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.

18
We hit the road once again. More buses. More costume racks. More long
rehearsals. More step-and-repeats.
That was already one of the darkest times of my life, and the vibe of the tour
was dark, too—a lot of sweaty numbers, dark themes, and moody lighting. The
tour also marked a change in my relationship with my brother, Bryan.
Working now as part of my team, Bryan was very well paid—and so was I—
for the Onyx Hotel Tour. He also did a huge deal for me with Elizabeth Arden.
And yet, I had trouble not resenting him a bit once I went out on what was to be
an unbelievably grueling tour while he stayed in Los Angeles and New York and
enjoyed his life.
I lost track of my brother in those years. And so, in many ways, it felt as
though I lost Justin and Bryan around the same time.
The tour felt so depressing. In Moline, Illinois, I hurt my knee really badly
toward the end of the show. I’d had a previous knee injury while rehearsing for
the music video for “Sometimes” o my rst album. That was more extreme: I’d
cried hysterically. With this injury, I only had to reschedule two dates, but in my
mind, I’d already started to check out. I was craving some lightness and joy in my
life.
Then Kevin Federline was holding me. That’s the thing I remember best. We
met at a club called Joseph’s Café in Hollywood, where I used to sit at a table in
the back. Right away, from the moment I saw him, there was a connection
between us—something that made me feel like I could escape everything that
was hard in my life. That very rst night we met, he held me—and I mean held
me—in a pool for hours.
That was how he was to me: steady, strong, a comfort. I remember we would
go swimming, and he’d just wrap his arms around me in the water and not let
me go until I wanted him to, no matter how long that took. It was beyond a
sexual thing. It wasn’t about lust. It was intimate. He would hold me as long as I
wanted to be held. Had anyone in my life ever done that before? If so, I couldn’t
remember when. And was there anything better?
After what I’d gone through with J, I hadn’t been with someone in a real way
in so long. Meanwhile, the press kept suggesting famous men who I should date
—royalty, CEOs, models. How could I explain that I just wanted to be held for
an hour by a man in a swimming pool?
I feel like a lot of women—and this is denitely true of me—can be as strong
as they want to be, can play this powerful role, but at the end of the day, after
we’ve done our work and made our money and taken care of everyone else, we
want someone to hold us tight and tell us everything’s going to be okay. I’m
sorry. I know it sounds regressive. But I think it’s a human impulse. We want to
feel safe and alive and sexy all at the same time. And that’s what Kevin did for
me. So I held on to him like there was no tomorrow.
In the beginning, my relationship with Kevin was playful.
Kevin liked me the way I was. As a woman who’d spent so much time trying
to live up to society’s expectations, being with a man who gave me permission to
be exactly who I was felt like such a gift.
Kevin had a “bad boy” image. Still, I had no idea when we met that he had a
toddler, nor that his ex-girlfriend was eight months pregnant with his second
baby. I was clueless. I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t have a lot of good, close
friends to conde in and get advice from. I had no idea until after we’d been
together for a while and someone told me, “You know he has a new baby, right?”
I didn’t believe it, but when I asked, he told me it was true. He told me he saw
them once a month.
“You have kids?” I said. “You have children? Not only one child but two
children?”
So, a number was done on me, obviously. I had no idea.
That spring of 2004 I had to go back to work to make good on my contracted
dates, even though I was in no mood to do it. I gured it would be tolerable if
Kevin could go with me, and he agreed to come. We had so much fun together
on that tour; he helped keep me distracted from the work, which felt as
challenging as it ever had. After the shows, I didn’t have to go back to my hotel
room alone. Flying home, we were chatting away, and I asked him to marry me.
He said no and then he proposed.
We lmed tour diaries together. The original concept was a documentary like
Madonna’s Truth or Dare, but it became more like a collection of our home
movies, especially after I got hurt again, and it was later released as a reality show
called Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.
