­ly posed, stand­ing on top of a sky­scraper over­look­ing
Man­hat­tan in 1984; the one of artist Robert Turn­er in the act of
paint­ing a can­vas while the text declared that he had AIDS, back in
1991. It felt sur­re­al to be a part of the Vivant world. I have always
want­ed to see my name on its glossy pages.
But unfor­tu­nate­ly, for the past twelve issues, I’ve done noth­ing but
ask old-guard ques­tions of peo­ple with old mon­ey, while my col­leagues
back at the Dis­course are attempt­ing to change the world while going
viral. So, sim­ply put, I’m not exact­ly impressed with myself.
“Look, it’s not that we don’t love you, we do,” Frankie says. “We
think you’re des­tined for big things at Vivant, but I was hop­ing to put
one of our more expe­ri­enced, top hit­ters on this. And so I want to be
up front with you when I say that we did not sub­mit you as an idea to
Evelyn’s team. We sent five big names, and they came back with this.”
Frankie turns her com­put­er screen toward me and shows me an e-
mail from some­one named Thomas Welch, who I can only assume is
Eve­lyn Hugo’s pub­li­cist.
From: Thomas Welch
To: Troupe, Frankie
Cc: Stamey, Jason; Pow­ers, Ryan
It’s Monique Grant or Evelyn’s out.
I look back up at Frankie, stunned. And to be hon­est, a lit­tle bit
starstruck that Eve­lyn Hugo wants any­thing to do with me.
“Do you know Eve­lyn Hugo? Is that what’s going on here?” Frankie
asks me as she turns the com­put­er back toward her side of the desk.
“No,” I say, sur­prised even to be asked the ques­tion. “I’ve seen a few
of her movies, but she’s a lit­tle before my time.”
“You have no per­son­al con­nec­tion to her?”
I shake my head. “Def­i­nite­ly not.”
“Aren’t you from Los Ange­les?”
“Yeah, but the only way I’d have any con­nec­tion to Eve­lyn Hugo, I
sup­pose, is if my dad worked on one of her films back in the day. He
was a still pho­tog­ra­ph­er for movie sets. I can ask my mom.”
“Great. Thank you.” Frankie looks at me expec­tant­ly.
“Did you want me to ask now?”
“Could you?”
I pull my phone out of my pock­et and text my moth­er: Did Dad ever
work on any Eve­lyn Hugo movies?
I see three dots start to appear, and I look up, only to find that
Frankie is try­ing to get a glimpse of my phone. She seems to
rec­og­nize the inva­sion and leans back.
My phone dings.
My moth­er texts: Maybe? There were so many it’s hard to keep track.
Why?
Long sto­ry, I reply, but I’m try­ing to fig­ure out if I have any con­nec­tion
to Eve­lyn Hugo. Think Dad would have known her?
Mom answers: Ha! No. Your father nev­er hung out with any­body
famous on set. No mat­ter how hard I tried to get him to make us some
celebri­ty friends.
I laugh. “It looks like no. No con­nec­tion to Eve­lyn Hugo.”
Frankie nods. “OK, well, then, the oth­er the­o­ry is that her peo­ple
chose some­one with less clout so that they could try to con­trol you
and, thus, the nar­ra­tive.”
I feel my phone vibrate again. That reminds me that I want­ed to send
you a box of your dad’s old work. Some gor­geous stuff. I love hav­ing it
here, but I think you’d love it more. I’ll send it this week.
“You think they’re prey­ing on the weak,” I say to Frankie.
Frankie smiles soft­ly. “Sort of.”
“So Evelyn’s peo­ple look up the mast­head, find my name as a low­er-
lev­el writer, and think they can bul­ly me around. That’s the idea?”
“That’s what I fear.”
“And you’re telling me this because . . .”
Frankie con­sid­ers her words. “Because I don’t think you can be
bul­lied around. I think they are under­es­ti­mat­ing you. And I want this
cov­er. I want it to make head­lines.”
“What are you say­ing?” I ask, shift­ing slight­ly in my chair.
Frankie claps her hands in front of her and rests them on the desk,
lean­ing toward me. “I’m ask­ing you if you have the guts to go toe-to-toe
with Eve­lyn Hugo.”
Of all the things I thought some­one was going to ask me today, this
would prob­a­bly be some­where around num­ber nine mil­lion. Do I have
the guts to go toe-to-toe with Eve­lyn Hugo? I have no idea.
