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.

32
On the rare occasion that I went out—like to my agent and friend Cade’s house
for a dinner party—the security team would sweep through the house before I
arrived to make sure there was no alcohol or any drugs, even Tylenol, there. No
one at the party was allowed to drink until I left. The other guests were all very
good sports about it, but I sensed that the second I left was when the real party
started.
When someone wanted to date me, the security team who answered to my
father would run a background check on him, make him sign an NDA, and even
have him submit to a blood test. (And my father said I couldn’t see the
photographer I had been dating ever again, too.)
Before a date, Robin would tell the man my medical and sexual history. To be
clear: this was before the rst date. The whole thing was humiliating, and I know
the insanity of this system kept me from nding basic companionship, having a
fun night out, or making new friends—let alone falling in love.
Thinking back on the way my father was raised by June and the way I was
brought up by him, I had known from the jump that it would be an actual
nightmare to have him in charge. The thought of my father taking over any
aspect of my life had lled me with fear. But taking over everything? It was just
the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to my music, my career, and my
sanity.
Pretty quickly, I called the weird-ass lawyer the court had appointed for me and
asked him for help. Incredibly, he was all I really had—even though I hadn’t
chosen him. I had been told that I couldn’t hire anyone new, because my lawyer
had to be court-approved. Much later, I would come to nd out that was
bullshit: I didn’t know for thirteen years that I could’ve gotten my own lawyer. I
felt that the court-appointed lawyer didn’t seem eager to help me understand
what was going on, or to ght for my rights.
My mother, who is best friends with the governor of Louisiana, could have
put me on the phone with him, and he would have told me I could get my own
lawyer. But she kept it a secret; instead, she got a lawyer for herself just so she
could get o on ghting with my dad, like she did when I was younger.
At various times I pushed back, especially when my father took away access to
my cell phone. I would be smuggled a private phone and try to break free. But
they always caught me.
And here’s the sad, honest truth: after everything I had been through, I
didn’t have a lot of ght left in me. I was tired, and I was scared, too. After being
held down on a gurney, I knew they could restrain my body any time they
wanted to. They could’ve tried to kill me, I thought. I started to wonder if they
did want to kill me.
So when my father said, “I call the shots,” I thought, This is too much for me.
But I didn’t see a way out. So I felt my spirit retreat, and I went on autopilot. If I
play along, surely they’ll see how good I am and they will let me go.
And so I went along with it.
After I’d married Kevin and had my kids, Felicia was still there a little bit; I had
always adored her, but once I stopped touring and started working less, we fell
out of touch. There was some talk of Felicia’s coming back on board for the
Circus Tour, but somehow I never did have her as my assistant again. I later
learned that my dad told her I didn’t want her to work for me anymore. But I
never said that. If I had known she wanted to do something for me, I never
would have told her no. Without my knowledge, my father was keeping her from
me.
I never saw some of my really close friends ever again—still haven’t, to this
day. It made me shut down psychologically even more than I had before.
My parents had some old friends from home come visit me to make me feel
better.
“No, thanks,” I said.
I mean, I loved them to death, but they had kids now, and they’d moved on
with their lives. Their coming to see me felt more like sympathy than like a social
call. Help is good, but not if it’s not asked for. Not if it doesn’t feel like it’s a
choice.
It’s dicult for me to revisit this darkest chapter of my life and to think about
what might have been dierent if I’d pushed back harder then. I don’t at all like
to think about that, not whatsoever. I can’t aord to, honestly. I’ve been
through too much.
And, when the conservatorship happened, it was true that I had been
partying. My body couldn’t physically take that anymore. It was time to calm
down. But I went from partying a lot to being a total monk. Under the
conservatorship, I didn’t do anything.
One day I was with the photographer, driving my car fast, living so much.
And then all of a sudden I was alone, doing nothing at all, not even always
allowed access to my own cell phone. It was night and day.
In my old life I’d had freedom: the freedom to make my own decisions, to set
my own agenda, to wake up and decide how I wanted to spend the day. Even the
hard days were my hard days. Once I gave up the ght, in my new life, I would
wake up each morning and ask one question: “What are we doing?”