The Onyx Hotel Tour was just rough. It was too sexual, for a start. Justin had
embarrassed me publicly, so my rebuttal onstage was to kind of go there a little
bit, too. But it was absolutely horrible. I hated it in the moment. In fact, I hated
that entire stupid tour—so much that I prayed every night. I said, “God, just
make my arm break. Make my leg break. Can you make something break?” And
then, on June 8, 2004, with still two months of shows to go, I fell again on the
set of my video for “Outrageous,” got another knee injury, and had to have
surgery. The rest of the tour dates were scrapped. I thought back on how much
I’d suered as a teenager doing physical therapy for my knee. The experience had
been excruciating. I had to move my legs up and down even as they were causing
me unspeakable agony. So when the doctors oered me Vicodin, I took it. I
didn’t want to experience that level of pain again.
I just went to my apartment in Manhattan, got into my princess bed, and if
anyone—friends, family, people in the business—wanted to talk to me during
this time, I said, “Leave me alone. No, I don’t want to do anything or see
anyone.” And I denitely didn’t want to go back out on tour for a while if I
could help it.
Part of it was that I believed I had earned the right to make my own decisions
in my personal life after such a grueling schedule. I felt like I’d been manipulated
into going straight back to work after the breakup with Justin, because it was all
I knew. The Onyx tour was a mistake. But in my mind I thought I should just do
what I was supposed to do, which was work.
I realize now that I should’ve sat back and taken my time getting over the
breakup with Justin before I resumed touring. The music industry is just too
hard-core and unforgiving. You often visit a dierent city every day. There’s no
consistency. It’s not possible to nd stillness when you’re on the road. When I
made the Britney Spears: Live and More! video special in Hawaii in 2000, I
began to realize that TV is really easy. TV is the luxury part of the business;
touring is not.
My sister had also just landed a huge Nickelodeon deal. I was happy for her.
Seeing her learning her lines and doing wardrobe ttings reminded me that I
would have loved to have a job that was more like the cozy world of children’s
television. I liked thinking about the Mickey Mouse Club and remembering how
easy everything had seemed back then.
I thought Kevin would give me the stability I was craving—and the freedom,
too.
Not a lot of people were happy for Kevin and me. Whether or not I liked it, I
was one of the biggest stars in the world at that time. He was living a more
private life. I had to defend our relationship to everyone.
Kevin and I got married that fall. We held a “surprise” ceremony in
September, but the lawyers needed more time with the prenup, so the legal event
didn’t take place for a couple weeks.
People shot the ceremony. I wore a strapless dress and the bridesmaids wore
burgundy. After the ceremony, I changed into a pink sweatsuit that read MRS.
FEDERLINE and everyone else put on Juicy tracksuits, too, because we went to a
club after to dance all night. Now that I was married and thinking about starting
a family, I decided to start saying no to things that didn’t feel right—like the
Onyx tour. I parted ways with my managers. I posted a letter to fans on my
website in which I told them I was going to take some time o to enjoy my life.

You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

CHAPTER 18
Patricia woke up feeling like she’d fallen down the stairs. Her joints
popped when she got out of bed, and her shoulders groaned like they
were stuffed with broken glass when she reached for the coffee
filters. When she undressed for her shower she noticed bruises on
both hips from sliding back and forth across the back seat of the
police car.
Carter had to go in to the hospital even though it was Saturday,
and Patricia let Blue do whatever he wanted because it was light out.
“But be back before it starts to get dark,” she said. “We’re having
early supper.”
It wasn’t safe to have Blue out of her sight after dark. She didn’t
know what James Harris was, she didn’t care, she couldn’t think
straight, but she knew he wouldn’t go out in the sun. She wanted to
call Grace, to tell her what she’d seen, but when Grace didn’t
understand something she refused to believe it existed. She forced
herself to calm down.
She couldn’t bring herself to vacuum her curtains, so she did
laundry. She ironed shirts and slacks. She ironed socks. She kept
seeing James Harris with that thing on his face, his beard of blood,
that little girl on the floor of his van, kept trying to figure out how to
explain this to someone. She cleaned the bathrooms. She watched
the sun slide across the sky. She felt grateful that Korey was still
away at soccer camp.
The phone rang while she was throwing out expired condiments.
“Campbell residence,” Patricia said.
“They took her daughter,” Mrs. Greene told her.
“What? Who did?” Patricia asked, trying to catch up.
“This morning when Wanda Taylor took her to the doctor,” Mrs.