“Yes,” I say final­ly.
“That’s all? Just yes?”
I want this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I want to write this sto­ry. I’m sick of being
the low­est one on the totem pole. And I need a win, god­dammit. “Fuck
yes?”
Frankie nods, con­sid­er­ing. “Bet­ter, but I’m still not con­vinced.”
I’m thir­ty-five years old. I’ve been a writer for more than a decade. I
want a book deal one day. I want to pick my sto­ries. I want to
even­tu­al­ly be the name peo­ple scram­ble to get when some­one like
Eve­lyn Hugo calls. And I’m being under­used here at Vivant. If I’m
going to get where I want to go, some­thing has to let up. Some­one has
to get out of my way. And it needs to hap­pen quick­ly, because this
god­damn career is all I have any­more. If I want things to change, I
have to change how I do things. And prob­a­bly dras­ti­cal­ly.
“Eve­lyn wants me,” I say. “You want Eve­lyn. It doesn’t sound like I
need to con­vince you, Frankie. It sounds like you need to con­vince
me.”
Frankie is dead qui­et, star­ing right at me over her steepled fin­gers.
I was aim­ing for for­mi­da­ble. I might have over­shot.
I feel the same way I did when I tried weight train­ing and start­ed
with the forty-pound weights. Too much too soon makes it obvi­ous you
don’t know what you’re doing.
It takes every­thing I have not to take it back, not to apol­o­gize
pro­fuse­ly. My moth­er raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have long
oper­at­ed under the idea that civil­i­ty is sub­servience. But it hasn’t
got­ten me very far, that type of kind­ness. The world respects peo­ple
who think they should be run­ning it. I’ve nev­er under­stood that, but
I’m done fight­ing it. I’m here to be Frankie one day, maybe big­ger than
Frankie. To do big, impor­tant work that I am proud of. To leave a
mark. And I’m nowhere near doing that yet.
The silence is so long that I think I might crack, the ten­sion
build­ing with every sec­ond that goes by. But Frankie cracks first.
“OK,” she says, and puts out her hand as she stands up.
Shock and sear­ing pride run through me as I extend my own. I
make sure my hand­shake is strong; Frankie’s is a vise.
“Ace this, Monique. For us and for your­self, please.”
“I will.”
We break away from each oth­er as I walk toward her door. “She
might have read your physi­cian-assist­ed sui­cide piece for the
Dis­course,” Frankie says just before I leave the room.
“What?”
“It was stun­ning. Maybe that’s why she wants you. It’s how we
found you. It’s a great sto­ry. Not just because of the hits it got but
because of you, because it’s beau­ti­ful work.”
It was one of the first tru­ly mean­ing­ful sto­ries I wrote of my own
voli­tion. I pitched it after I was assigned a piece on the rise in
pop­u­lar­i­ty of micro­greens, espe­cial­ly on the Brook­lyn restau­rant
scene. I had gone to the Park Slope mar­ket to inter­view a local farmer,
but when I con­fessed that I didn’t get the appeal of mus­tard greens, he
told me that I sound­ed like his sis­ter. She had been high­ly car­niv­o­rous
until the past year, when she switched to a veg­an, all-organ­ic diet as
she bat­tled brain can­cer.
As we spoke more, he told me about a physi­cian-assist­ed sui­cide
sup­port group he and his sis­ter had joined, for those at the end of their
lives and their loved ones. So many in the group were fight­ing for the
right to die with dig­ni­ty. Healthy eat­ing wasn’t going to save his sister’s
life, and nei­ther of them want­ed her to suf­fer any longer than she had
to.
I knew then that I want­ed, very deeply, to give a voice to the peo­ple
of that sup­port group.
I went back to the Dis­course office and pitched the sto­ry. I thought
I’d be turned down, giv­en my recent slate of arti­cles about hip­ster
trends and celebri­ty think pieces. But to my sur­prise, I was greet­ed
with a green light.
I worked tire­less­ly on it, attend­ing meet­ings in church base­ments,
inter­view­ing the mem­bers, writ­ing and rewrit­ing, until I felt con­fi­dent
that the piece rep­re­sent­ed the full complexity—both the mer­cy and
the moral code—of help­ing to end the lives of suf­fer­ing peo­ple.