And then I would do what I was told.
When I was alone at night, I would try to nd inspiration in beautiful or
transporting music, movies, books—anything to help blot out the horror of this
arrangement. Just as I had when I was a little girl, I’d look for other worlds to
escape into.
It seemed like every request went through my father and Robin. They
decided where I went and with who. Under Robin’s direction, security guards
handed me prepackaged envelopes of meds and watched me take them. They
put parental controls on my iPhone. Everything was scrutinized and controlled.
Everything.
I would go to sleep early. And then I would wake up and do what they told
me again. And again. And again. It was like Groundhog Day.
I did that for thirteen years.
If you’re asking why I went along with it, there’s one very good reason. I did it
for my kids.
Because I played by the rules, I was reunited with my boys.
It was an ecstatic experience getting to hold them again. When they fell asleep
next to me that rst night we had back together, I felt whole for the rst time in
months. I just stared at them sleeping and felt so, so lucky.
To see them as much as possible, I did everything I could to appease Kevin. I
paid his legal bills, plus child support, plus thousands more a month so the kids
could come along with me on the Circus Tour. Within the same short period of
time, I appeared on Good Morning America, did the Christmas-tree lighting in
Los Angeles, shot a segment for Ellen, and toured through Europe and
Australia. But again, the question was nagging at me—if I was so sick that I
couldn’t make my own decisions, why did they think it was ne for me to be out
there smiling and waving and singing and dancing in a million time zones a
week?
I’ll tell you one good reason.
The Circus Tour grossed more than $130 million.
Lou Taylor’s company, Tri Star, got 5 percent. And I learned, after the
conservatorship, that even when I was on hiatus in 2019 and money wasn’t
coming in, my father paid them an extra minimum “at fee,” so they were paid
hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
My father got a percentage, too, plus, throughout the conservatorship, about
$16,000 a month, more than he’d ever made before. He proted heavily from
the conservatorship, becoming a multimillionaire.
My freedom in exchange for naps with my children—it was a trade I was
willing to make. There is nothing I love more—nothing more important to me

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 32
“He’d been overserved,” Patricia said breathlessly into the telephone
receiver, eyes wide, voice full of astonished innocence. “And he was
doing how men do at a party, talking big, showing off. I didn’t mean
to get so far away from my husband, but he just kept sort of pushing
me farther and farther away.”
Patricia stopped and swallowed, caught up in her own
performance. She pulled Francine’s driver’s license out of her pocket
and turned it over in her hand. She heard Mrs. Greene listening hard
on the other end of the line.
“When he kind of got me over in a corner,” she continued, “he told
me, real low so no one else could hear, that years ago he’d gotten
angry at the woman who did for him. She’d stolen some money, I
think, I wasn’t real clear on that point, Detective. But he said he
‘fixed her.’ I definitely remember that. Well, I didn’t understand what
he meant at first and I said I’d have to ask her about it when I saw
her again, and he said I wouldn’t be seeing her again, unless I went
up in his attic and looked inside his suitcases. Well, I couldn’t help it,
it just sounded so absurd, and I laughed. I don’t need to tell you how
men get when you laugh at them. His face turned red, and he
reached into his wallet and pulled out something and stuck it in my
face and said if he was lying then how did I explain that. And,
Detective, that’s when I got scared. Because it was Francine’s driver’s
license. I mean, who carries around a thing like that? If he hadn’t
hurt her, then where did he get it?” She paused, as if listening. “Oh,
yes, sir. He put it right back in there. He’d had so much to drink he
might not even remember showing it to me.”
She stopped and waited.
“You think that’ll work?” Mrs. Greene asked.
“They don’t have to get a warrant or anything like that. All they
have to do is stop by his house and ask to look inside his wallet. He’ll
have no clue it’s in there, so of course he’ll show them. Once they see
it, they’ll ask for permission to search his attic, he’ll refuse, they’ll
leave someone with him while they go get a warrant, and then they’ll
find Francine.”
“When?” Mrs. Greene asked.
“The Scruggs are having an oyster roast this coming Saturday out
at their farm,” Patricia said. “It’s six days away but it will be crowded,
it will be public, people will be drinking. It’s our best chance.”
