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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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