It is the sto­ry I am proud­est of. I have, more than once, gone home
from a day’s work here and read that piece again, remind­ing myself of

The chap­ter dives into the roots of upbring­ing in the South, empha­siz­ing tra­di­tion­al val­ues of respect and silence towards par­ents, a stark con­trast to the narrator’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence of expres­sion through singing. Born in McComb, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and raised in Kent­wood, Louisiana, the nar­ra­tor paints a vivid pic­ture of a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty where life revolves around church gath­er­ings, famil­ial out­ings, and Civ­il War reen­act­ments. Singing emerges as a spir­i­tu­al quar­an­tine, pro­vid­ing solace and an escape from mun­dane wor­ries.

The narrator’s child­hood was swathed in the sim­plic­i­ty of small-town life – from attend­ing Chris­t­ian schools to shar­ing in com­mu­nal cel­e­bra­tions – yet it was deeply enriched by music. An encounter with a house­keep­er’s gospel singing sparks a pro­found pas­sion in the nar­ra­tor, trans­form­ing singing into an essen­tial mode of self-expres­sion and con­nec­tion with some­thing greater than one­self.

The back­drop of famil­ial his­to­ry intro­duces a dual­i­ty of tragedy and aspi­ra­tion. The nar­ra­tor shares the dis­tress­ing sto­ry of their grand­moth­er, Jean, who faced immense grief and ulti­mate­ly took her own life, cast­ing a shad­ow of sor­row and com­plex­i­ty over the fam­i­ly’s lega­cy. This his­to­ry con­trasts sharply with the narrator’s mother’s lin­eage, which car­ries hints of ele­gance and sophis­ti­ca­tion from Lon­don, under­scor­ing a con­flict between the worlds of aspi­ra­tion and the harsh real­i­ties of rur­al Amer­i­can life.

Ear­ly on, the nar­ra­tor devel­ops a strong sense of iden­ti­ty and ambi­tion, fueled by a desire to tran­scend the con­fines of their sur­round­ings through art and imag­i­na­tion. The act of singing becomes not just a way to bridge the gap between real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy but also a means to cope with the bur­dens of famil­ial his­to­ry and per­son­al dreams.

The chap­ter weaves togeth­er themes of cul­tur­al her­itage, per­son­al tragedy, and the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of music, illus­trat­ing how one’s ori­gins and fam­i­ly lega­cies can deeply influ­ence one’s jour­ney towards self-expres­sion and ful­fill­ment. The narrator’s jour­ney is marked by a long­ing to escape into a world of dreams, under­scored by a com­mit­ment to pur­sue singing as a path­way to free­dom and dis­cov­ery.

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 1
In 1988, George H. W. Bush had just won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by
invit­ing every­one to read his lips while Michael Dukakis lost it by
rid­ing in a tank. Dr. Huxtable was America’s dad, Kate & Allie were
America’s moms, The Gold­en Girls were America’s grand­moms,
McDonald’s announced it was open­ing its first restau­rant in the
Sovi­et Union, every­one bought Stephen Hawking’s A Brief His­to­ry of
Time and didn’t read it, Phan­tom of the Opera opened on Broad­way,
and Patri­cia Camp­bell got ready to die.
She sprayed her hair, put on her ear­rings, and blot­ted her lip­stick,
but when she looked at her­self in the mir­ror she didn’t see a
house­wife of thir­ty-nine with two chil­dren and a bright future, she
saw a dead per­son. Unless war broke out, the oceans rose, or the
earth fell into the sun, tonight was the month­ly meet­ing of the
Lit­er­ary Guild of Mt. Pleas­ant, and she hadn’t read this month’s
book. And she was the dis­cus­sant. Which meant that in less than
nine­ty min­utes she would stand up in front of a room full of women
and lead them in a con­ver­sa­tion about a book she hadn’t read.
She had meant to read Cry, the Beloved Country—honestly—but
every time she picked up her copy and read There is a love­ly road
that runs from Ixopo into the hills, Korey rode her bike off the end of
the dock because she thought that if she ped­aled fast enough she
could skim across the water, or she set her brother’s hair on fire
try­ing to see how close she could get a match before it caught, or she
spent an entire week­end telling every­one who called that her moth­er
couldn’t come to the phone because she was dead, which Patri­cia
only learned about when peo­ple start­ed show­ing up at the front door
with con­do­lence casseroles.