Patricia didn’t know how she’d get into his wallet—she didn’t even
know if he carried one—but she’d keep her eyes open and stay on her
toes. Kitty’s oyster roast started at 1:30. If she got it into his wallet
early enough, she could call the police that afternoon; they could
even come to the oyster roast and ask to see inside his wallet there,
and this could all be over in less than a week.
“A lot could go wrong,” Mrs. Greene said.
“We’re running out of time,” Patricia said.
It was already the end of the month. That night was Halloween.
—
The doorbell started ringing around four on Halloween evening, and
Patricia oohed and ahhed over an endless stream of Aladdins and
Jasmines and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and fairies in tutus
with wings bouncing up and down on their backs.
She had fun-sized Butterfingers and small boxes of Sun-Maid
raisins for the children, and Jack Daniel’s for their fathers, who stood
behind them, red Solo cups in hand. It was an Old Village tradition:
moms stayed home and gave out candy on Halloween while dads
took the kids trick-or-treating. Everyone kept a bottle of something
behind their front door to top off whatever the dads were drinking.
The dads got progressively louder and happier as the shadows got
longer and the sun went down on the Old Village.
Carter wasn’t among them. When Patricia had asked Korey if she
wanted to go trick-or-treating she’d been treated to a withering glare
and a single contemptuous snort. Blue said trick-or-treating was for
babies so, Carter said, if neither of his children wanted him to take
them, he’d go right from the airport to his office and get ahead on
some work for Monday.
Around seven, Blue came downstairs, opened the dog food cabinet,
and took out a paper shopping bag.
“Are you going trick-or-treating?” Patricia asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Where’s your costume?” she asked, trying to reach him.
“I’m a serial killer,” he said.
“Don’t you want to be something more fun?” she asked. “We could
put something together in just a few minutes.”
He turned and walked out of the den.
“Be back by ten,” she called as the front door slammed.
She had just run out of Butterfingers and given the first box of
raisins to a deeply disappointed Beavis and Butthead when the
phone rang.
“Campbell residence,” she said.
No one answered. She figured it was a prank call and was about to
hang up when someone inhaled, wet and sticky, and a ruined voice
said:
“…I didn’t…”
“Hello?” Patricia said. “This is the Campbell residence?”
“I didn’t…,” the voice said again, dazed, and Patricia realized it was
a woman.
“If you don’t tell me who this is, I’m going to hang up,” she said.
“I didn’t…” the woman repeated. “…I didn’t make a sound…”
“Slick?” Patricia asked.
“I didn’t make a sound…I didn’t make a sound…I didn’t make a
sound,” Slick babbled.
“What’s going on?” Patricia asked.
Slick hadn’t called—not to apologize for abandoning her, not to see
if she was all right—and that was all the evidence Patricia needed to
know that Slick had told James Harris she was breaking into his
house. Slick was why he had come home early. As far as she was
concerned, Slick could go hang.
Then Slick began to cry.
“Slick?” Patricia asked. “What’s wrong?”
“…I didn’t make a sound…” Slick whispered over and over, and
gooseflesh crawled up Patricia’s arms.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”
“I didn’t,” Slick moaned. “I didn’t…”
“Where are you?” Patricia asked. “Are you at home? Do you need
help?”
Patricia couldn’t hear Slick wheezing into the earpiece anymore.
She hung up and dialed her back and got a busy signal. She thought
about not doing anything, but she couldn’t. Slick’s voice had scared
her, and something dark stirred in her gut. She grabbed her purse
and found Korey on the sun porch, eyes glued to the TV, which was
showing a commercial for Bounce Gentle Breeze dryer sheets.
“I have to run out to Kitty’s,” Patricia said, and realized that lies
came easier the more she told them. “Can you get the door?”
“Mm,” Korey said, not turning around.
Patricia supposed that was yes in seventeen-year-old language.
The Old Village streets were packed with a parade of kids and
parents, and Patricia wove through them too slowly. The fathers
looked pleasantly loaded, their steps getting heavier, their dips into
the candy bags becoming more frequent. She couldn’t imagine what
had happened to Slick. She needed to get to her house. She crawled
through the crowds at fifteen miles per hour, passing James Harris’s
house with its two jack-o’-lanterns flickering on the front porch, then
turned up McCants and hit the brakes.