Greene said, “he found a mark on her leg, like you said, and he made
Wanda wait outside while he talked to Destiny.”
“What did she say?” Patricia asked.
“Wanda doesn’t know, but then the DSS showed up and a
policeman stood at the door,” Mrs. Greene said. “They told her
Destiny was on drugs and had marks where someone injected her.
They asked her who the man was that Destiny referred to as ‘Boo
Daddy.’ Wanda told them she wasn’t seeing any man, but they didn’t
believe her.”
“I’ll call those officers from last night,” Patricia said, frantic. “I’ll
call them and they can talk to DSS. And Carter can call her doctor.
What was his name?”
“You promised this wouldn’t happen,” Mrs. Greene said. “Both of
you promised.”
“Carter will call,” Patricia said. “He’ll straighten this out. Should I
come out to talk to Wanda?”
“I think it’s best if you don’t see Wanda Taylor right now,” Mrs.
Greene said. “She’s not in a receptive frame of mind.”
Patricia disconnected the call but held onto the receiver as the
kitchen spun around her. She had seen Destiny. She’d been in her
bedroom. She’d sat with her mother. She’d seen her tiny, limp body
underneath James Harris, while he stood over her, his face covered
in her blood.
“I’m bored,” Blue said, coming into the den.
“Only boring people get bored,” Patricia said, automatically.
“Everyone’s at camp,” Blue said. “There’s no one to play with.”
How had this happened? What had she done?
“Go read a book,” she said.
She picked up the phone and dialed Carter’s office.
“I’ve read all my books,” he said.
“We’ll go to the library later,” she said.
The phone rang, Carter picked up, and she told him what had
happened.
“I’m in the middle of a million things right now,” he said.
“We promised her, Carter. We made a promise. That woman is
covered in stitches from trying to help your mother.”
“Okay, okay, Patty, I’ll make some calls.”
—
“Everyone thinks Hitler was bad,” Blue said to the dinner table. “But
Himmler was worse.”
“Okay,” Carter said, trying to wind him down. “Can you pass the
salt, Patty?”
Patricia picked up the saltshaker but didn’t hand it to Blue just yet.
“Did you call that doctor about Destiny Taylor today?” she asked.
Carter had been deflecting her ever since he got home.
“Can I get the salt before I’m interrogated?” he asked.
She made herself smile and passed it to Blue.
“He was the head of the SS,” Blue said. “Which stands for
Schutzstaffel. They were the secret police in Germany.”
“That sounds pretty bad, buddy,” Carter said, taking the salt from
him.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate conversation for the dinner table,”
Patricia said.
“The Holocaust was all his idea,” Blue continued.
Patricia waited until Carter had salted everything on his plate for
what Patricia thought was a very long time.
“Carter?” she asked the second the saltshaker touched the table.
“Did you call?” He put down his fork and gathered his thoughts
before looking up at her, and Patricia knew this was a bad sign. “We
promised, Carter.”
“The second they form a search committee, any chance I have of
becoming department head is over,” Carter said. “And they are so
close to a decision that everything I do is scrutinized under a
microscope. How do you think it would look if the candidate for chief
of psych, who’s a state employee, started calling up other state
employees and telling them how to do their jobs? Do you know how
bad that would look for me? The Medical University is a state
institution. Things have to get done a certain way. I can’t just run
around asking questions and casting aspersions.”
“We made a promise,” Patricia said, and realized her hand was
shaking. She put her fork down.
“They did medical experiments in the camps,” Blue said. “They
would torture one twin and see if the other one felt anything.”
“If her doctor made a decision to remove her from her home, he
had a good reason and I’m not going to second-guess him,” Carter
said, picking up his fork. “And frankly, after seeing that trailer, he
probably made the right decision.”
Which was when the doorbell rang, and Patricia jumped in her
seat. Her heart started beating triple time. She had a sinking feeling
she knew who it was. She wanted to say something to Carter, to show
him how unfair he was being, but the doorbell rang again. Carter
looked up over his forkful of chicken.
“Are you going to get that?” he asked.
“I’ll get it,” Blue said, sliding out of his chair.
Patricia stood up and blocked him.
“Finish your chicken,” she said.