Before Patri­cia could dis­cov­er why the road that runs from Ixopo
was so love­ly, she’d see Blue run past the sun porch win­dows buck
naked, or she’d real­ize the house was so qui­et because she’d left him
at the down­town library and had to jump in the Vol­vo and fly back
over the bridge, pray­ing that he hadn’t been kid­napped by Moonies,
or because he’d decid­ed to see how many raisins he could fit up his
nose (twen­ty-four). She nev­er even learned where Ixopo was exact­ly
because her moth­er-in-law, Miss Mary, moved in with them for a six-
week vis­it and the garage room had to have clean tow­els, and the
sheets on the guest bed had to be changed every day, and Miss Mary
had trou­ble get­ting out of the tub so they had one of those bars
installed and she had to find some­body to do that, and the chil­dren
had laun­dry that need­ed to be done, and Carter had to have his shirts
ironed, and Korey want­ed new soc­cer cleats because every­one else
had them but they real­ly couldn’t afford them right now, and Blue
was only eat­ing white food so she had to make rice every night for
sup­per, and the road to Ixopo ran on to the hills with­out her.
Join­ing the Lit­er­ary Guild of Mt. Pleas­ant had seemed like a good
idea at the time. Patri­cia real­ized she need­ed to get out of the house
and meet new peo­ple the moment she leaned over at sup­per with
Carter’s boss and tried to cut up his steak for him. A book club made
sense because she liked read­ing, espe­cial­ly mys­ter­ies. Carter had
sug­gest­ed it was because she went through life as if the entire world
were a mys­tery to her, and she didn’t dis­agree: Patri­cia Camp­bell
and the Secret of Cook­ing Three Meals a Day, Sev­en Days a Week,
with­out Los­ing Your Mind. Patri­cia Camp­bell and the Case of the
Five-Year-Old Child Who Keeps Bit­ing Oth­er Peo­ple. Patri­cia
Camp­bell and the Mys­tery of Find­ing Enough Time to Read the
News­pa­per When You Have Two Chil­dren and a Moth­er-in-Law
Liv­ing with You and Every­one Needs Their Clothes Washed, and to
Be Fed, and the House Needs to Be Cleaned and Some­one Has to
Give the Dog His Heart­worm Pills and You Should Prob­a­bly Wash
Your Own Hair Every Few Days or Your Daugh­ter Is Going to Ask
Why You Look Like a Street Per­son. A few dis­creet inquiries, and
she’d been invit­ed to the inau­gur­al meet­ing of the Lit­er­ary Guild of
Mt. Pleas­ant at Mar­jorie Fretwell’s house.
The Lit­er­ary Guild of Mt. Pleas­ant picked their books for that year
in a very demo­c­ra­t­ic process: Mar­jorie Fretwell invit­ed them to select
eleven books from a list of thir­teen she found appro­pri­ate. She asked
if there were oth­er books any­one want­ed to rec­om­mend, but
every­one under­stood that wasn’t a real ques­tion, except for Slick
Paley, who seemed chron­i­cal­ly unable to read social cues.
“I’d like to nom­i­nate Like Lambs to the Slaugh­ter: Your Child and
the Occult,” Slick said. “With that crys­tal store on Cole­man
Boule­vard and Shirley MacLaine on the cov­er of Time mag­a­zine
talk­ing about her past lives, we need a wake-up call.”
“I’ve nev­er heard of it,” Mar­jorie Fretwell said. “So I imag­ine it
falls out­side our man­date of read­ing the great books of the West­ern
world. Any­one else?”
“But—” Slick protest­ed.
“Any­one else?” Mar­jorie repeat­ed.
They select­ed the books Mar­jorie wrote down for them, assigned
each book to the month Mar­jorie thought best, and picked the
dis­cus­sants Mar­jorie thought were most appro­pri­ate. The dis­cus­sant
would open the meet­ing by deliv­er­ing a twen­ty-minute pre­sen­ta­tion
on the book, its back­ground, and the life of its author, then lead the
group dis­cus­sion. A dis­cus­sant could not can­cel or trade books with
any­one else with­out pay­ing a stiff fine because the Lit­er­ary Guild of
Mt. Pleas­ant was not fool­ing around.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to be able to fin­ish Cry, the
Beloved Coun­try, Patri­cia called Mar­jorie.
“Mar­jorie,” she said over the phone while putting a lid on the rice
and turn­ing it down from a boil. “It’s Patri­cia Camp­bell. I need to
talk to you about Cry, the Beloved Coun­try.”
“Such a pow­er­ful work,” Mar­jorie said.
“Of course,” Patri­cia said.