The Cantwells lived on the corner of Pitt and McCants, and every
Halloween they filled their front yard with fake corpses hanging from
the trees, Styrofoam headstones, and skeletons wired to their
shrubberies. Every half hour, Mr. Cantwell emerged from the coffin
on the front porch dressed as Dracula, and the family performed a
ten-minute show. The Wolfman grabbed at the kids in front; the
Mummy stumbled toward little girls who ran away shrieking; Mrs.
Cantwell, wearing a fake warty nose, stirred her cauldron full of dry
ice and offered people ladles of edible green slime and gummy
worms. It ended with all of them dancing to “The Monster Mash”
followed by mass candy distribution.
The crowd around their house spilled off the sidewalk and blocked
the street. Patricia’s face twitched. Was it just Slick? What about the
rest of Slick’s family? Something was wrong. She needed to go. She
took her foot off the brake and rolled onto the edge of the
Simmonses’ front yard on the far side of McCants, flashing her lights
to make people clear the way. It took her five minutes to get through
the intersection, and then she picked up speed as she headed to
Coleman Boulevard, and hit fifty on Johnnie Dodds. Even that wasn’t
fast enough.
She pulled into Creekside and wove around trick-or-treaters as fast
as she dared. Both cars were parked in the Paleys’ driveway.
Whatever had happened had happened to the entire family. A
flickering white candle sat on a kitchen stool on the front porch. Next
to it sat a bowl of pamphlets emblazoned with orange type reading:
Trick? Yes. Treat? Only Through the Grace of God!
Patricia reached for the doorbell and stopped. What if it was James
Harris? What if he was still inside?
She tried the handle and the latch popped and the door swung
silently open. Patricia took a breath and stepped inside. She closed
the door behind her and stood, eyes and ears straining, listening for
any sign of life, looking for a single telltale detail: a drop of blood on
the hardwood floor, a picture knocked askew, a crack in one of the
display cabinets. Nothing. She crept down the front hall’s thick
runner and pushed open the door to the back addition. People
started screaming.
Every muscle in Patricia’s body snapped into action. Her hands
flew up to protect her face. She opened her mouth to scream. Then
the screaming dissolved into laughter and she looked past her hands
and saw Leland, LJ, their oldest, Greer, and Tiger sitting around the
long dinner table halfway across the room, their backs to her, all
laughing. Greer was the only one facing Patricia.
She caught sight of Patricia and stopped laughing. LJ and Tiger
spun around.
“Ohmygosh,” Greer said. “How’d you get in?”
A Monopoly board sat in the middle of the table. Slick wasn’t
there.
“Patricia?” Leland said, standing, genuinely baffled, trying to
smile.
“Don’t get up,” she said. “Slick called and I thought she was home.”
“She’s upstairs,” Leland said.
“I’ll just pop right up,” Patricia said. “Keep playing.”
She left the room before they could say anything and went up the
carpeted stairs fast. In the upstairs hall she didn’t have a clue which
way to go. The door to the master bedroom sat ajar. The bedroom
light was off but the master bathroom light was on. Patricia walked
in.
“Slick?” she called softly.
The shower curtain rattled and Patricia looked down and saw Slick
lying in the tub, her lipstick smeared, her mascara running down her
face in trails, her hair sticking out in clumps. Her skirt had been torn
and she only wore one dangling sand dollar earring.
Everything between them evaporated and Patricia knelt by the
bathtub.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick rasped, eyes wide with panic.
Her mouth moved soundlessly, straining to form words. Her hands
opened and closed.
“Slick?” Patricia repeated. “What happened?”
“I didn’t…,” Slick began, then licked her lips and tried again. “I
didn’t make a sound.”
“We need to call the ambulance,” Patricia said, standing up. “I’ll go
get Leland.”
“I…,” Slick said, and it trailed off to a whisper. “I didn’t…”
Patricia walked to the bathroom door and heard hollow flailing in
the tub behind her, and then Slick rasped, “No!”