She walked toward the front door like a prisoner approaching the
electric chair. She swung it wide and through the screen door she saw
James Harris. He smiled. This first encounter would be the hardest,
but with her family at her back and her house around her, standing
on her private property, Patricia gave him her very best fake hostess
smile. She’d had lots of practice.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she said through the screen door.
“Did I catch you during a meal again?” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s no bother.”
“You know,” he said, “I got interrupted during a meal recently. It
was very upsetting.”
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. No, she told herself, it was an
innocent comment. He wasn’t testing her.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“It made me think about you,” he said. “It made me realize how
often I interrupt your family’s meals.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “We enjoy having you.”
She examined his face carefully through the screen. He examined
her face right back.
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Ever since you invited me into your
home I just can’t stay away. I almost feel like it’s my house, too.”
“How nice,” she said.
“So when I found myself dealing with an unpleasant situation
today I thought of you,” he said. “You were so helpful last time.”
“Oh?” Patricia said.
“The woman who cleaned for my great-aunt disappeared,” he said.
“And I heard that someone was spreading the story that the last place
she was seen was my house. The insinuation is that I had something
to do with it.”
And Patricia knew. The police had been to see him. They hadn’t
said her name. He hadn’t seen her last night. But he was suspicious
and had come here to test her, to see if he could jolt her into
revealing something. Clearly he had never been to a cocktail party in
the Old Village before.
“Who would say something like that, I wonder?” Patricia asked.
“I thought you might have heard something.”
“I don’t listen to gossip.”
“Well,” he said. “The way I heard it, she took off with some fella.”
“Then that settles that,” she said.
“It hurts me to think that you or your kids might hear that I did
something to her,” he said. “The last thing I want is for anyone to be
afraid of me.”
“Don’t you worry about that for a second,” Patricia said, and she
made herself meet his eyes. “No one in this house is afraid of you.”
They held each other for a second, and it felt like a challenge. She
looked away first.
“It’s just the way you’re talking to me,” he said. “You won’t open
the door. You seem distant. Usually you invite me in when I drop by.
I feel like something’s changed.”
“Not a thing,” she said, and realized what she had to do. “We were
about to have dessert. Won’t you join us?”
She kept her breathing under control, kept a pleasant smile on her
face.
“That would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
She realized she had to let him in now, and she forced her arm to
reach out toward the door, and she felt the bones in her shoulder
grating as she took the latch in one hand and twisted it clockwise.
The screen door groaned on its spring.
“Come in,” she said. “You’re always welcome.”
She stood to the side as he stepped past her, and she saw his chin
covered with blood and that thing retracting into his mouth, and it
was only a shadow, and she closed the door behind him.
“Thank you,” he said.
He had gotten into her house the same as if he’d held a gun to her
head. She had to stay calm. She wasn’t helpless. How many times
had she stood at a party or in the supermarket, talking about
someone’s child being slow, or their baby being ugly, and that person
appeared out of nowhere and she smiled in their face and said, I was
just thinking about you and that cute baby of yours, and they never
had a clue.
She could do this.
“…would drain the person of all their blood and then give them
someone else’s blood that was the wrong type,” Blue was saying as
she led James Harris back into the dining room.
“Mm-hmm,” Carter said, ignoring Blue.
“Are you talking about Himmler and the camps?” James Harris
asked.
Blue and Carter stopped and looked up. Patricia saw every detail in
the room all at once. Everything felt freighted with importance.
“Look who stopped by.” She smiled. “Just in time for dessert.”
She picked up her napkin and sat down, gesturing to her left for
James Harris to be seated.
“Thank you for inviting an old bachelor in for dessert,” he said.
“Blue,” Patricia said. “Why don’t you clear the table and bring in
the cookies. Would you like coffee, James?”
“It’ll keep me up,” he said. “I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.”
“Which cookies?” Blue asked.
“All of them,” Patricia said, and Blue scampered from the room,
practically skipping.
“How’re you enjoying summer?” Carter asked. “Where’d you live
before here?”
“Nevada,” James Harris said.
Nevada? Patricia thought.
“That’s a dry heat,” Carter said. “We got up to eighty-five percent
humidity today.”
“It’s certainly not what I’m used to,” James said. “It really ruins my
appetite.”