“I know you’ll do it jus­tice,” Mar­jorie said.
“I’ll do my best,” Patri­cia said, real­iz­ing that this was the exact
oppo­site of what she need­ed to say.
“And it’s so time­ly with the sit­u­a­tion in South Africa right now,”
Mar­jorie said.
A cold bolt of fear shot through Patri­cia: what was the sit­u­a­tion in
South Africa right now?
After she hung up, Patri­cia cursed her­self for being a cow­ard and a
fool, and vowed to go to the library and look up Cry, the Beloved
Coun­try in the Direc­to­ry of World Lit­er­a­ture, but she had to do
snacks for Korey’s soc­cer team, and the babysit­ter had mono, and
Carter had a sud­den trip to Colum­bia and she had to help him pack,
and then a snake came out of the toi­let in the garage room and she
had to beat it to death with a rake, and Blue drank a bot­tle of Wite-
Out and she had to take him to the doc­tor to see if he would die (he
wouldn’t). She tried to look up Alan Paton, the author, in their World
Book Ency­clo­pe­dia but they were miss­ing the P vol­ume. She made a
men­tal note that they need­ed new ency­clo­pe­dias.
The door­bell rang.
“Mooooom,” Korey called from the down­stairs hall. “Pizza’s here!”
She couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to face Mar­jorie.
—
Mar­jorie had hand­outs.
“These are just a few arti­cles about cur­rent events in South Africa,
includ­ing the recent unpleas­ant­ness in Van­der­bi­jl­park,” she said.
“But I think Patri­cia will sum things up nice­ly for us in her dis­cus­sion
of Mr. Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Coun­try.”
Every­one turned to stare at Patri­cia sit­ting on Marjorie’s enor­mous
pink-and-white sofa. Not being famil­iar with the design of Marjorie’s
home, she had put on a flo­ral dress and felt like all any­one saw were
her head and hands float­ing in midair. She wished she could pull
them into her dress and dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly. She felt her soul exit
her body and hov­er up by the ceil­ing.
“But before she begins,” Mar­jorie said, and every head turned back
her way, “let’s have a moment of silence for Mr. Alan Paton. His
pass­ing ear­li­er this year has shak­en the lit­er­ary world as much as it’s
shak­en me.”
Patricia’s brain chased itself in cir­cles: the author was dead?
Recent­ly? She hadn’t seen any­thing in the paper. What could she
say? How had he died? Was he mur­dered? Torn apart by wild dogs?
Heart attack?
“Amen,” Mar­jorie said. “Patri­cia?”
Patricia’s soul decid­ed that it was no fool and ascend­ed into the
after­life, leav­ing her at the mer­cy of the women sur­round­ing her.
There was Grace Cavanaugh, who lived two doors down from Patri­cia
but whom she’d only met once when Grace rang her door­bell and
said, “I’m sor­ry to both­er you, but you’ve lived here for six months
and I need to know: is this the way you intend for your yard to look?”
Slick Paley blinked rapid­ly, her sharp foxy face and tiny eyes glued
to Patri­cia, her pen poised above her note­book. Louise Gibbes
cleared her throat. Cuffy Williams blew her nose slow­ly into a
Kleenex. Sadie Funche leaned for­ward, nib­bling on a cheese straw,
eyes bor­ing into Patri­cia. The only per­son not look­ing at Patri­cia was
Kit­ty Scrug­gs, who eyed the bot­tle of wine in the cen­ter of the cof­fee
table that no one had dared open.
“Well…,” Patri­cia began. “Didn’t we all love Cry, the Beloved
Coun­try?”
Sadie, Slick, and Cuffy nod­ded. Patri­cia glanced at her watch and
saw that sev­en sec­onds had passed. She could run out the clock. She
let the silence linger hop­ing some­one would jump in and say
some­thing, but the long pause only prompt­ed Mar­jorie to say,
“Patri­cia?”
“It’s so sad that Alan Paton was cut down in the prime of his life
before writ­ing more nov­els like Cry, the Beloved Coun­try,” Patri­cia
said, feel­ing her way for­ward, word by word, guid­ed by the nods of
the oth­er women. “Because this book has so many time­ly and
rel­e­vant things to say to us now, espe­cial­ly after the ter­ri­ble events in
Vander…Vanderbill…South Africa.”
The nod­ding got stronger. Patri­cia felt her soul descend­ing back
into her body. She forged ahead.
