Chap­ter 4 begins with a ques­tion that sounds casu­al but car­ries a sharp­er edge under­neath: “Since when does Eddie Rochester have a dog?” Emi­ly Clark, or Mrs. Clark as she insists every­one in the neigh­bor­hood say—except when she reminds you that “Emi­ly is fine”—asks it with a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. She’s dressed in her usu­al ath­leisure that’s prob­a­bly more about sta­tus than sweat, her ther­mos mono­grammed, her tone sweet but lined with judg­ment. She knows Adele isn’t mine, and that means she knows I’ve been at Eddie’s house. This isn’t small talk; it’s recon­nais­sance.

I tell her he got the pup­py last week. That part is true. And it gave me the per­fect excuse to see him again—week after week, in that per­fect­ly staged home, in that per­fect lit­tle gat­ed fan­ta­sy. Emi­ly leans in, low­er­ing her voice as if we’re co-con­spir­a­tors, her gos­sip about Bea and Blanche car­ry­ing a strange rev­er­ence, like she’s shar­ing scrip­ture instead of spec­u­la­tion. There’s some­thing odd­ly per­for­ma­tive about it—how she twists her fin­gers togeth­er to mim­ic Bea and Blanche’s child­hood bond. As if mim­ing it makes her clos­er to the sto­ry.

The way she talks about the accident—the “real, real sad” tone that fal­ters when she real­izes I’m not reacting—reminds me that in Thorn­field Estates, tragedies are social cur­ren­cy. Emi­ly wants a gasp, a tear, a shocked glance. She doesn’t get one. I’ve seen real loss. This kind of rehearsed grief is just the­ater. Still, it’s hard not to pic­ture the scene she paints: a drift­ing boat in the dark, two women miss­ing, the weight of uncer­tain­ty heav­ier than any con­firmed death. Whether or not she knows it, Emi­ly hands me a glimpse of the pow­er Bea once held, and how much her absence changed every­thing.

She drops a detail I had­n’t known—that Eddie and Bea met at Smith Lake, that he wasn’t even there the night it hap­pened. And just like that, Eddie becomes more than the charm­ing con­trac­tor who adopt­ed a dog. He becomes a man with a past wrapped in mys­tery, grief, and com­mu­ni­ty scruti­ny. Emily’s assess­ment that “Eddie didn’t take it as hard as Tripp” only fuels my curios­i­ty. If Bea’s hus­band didn’t col­lapse under the weight of her loss like the rest of them expect­ed, maybe that means some­thing. Maybe it means he was ready to move on.

I nod and offer polite noth­ings. Emi­ly, like the oth­ers, sees what she wants to see. What I see is oppor­tu­ni­ty. Each tid­bit she shares is anoth­er puz­zle piece in the por­trait I’m build­ing of Eddie Rochester—and of the woman he used to love. She calls him bro­ken, but I think she means avail­able. She calls him loy­al, but I think she means vul­ner­a­ble. A man who used to be hap­py, and now is some­thing else.

The con­ver­sa­tion makes me more cer­tain of what I already felt—getting close to Eddie isn’t just a pos­si­bil­i­ty. It’s a plan. His life may be shad­owed by loss, but it’s still full of beau­ty, of influ­ence, of wealth. And if I can fig­ure out where I fit into all that, I might final­ly become some­one who does­n’t have to explain away her life or hide the truth behind a dog leash.

As I leave Emily’s house, her words echo in my head. “He was crazy about her. We all were.” I don’t doubt it. Bea was the kind of woman who could make the rest of the world feel like wall­pa­per. But what Emi­ly doesn’t under­stand is that admi­ra­tion fades, and the peo­ple left behind don’t always want to stay buried in some­one else’s sto­ry. Some of us are just wait­ing for the right moment to write our own.