Was that what he’d been doing to Destiny Taylor, Patricia
wondered? Did he think he was eating blood? She thought about
Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, who killed and partially
ate six people in the seventies and literally believed he was an actual
vampire. Then she saw that hard, thorny thing retreating into James
Harris’s mouth like a cockroach’s leg, and she didn’t know how to
explain that. Her pulse sped up as she realized that it lay in his
throat, behind a thin layer of skin, so close to her she could reach
over and touch it. So close to Blue. She took a breath and forced
herself to calm down.
“I have a recipe for gazpacho,” she said. “Have you ever had
gazpacho, James?”
“Can’t say I have,” he said.
“It’s a cold soup,” Patricia said. “From Italy.”
“Gross,” Blue said, coming in with four bags of Pepperidge Farm
cookies clutched to his chest.
“It’s perfect for warm weather,” Patricia smiled. “I’ll copy the
recipe down for you before you go.”
“Look,” Carter said, in his business voice, and Patricia looked at
him, trying to convey in the secret language of married couples that
they needed to stay absolutely normal because they were in more
danger than he knew right this minute.
Carter made eye contact and Patricia flicked her eyes from her
husband to James Harris and put everything inside her heart,
everything they shared in their marriage, she put it all into her eyes
in a way only he could see, and he got it. Play it safe, her eyes said.
Play dumb.
Carter broke eye contact and turned to James Harris.
“We need to clear the air,” he said. “You have to realize that Patty
feels terrible about what she said to the police.”
Patricia felt like Carter had cracked open her chest and dumped ice
cubes inside. Anything she could say froze in her throat.
“What did Mom do?” Blue asked.
“I think it’s better if you hear it from your mother,” James Harris
said.
Patricia saw James Harris and Carter both watching her. James
Harris wore a sincere mask but Patricia knew that behind it he was
laughing at her. Carter wore his Serious Man face.
“I thought Mr. Harris had done something wrong,” Patricia told
Blue, pushing the words through her constricted throat. “But I was
confused.”
“It wasn’t much fun having the police stop by my house today,”
James Harris said.
“You called the police on him?” Blue asked, astounded.
“I feel awful about all this,” Carter said. “Patty?”
“I’m sorry,” Patricia said, faintly.
“We cleared it all up,” James Harris said. “Mostly it was just
embarrassing to have a police car parked in front of my house since
I’m new here. You know how these small neighborhoods are.”
“What did you do?” Blue asked James Harris.
“Well, it’s a little adult,” James Harris said. “Your mother should
really be the one to tell you.”
Patricia felt trapped by Carter and James Harris, and the
unfairness of it all made her feel wild. This was her house, this was
her family, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She could ask everyone
to leave, right this minute. But she had done something wrong,
hadn’t she? Because Destiny Taylor was crying herself to sleep
without her mother right this minute.
“I…,” she began, and it died in the dining room air.
“Your mother thought he had done something inappropriate with
a child,” Carter said. “But she was absolutely, one hundred percent
wrong. I want you to know, son, we would never invite someone into
this house who might harm you or your sister in any way. Your
mother meant well but she wasn’t thinking clearly.”
James Harris kept staring at Patricia.
“Yes,” she said. “I was mixed up.”
The silence stretched on and Patricia realized what they were
waiting for. She looked hard at her plate.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice so faint she barely heard it.
James Harris bit noisily into a Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano and
chewed. In the silence, she could hear his teeth grinding it to pulp,
and then he swallowed and she heard the wad of chewed-up cookie
slide down his throat, past that thing.
“Well,” James Harris said, “I have to run but don’t worry—I can’t
be too mad at your mom. After all, we’re neighbors. And you’ve been
so kind to me since I moved in.”
“I’ll show you out,” Patricia said, because she didn’t know what
else to say.
She walked through the dark front hall in front of James Harris
and felt him leaning forward to say something. She couldn’t take it.
She couldn’t handle one more word. He was so smug.
“Patricia…,” he began, voice low.
She snapped on the hall light. He flinched, squinting and blinking.
A teardrop leaked from one eye. It was childish, but it made her feel
better.
—
As they got ready for bed, Carter tried to talk to her.