“I want­ed to tell you all about Alan Paton’s life,” she said. “And
why he wrote this book, but all those facts don’t express how
pow­er­ful this sto­ry is, how much it moved me, the great cry of
out­rage I felt when I read it. This is a book you read with your heart,
not with your mind. Did any­one else feel that way?”
The nods were gen­er­al, all over the liv­ing room.
“Exact­ly.” Slick Paley nod­ded. “Yes.”
“I feel so strong­ly about South Africa,” Patri­cia said, and then
remem­bered that Mary Brasington’s hus­band was in bank­ing and
Joanie Wieter’s hus­band did some­thing with the stock mar­ket and
they might have invest­ments there. “But I know there are many sides
to the issue, and I won­der if any­one want­ed to present anoth­er point
of view. In the spir­it of Mr. Paton’s book, this should be a
con­ver­sa­tion, not a speech.”
Every­one was nod­ding. Her soul set­tled back into her body. She
had done it. She had sur­vived. Mar­jorie cleared her throat.
“Patri­cia,” Mar­jorie asked. “What did you think about what the
book had to say about Nel­son Man­dela?”
“So inspi­ra­tional,” Patri­cia said. “He sim­ply tow­ers over
every­thing, even though he’s real­ly just men­tioned.”
“I don’t believe he is,” Mar­jorie said, and Slick Paley stopped
nod­ding. “Where did you see him men­tioned? On which page?”
Patricia’s soul began ascend­ing into the light again. Good-bye, it
said. Good-bye, Patri­cia. You’re on your own now…
“His spir­it of free­dom?” Patri­cia said. “It per­vades every page?”
“When this book was writ­ten,” Mar­jorie said. “Nel­son Man­dela
was still a law stu­dent and a minor mem­ber of the ANC. I’m not sure
how his spir­it could be any­where in this book, let alone per­vad­ing
every page.”
Mar­jorie drilled into Patricia’s face with her ice-pick eyes.
“Well,” Patri­cia croaked, because she was dead now and
appar­ent­ly death felt very, very dry. “What he was going to do. You
could feel it build­ing. In here. In this book. That we read.”
“Patri­cia,” Mar­jorie said. “You didn’t read the book, did you?”
Time stopped. No one moved. Patri­cia want­ed to lie, but a life­time
of breed­ing had made her a lady.
“Some of it,” Patri­cia said.
Mar­jorie let out a soul-deep sigh that seemed to go on for­ev­er.
“Where did you stop?” she asked.
“The first page?” Patri­cia said, then began to bab­ble. “I’m sor­ry, I
know I’ve let you down, but the babysit­ter had mono, and Carter’s
moth­er is stay­ing with us, and a snake came out of the com­mode,
and everything’s just been so hard this month. I real­ly don’t know
what to say except I’m so, so sor­ry.”
Black crept in around the edges of her vision. A high-pitched tone
shrilled in her right ear.
“Well,” Mar­jorie said. “You’re the one who’s lost out, by rob­bing
your­self of what is pos­si­bly one of the finest works of world
lit­er­a­ture. And you’ve robbed all of us of your unique point of view.
But what’s done is done. Who else would be will­ing to lead the
dis­cus­sion?”
Sadie Funche retract­ed into her Lau­ra Ash­ley dress like a tur­tle,
Nan­cy Fox start­ed shak­ing her head before Mar­jorie even reached
the end of her sen­tence, and Cuffy Williams froze like a prey ani­mal
con­front­ed by a preda­tor.
“Did any­one actu­al­ly read this month’s book?” Mar­jorie asked.
Silence.
“I can­not believe this,” Mar­jorie said. “We all agreed, eleven
months ago, to read the great books of the West­ern world and now,
less than one year lat­er, we’ve come to this. I am deeply dis­ap­point­ed
in all of you. I thought we want­ed to bet­ter our­selves, expose
our­selves to thoughts and ideas from out­side Mt. Pleas­ant. The men
all say, ‘It’s not too clever for a girl to be clever,’ and they laugh at us
and think we only care about our hair. The only books they give us
are cook­books because in their minds we are sil­ly, light­weight know-
noth­ings. And you’ve just proven them right.”
She stopped to catch her breath. Patri­cia noticed sweat glis­ten­ing
in her eye­brows. Mar­jorie con­tin­ued:
“I strong­ly sug­gest y’all go home and think about whether you
want to join us next month to read Jude the Obscure and—”
Grace Cavanaugh stood, hitch­ing her purse over one shoul­der.