Patricia turned around. Slick gripped the edge of the tub with both
hands, knuckles white, shaking her head, her single sand dollar
earring flopping from side to side.
“They can’t know,” she said.
“You’re hurt,” Patricia said.
“They can’t know,” Slick repeated.
“Slick!” Leland called from downstairs. “Everything all right?”
Slick locked eyes with Patricia and slowly shook her head back and
forth. Patricia eased out into the bedroom, eyes still on Slick.
“We’re fine,” she called back.
“Slick?” Leland said, and from his voice Patricia could tell he was
coming up the stairs.
Slick shook her head harder. Patricia held out one hand, then
raced to the hall and headed off Leland at the top of the stairs.
“What’s happening?” he asked, stopping two steps below her.
“She’s ill,” Patricia said. “I’ll sit with her and make sure she’s okay.
She didn’t want to break up your party.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Leland said. “You didn’t need to
come all this way. We’re right downstairs.”
He tried to take a step but Patricia moved to block him.
“Leland,” she said, smiling. “Slick wants you to have fun with the
children tonight. It’s important to her that they have…Christian
associations with Halloween. Let me handle this.”
“I want to see how she is,” he said, sliding one hand up the
banister, letting her know he was going to go right through her if
necessary.
“Leland.” She dropped her voice low. “It’s a female problem.”
She wasn’t sure what a female problem meant to Leland, but his
body sagged.
“All right,” he said. “But if she’s really not well, you’ll tell me?”
“Of course,” Patricia said. “Go back to the kids.”
He turned and went back downstairs. She waited until he passed
into the addition, and then sprinted back to the bathroom. Slick
hadn’t moved. Patricia knelt beside the tub, leaned forward, and got
her arms around Slick. She stood, pulling Slick up with her, amazed
at how weak her legs were. She helped her out of the tub, one foot at
a time.
“They can’t know,” Slick said.
“I didn’t say a word,” Patricia said.
She took off Slick’s one earring and laid it on the bathroom
counter.
“The other one’ll turn up,” she reassured her.
Patricia locked the bathroom door, then pulled Slick’s sweater over
her head and unfastened her brassiere. Slick’s breasts were small and
pale and the way she was hunched over, the way her ribs stuck out,
the way her breasts hung lifeless, she reminded Patricia of a plucked
chicken.
She sat Slick down on the toilet and put her fingers in the waist of
her skirt. It was torn down the back so there was no need to unzip it.
The tear went right through the suede, not down the seam. Patricia
didn’t know what was strong enough to do that.
As she started to pull off her skirt, Slick recoiled, pulling her hands
up over her groin.
“What’s wrong?” Patricia asked. “Slick, what’s wrong?”
Slick shook her head back and forth, and Patricia’s heart hitched.
She focused on keeping her voice steady and slow.
“Show me,” she insisted, but Slick shook her head faster. “Slick?”
“They can’t know,” Slick moaned.
She took Slick’s thin wrists and pulled them away. Slick resisted at
first, then went slack. Patricia pulled her skirt down. Slick’s panties
were torn. She pulled them off, lifting Slick’s buttocks. Slick clamped
her thighs closed.
“Slick,” Patricia said, using her nurse’s voice. “I need to see.”
She pried Slick’s knees apart. At first, Patricia didn’t know what
was coming through Slick’s sparse, blond pubic hair, and then she
saw Slick’s abdominal muscles convulse and a runnel of black jelly
oozed out of her vagina. It smelled rank, like something lying rotten
on the side of the road in summer. And it kept coming, an endless
ooze of fetid slime pooling in a quivering black puddle on the toilet
seat lid.
“Slick?” Patricia asked. “What happened?”
Slick met her eyes, tears trembling along her lower lids, and she
looked so haunted that Patricia leaned forward and embraced her.
Slick stayed stiff in her arms.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick insisted.
Patricia sprayed enough air freshener in the bathroom to make her
eyes burn, and then she ran the shower. She took off her blouse and
helped Slick back into the tub, holding her under the hot, strong
spray. She cleaned the makeup off Slick’s face with a washcloth,
rubbing until Slick’s skin turned pink, then used as much soap as she
could to clean between Slick’s legs.