“Patty,” he said. “Don’t get upset. It was better to get that out in
the open.”
“I’m not upset,” she said.
“Whatever you think you saw, he seems like an okay guy.”
“Carter, I saw it,” she said. “He was doing something to that little
girl. They took her from her mother today because they found a mark
on her inner thigh.”
“I’m not going to get into that again,” he said. “At some point you
have to assume the professionals know what they’re doing.”
“I saw him,” she said.
“Even if you did look in his van that no one could find,” Carter
said, “eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. It was dark,
the light source was a flashlight, it happened fast.”
“I know what I saw,” Patricia said.
“I can show you studies,” Carter said.
But Patricia knew what she had seen and she knew it was
unnatural. From the way Ann Savage attacked her, to Miss Mary
being attacked by rats, to the man on the roof that night, to James
Harris and all his hints about eating and being interrupted, the way
the Old Village no longer felt safe—something was wrong. She’d
already removed their spare key from its hiding place outside in the
fake rock, and she’d started deadbolting the doors whenever she left
the house, even just to run errands. Things were changing too fast,
and James Harris was at the center of it.
And something he’d said ate at her. She got up and went
downstairs.
“Patty,” Carter called behind her. “Don’t storm off.”
“I’m not storming,” she called over her shoulder, but really didn’t
care if he heard her or not.
She found her copy of Dracula in the bookcase in the den. They’d
read it for book club in October two years ago.
She flipped through the pages until the phrase she was looking for
jumped out at her:
“He may not enter anywhere at the first,” says Van Helsing in his
Dutch-tainted English, “unless there be some of the household who
bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please.”
She had invited him inside her house months ago. She thought
about Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, again, and then
she thought about that thing in his mouth, and the next day after
church she drove to The Commons shopping center and went into
the Book Bag. She checked to make sure no one she knew was there
before she walked over to the register.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Could you tell me where your horror books
are?”
“Behind Sci-fi and Fantasy,” the kid grunted without looking up.
“Thank you,” Patricia said.
She picked books by their covers, one after the other, and began
piling them up by the cash register.
When she was ready to pay, the clerk rang them up, one cover of a
hunky, smooth-shaven young man with spiked hair after another:
Vampire Beat, Some of Your Blood, The Delicate Dependency,
’Salem’s Lot, Vampire Junction, Live Girls, Nightblood, No Blood
Spilled, The Vampire’s Apprentice, Interview with the Vampire, The
Vampire Lestat, Vampire Tapestry, The Hotel Transylvania. If it

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.

18
Eddie takes the detective out to the backyard. There’s no ride to the police station, no Eddie in the
back of a car, and I tell myself that this isn’t serious. This is nothing, really.
If it were something, he wouldn’t be offering the detective bottled water with a smile.
I stand in the kitchen, absentmindedly cleaning the counters, putting glasses in the dishwasher,
anything to keep my hands busy and make me look just as relaxed as Eddie does right now.
But I’m not Eddie, and when Detective Laurent comes back inside, I have to fight the urge to go
hide in the bedroom and lock the door.
It sounds stupid, but I’d thought this kind of money and lifestyle insulated you from things like this,
the police showing up at your door with questions and hard eyes.
The detective is friendly enough, though, holding up her empty bottle. “Recycling?” she asks, and
I take it from her, smiling like I’m totally unbothered.
She leans on the counter, casual, and asks, “How long have the two of you been seeing each
other?”
I have no idea if this is an actual question she’s asking as a police officer, or if she’s just making
small talk, and my palms sweat as I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“A few months?” I say. “Eddie and I met back in February, started dating in March?”
Great, I’m doing the questioning thing that makes me sound like an unsure little girl, not the kind of
woman who belongs in a house like this.
But the detective just smiles at me, her dark eyes warm, the skin around them crinkling.
“Your fiancé says you used to be his dog-walker.” Wrinkling her nose, she gestures around us. “I
said, ‘What the hell do people in this neighborhood need a dog-walker for?’ but that’s the bougie set
for you, isn’t it?”
I laugh along with her, nodding even as my heart keeps pounding and my hands keep shaking. “I
said the same thing. But it was a good job, and I like dogs.”