“Grace?” Mar­jorie asked. “Are you not stay­ing?”
“I just remem­bered an appoint­ment,” Grace said. “It entire­ly
slipped my mind.”
“Well,” Mar­jorie said, her momen­tum under­mined. “Don’t let me
keep you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Grace said.
And with that, the tall, ele­gant, pre­ma­ture­ly gray Grace float­ed out
of the room.
Robbed of its veloc­i­ty, the meet­ing dis­solved. Mar­jorie retreat­ed to
the kitchen, fol­lowed by a con­cerned Sadie Funche. A dispir­it­ed
clump of women lin­gered around the dessert table mak­ing chitchat.
Patri­cia lurked in her chair until no one seemed to be watch­ing, then
dart­ed out of the house.
As she cut across Marjorie’s front yard, she heard a noise that
sound­ed like Hey. She stopped and looked for the source.
“Hey,” Kit­ty Scrug­gs repeat­ed.
Kit­ty lurked behind the line of parked cars in Marjorie’s dri­ve­way,
a cloud of blue smoke hov­er­ing over her head, a long thin cig­a­rette
between her fin­gers. Next to her stood Maryellen some­thing-or-
oth­er, also smok­ing. Kit­ty waved Patri­cia over with one hand.
Patri­cia knew that Maryellen was a Yan­kee from Mass­a­chu­setts
who told every­one that she was a fem­i­nist. And Kit­ty was one of
those big women who wore the kind of clothes peo­ple char­i­ta­bly
referred to as “fun”—baggy sweaters with mul­ti­col­ored hand­prints
on them, chunky plas­tic jew­el­ry. Patri­cia sus­pect­ed that get­ting
entan­gled with women like this was the first step on a slip­pery slope
that end­ed with her wear­ing felt rein­deer antlers at Christ­mas, or
stand­ing out­side Citadel Mall ask­ing peo­ple to sign a peti­tion, so she
approached them with cau­tion.
“I liked what you did in there,” Kit­ty said.
“I should have found time to read the book,” Patri­cia told her.
“Why?” Kit­ty asked. “It was bor­ing. I couldn’t make it past the first
chap­ter.”
“I need to write Mar­jorie a note,” Patri­cia said. “To apol­o­gize.”
Maryellen squint­ed against the smoke and sucked on her cig­a­rette.
“Mar­jorie got what she deserved,” she said, exhal­ing.
“Lis­ten.” Kit­ty placed her body between the two of them and
Marjorie’s front door, just in case Mar­jorie was watch­ing and could
read lips. “I’m hav­ing some peo­ple read a book and come over to my
house next month to talk about it. Maryellen’ll be there.”
“I couldn’t pos­si­bly find the time to belong to two book clubs,”
Patri­cia said.
“Trust me,” Kit­ty said. “After today, Marjorie’s book club is done.”
“What book are you read­ing?” Patri­cia asked, grop­ing for rea­sons
to say no.
Kit­ty reached into her den­im shoul­der bag and pulled out the kind
of cheap paper­back they sold at the drug­store.
“Evi­dence of Love: A True Sto­ry of Pas­sion and Death in the
Sub­urbs,” she said.
It took Patri­cia aback. This was one of those trashy true crime
books. But clear­ly Kit­ty was read­ing it and you couldn’t call some­one
else’s taste in books trashy, even if it was.
“I’m not sure that’s my kind of book,” Patri­cia said.
“These two women were best friends and they chopped each oth­er
up with axes,” Kit­ty said. “Don’t pre­tend you don’t want to know
what hap­pened.”
“Jude is obscure for a rea­son,” Maryellen growled.

On a drea­ry Feb­ru­ary day, amidst relent­less rain, the pro­tag­o­nist dri­ves from Cen­ter Point to Moun­tain Brook to ful­fill her duty as a dog walk­er in the afflu­ent Thorn­field Estates. The jour­ney begins at the Reeds’ house­hold, where Mrs. Reed express­es a per­for­ma­tive sym­pa­thy for the pro­tag­o­nist hav­ing to walk her col­lie, Bear, in such unpleas­ant weath­er. This act under­scores the pri­ma­ry con­cern in Thorn­field Estates: appear­ances.

Mrs. Reed’s disin­gen­u­ous empa­thy con­trasts sharply with the pro­tag­o­nist’s indif­fer­ence towards her and the super­fi­cial­i­ty of the res­i­dents’ char­i­ta­ble endeav­ors, which seem more about social sta­tus than gen­uine phil­an­thropy. The pro­tag­o­nist, equipped with a prag­mat­ic army-green rain­coat against the rain, sets out with Bear, pon­der­ing on the lux­u­ri­ous yet hol­low lifestyle of her employ­ers ver­sus her own mod­est liv­ing con­di­tions.

Her obser­va­tions reveal a stark dis­par­i­ty; while every McMan­sion boasts lush back­yards ren­der­ing dog walk­ers tech­ni­cal­ly unnec­es­sary, the demand for such ser­vices is dri­ven by desire rather than need, high­light­ing the extrav­a­gance that defines the com­mu­ni­ty. Not only does Mrs. Reed live in a lav­ish home far too large for mere inhab­i­tants, but this opu­lence is mir­rored through­out the estate. The pro­tag­o­nist reflects on her employ­ment with var­i­ous fam­i­lies with­in the neigh­bor­hood, such as the McLarens, the Clarks, and Tripp Ingra­ham, not­ing the token ges­tures of respect afford­ed to her as the help — a shal­low attempt by the wealthy to assuage their guilt.

As she nav­i­gates the neigh­bor­hood, the con­trast between the man­i­cured per­fec­tion of Thorn­field Estates and the drab real­i­ty of her apart­ment becomes evi­dent. Despite her attempts to beau­ti­fy her small, leaky apart­ment, it can­not com­pare to the vibrant, metic­u­lous­ly main­tained homes she ser­vices. The neigh­bor­hood, alive with the buzz of main­te­nance crews, stands in stark oppo­si­tion to her own sim­ple exis­tence. Even as she mus­es on the lux­u­ry of a Burber­ry jack­et she saw at Mrs. Clark’s, the pro­tag­o­nist is sharply aware of the chasm between her world and that of her employ­ers — a chasm under­scored by her rain-soaked, prag­mat­ic attire and a yearn­ing for some­thing bet­ter amidst the afflu­ence that sur­rounds her.

In the open­ing chap­ter of “The Beasts of Tarzan”, the nar­ra­tive thrusts John Clay­ton, Lord Greystoke—formerly Tarzan of the Apes—into a sin­is­ter plot brewed by his old neme­sis, Niko­las Rokoff. The sto­ry unfolds in Lieu­tenant Paul D’Arnot’s Paris apart­ment, where Tarzan and D’Arnot learn of Rokof­f’s escape from prison. Sub­se­quent­ly, Tarzan, who had brought his fam­i­ly to Lon­don to escape the rainy sea­son in Uziri, decides to return to them, fear­ing Rokoff might harm his wife, Jane, or their son, Jack, to enact revenge.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, in a seclud­ed cot­tage on the out­skirts of Lon­don, Rokoff and his asso­ciate Alex­is plot to kid­nap Tarzan’s fam­i­ly as part of a deep­er scheme for revenge and prof­it. A mes­sage soon dis­rupts the tran­quil­i­ty of Tarzan’s Lon­don home, inform­ing him that Jack has been kid­napped, prompt­ing a fran­tic return to res­cue his child. Jane recounts the episode of Jack­’s kidnapping—how a new house­man, Carl, tricked the nan­ny, lead­ing to the baby’s abduc­tion via a taxi­cab orches­trat­ed by Rokoff and his asso­ciates.

Tarzan receives a mys­te­ri­ous call offer­ing infor­ma­tion on his son’s where­abouts in exchange for immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion. Fear­ing a trap but des­per­ate to find his son, Tarzan heads to Dover to meet the infor­mant, secret­ly fol­lowed by Jane, who decides to act despite the poten­tial dan­ger. Once in Dover, Tarzan is led to believe Jack is aboard a steam­er, but as he fol­lows the infor­man­t’s instruc­tions, he real­izes too late that he has walked into a trap, becom­ing a pris­on­er aboard the ship him­self.

This chap­ter is a tense set­up for the ensu­ing adven­ture, illus­trat­ing Tarzan’s unwa­ver­ing resolve amidst betray­al and his innate con­nec­tion to his jun­gle-honed instincts. It adept­ly posi­tions fam­i­ly loy­al­ty against a back­drop of sin­is­ter machi­na­tions, set­ting the stage for a grip­ping nar­ra­tive of sur­vival and vengeance.