I could not sound more insipid if I tried, but that’s the point, right? Make her think I’m no one
worth even talking to. And whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. Plain Jane, blending into the
background again.
Drumming her nails on the counter—sensible, short, square, only one thin gold band on her left
hand—Detective Laurent nods. “We all have to do what we can to get by,” she says, not unkindly, and
then gives me a nod before checking the phone she has clipped to her belt.
“I better get going. Sorry again for interrupting y’all’s evening.”
“It was no problem at all,” I tell her, dying to ask why she’s here, what she said to Eddie, but also
wanting her to go, to pretend that this night never even happened.
“Let me walk you out,” I offer, but she waves me off.
“No need.” Then, reaching into her jacket, she pulls out a business card and hands it to me. Unlike
the card Eddie handed to John that day, this one is thin, the paper cheap. It’s stamped with the
Mountain Brook PD’s crest, and has her name—Detective Tori Laurent—and number. “I told Mr.
Rochester to call if he has any questions. You do the same, okay?”
And then she’s off, her sensible shoes squeaking on the floor, the front door opening and closing.
As though he’d been waiting for her to leave, Eddie comes in through the back sliding glass door
and lets out a long breath, shoving his hands through his hair.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and I make myself smile up at him as I wrap my arms around his waist.
“Yeah, fine,” I say, even though I definitely am not. “What did she want?”
He leans in close, resting his chin on the top of my head. “To talk about Blanche. And Bea.”
“Did they find her?” My voice is quiet. It’s such a gruesome question, a gruesome image, them
finding Bea after she’s been in the water this long …
“Not Bea,” Eddie replies, his voice rough. “Blanche, though. They found Blanche.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, trying hard not to think about what exactly they found as I pull out of his
embrace.
His skin has gone a sort of grayish-green, and a muscle keeps ticking in his jaw. He looks more
like the Eddie I first met than he has in ages, and my stomach lurches.
“Is there more?”
“She was … there was a fracture on her skull. Like she’d been hit by something. Or someone.”
He turns away from me, then, rubbing the back of his neck, and I stand there, absorbing the news,
peeling through the shock and fear to see what this means.
Now I’m not just nauseous, I’m cold. Numb, almost as I reach up and press my fingers to my lips.
“She was murdered?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
Eddie still has his back to me, his shoulders tense, and I can’t help but add, “And Bea?”
“Considered a homicide, now, too,” he says. “That’s what they wanted to talk to me about. To tell
me they’re now investigating her disappearance as a murder.”
I feel like my vision is graying out, and my knees are suddenly weak, watery. “Oh, god. Eddie.”
I don’t know what else to say.
We were finally starting to make peace with Bea’s ghost. We’re engaged, for fuck’s sake. Talking
about a wedding. And it’s one thing to have lost your wife in a tragic accident. But to find out
someone did it on purpose? That’s a nightmare.
And then another thought occurs to me. “They don’t…” I don’t even want to finish the sentence.
Don’t want it hanging there in the air between us.
“Think I did it?” he asks, turning around. He’s still pale, but his expression isn’t quite so intense
now. “No, they just wanted to let me know that things had changed. They’ll have questions, of course,
but I got the impression they were looking at me as the grieving widower, not a suspect.”
The more he talks, the more that the normal Eddie, the Eddie I’m used to, starts bleeding back into
his face and voice. I can practically see his other persona sliding on like a shell. Or a mask.
He looks at me then, frowning. “Christ, Jane, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” I step toward him, taking his hands. “Why would you say that?”
Sighing, he pulls me into his arms. “Because this is such a fucking mess, and I don’t want you to
have to deal with this. I don’t want you … I don’t know, sitting in some little room, answering
questions about something that happened before you even fucking knew me.”
I thought I’d felt as scared as I could, but now a new horror rushes over me, making my mouth dry
as I look up at him. “You think they’ll want to question me?”
“They mentioned it,” he says, distracted. “Just that you should come along when I go in.”
I’ve spent the past five years avoiding attention, avoiding questions, definitely avoiding cops.
Fuck, if they look into Eddie over this, they’ll look into me. His fiancée. The girl he got engaged to
less than a year after his wife disappeared.
John, the call from Phoenix, now this. I can practically feel the teeth of a trap starting to snap
closed, and I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against Eddie’s chest and taking deep breaths.
Eddie’s hand goes to the back of my neck, rubbing. “Don’t let it worry you, though.”
“It doesn’t,” I automatically reply, but he gives a rueful smile, reaching out to cup my cheek.
“Janie, you’re pale as a ghost.”
I capture his hand before he can pull it back, pressing it closer to my face. His skin feels so warm.
Mine is still freezing. “This is a lot, I know,” he says. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. But
I want you to know you have nothing to worry about, okay? I’m not going anywhere, and we’re going
to get through this.”
He’s speaking in this calm, measured tone, but it doesn’t help. In fact, I think it might actually
make it worse, and I step back from him, running a hand through my hair.
“Eddie, your wife was murdered,” I say. “It’s not going to be okay. It can’t be.”
Things like this weren’t supposed to happen here. I was supposed to be safe here, this place was
supposed to be safe.
And even though Blanche and Bea had disappeared before I even arrived in Thornfield Estates,
there was a part of me that felt like maybe this was my fault. Had I brought this here? This sordidness,
this violence? Did it cling to me like some kind of virus, infecting anyone who got close to me?
It was a silly, self-absorbed thought that didn’t make any sense. But what made even less sense
was the thought that Bea and Blanche could’ve stumbled into something that got them killed. Who
would’ve wanted to hurt either of them? And why?
And why was Eddie so calm?
“I know, it’s fucking awful,” he says on a sigh. “Believe me, I know.” Closing his eyes, he pinches
the bridge of his nose. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. Worrying about it isn’t going to
change it.”
Worrying about it isn’t going to change it. I want to tell him that it’s pretty fucking normal to
worry about who might have wanted your wife and her best friend dead, but something stops me.
Eddie takes my hands. “Focus on the wedding,” he says. “On the rest of our lives. Not this.”
“It’s just that … I don’t really like the police,” I say, and he frowns in confusion.
“Why not?”
Spoken like a rich white guy, I think to myself.
Instead, I consider my response very carefully. This is another moment where I feel like a bit of
truth in the lie might be useful.
“There was a foster family I lived with,” I say. “In Arizona. They weren’t exactly in it to do good
work for kids, you know?”
When I glance back over at him, he’s got his arms folded across his chest, watching me with his

In Chapter 18 of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” titled “Paulvitch Plots Revenge,” the narrative focuses on Alexander Paulvitch’s scheming for retribution against Tarzan and Jane. Harbouring a deep-seated vendetta, the Russian plots various means to thwart the couple’s escape but struggles with practical execution. Paulvitch’s plans are driven by a blend of impractical ideas and a thirst for vengeance that his distorted reasoning fuels, failing to recognize his role in the conflict with Tarzan. Eventually, he decides the only feasible approach is to traverse the dangerous journey to retrieve a canoe and return to confront his adversaries.

Determined, Paulvitch navigates through the jungle towards a village, aiming to secure a canoe but is met with hostility due to his past actions associated with greed and cruelty. After being chased away, he stealthily watches for an opportunity to steal a canoe, which presents itself when a local youth unsuspectingly crosses paths with him. Paulvitch coldly murders the boy, steals his canoe, and sets off towards the Kincaid.

Upon reaching the Kincaid under the cloak of night, Paulvitch plans to recruit the ship’s disgruntled crew to seize control from Tarzan. He sneaks aboard and attempts to allure one of the crew members with his scheme but is met with resistance and disdain for past grievances. Faced with the threat of being handed over to Tarzan or navigating the perilous jungle alone, Paulvitch opts for the latter, after unsuccessfully trying to bribe his way out with his possessions.

Making his way to his cabin to collect his things, Paulvitch retrieves an infernal machine—a bomb designed during his time with the Nihilists—and sets it with the intention of annihilating Tarzan and his allies on the Kincaid. He conceals the device, leaves with the coerced “payment” for his freedom, and departs the ship, leaving the crew and the protagonists unaware of the imminent danger that lurks aboard.

The chapter vividly portrays Paulvitch’s descent into further villainy, illustrating his cunning and desperation, setting a tense stage for an impending confrontation fueled by revenge.