“Bear down,” she told Slick over the spray. “Like you’re going to
the bathroom.”
She saw the last remaining black drops fall into the water, stretch
into tendrils, and swirl down the drain. She used an entire bottle of
St. Ives shampoo to wash Slick’s hair, and when they were finished
the bathroom smelled steamy and floral. She dried herself and put
her top back on while Slick stood naked and shivering, and then she

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.

32
I really should’ve fucking known it.
My head ached, and as I opened my eyes, it seemed like they might explode out of my skull. There
was a thick, heavy feeling in my stomach, and I turned my head to the side, suddenly afraid I was
going to puke, but nothing happened. I just coughed and retched and wondered how the hell I didn’t
see this coming.
Bea was always too smart for this to be a permanent solution. Hell, I was too smart for this to be
a permanent solution. But that first night, I’d been freaking out and panicking, and this had seemed …
okay, it had seemed insane even then, but I was improvising. It’s what I’d always done, made things
up on the spot, adapted to my circumstances.
Usually it worked.
But this was Bea. This was my wife.
Of course it ended up like this, me on the floor, bleeding, missing several teeth—and Bea out
there, somewhere, with Jane.
The thought caused a quick surge of panic, and I tried to sit up, but that wasn’t happening. I
collapsed to the floor in the fetal position, staring blurrily at my own blood as somewhere
downstairs, my wife and my fiancée … what, called the cops? Shared a glass of celebratory
champagne?
Christ, I hoped it was one of those options, because anything else scared the fuck out of me.
It’s not like I went to Hawaii with the express purpose of seducing and marrying Bea Mason. I hadn’t
known she’d be there—I’m not a stalker, for fuck’s sake. But I’d gotten good at spotting opportunities
over the years, and that’s what seeing Bea Mason on that beach was.
Not just an opportunity.
The opportunity.
I hadn’t known who she was, initially. I didn’t exactly keep up with the home décor industry, but
the girl I was traveling with, Charlie, did.
“Holy shit,” she’d said as we’d been sitting by the pool.
I’d looked up from my phone to see a woman walking by in a deep purple one-piece, a flowered
sarong around her waist. She was pretty and petite, and even from a distance, I caught the sparkle of
diamonds in her ears, but I didn’t think anything about her really warranted a “Holy shit.”
“What?” I’d asked, and Charlie had thumped me with a rolled-up magazine.
“That’s Bea Mason,” she’d said, and when I’d just stared at her, she’d rolled her eyes and said,
“She owns Southern Manors? It’s, like, huge? I got that gingham skirt you like so much from there.”
I had no idea what skirt she was talking about, but I smiled and nodded. “Oh, right. So, she’s a big
deal?”
“To women, yeah,” Charlie said, then wrinkled her nose. “But I wonder why she’s staying here?
This isn’t even the nicest resort on the island. If I had her money, I’d be at the Lanai.”
And that’s when Bea Mason suddenly got a lot more interesting to me.
Charlie had money. Lots of it. None of it was really hers, I guess, more her family’s, but she was
still comfortably loaded. Which meant that Bea Mason must have even more.
“It’s her company?” I asked, looking back at my phone, keeping my tone casual.
“Oh yeah,” Charlie said as she reached to pick her daiquiri up off the nearby table. I could smell
the sugary strawberry scent of it from my chair. “She’s super inspiring. Built it up from this little
internet business to a massive thing in like five years. Self-made multimillionaire. There was an
interview with her in Fortune that my dad sent to me, and I was like, ‘Goals.’”
I’d looked up from my phone then, and caught a glimpse of Bea walking away.
It wasn’t just the money. The money was a big part of it, sure, but I liked that idea—that she’d
made something out of nothing. And while Charlie ordered another drink and went back to her
magazine, I’d done some googling.
The Southern Manors website had been charming, if a little cloying, and the pictures of Bea had
proven that she was as attractive as I’d guessed. Not in the same showy way Charlie was, forever
Instagram ready, but in a subtler, classier way.
Learning her net worth added a certain sheen to things, too, of course.
Two hundred million dollars. That’s what Google said, although I knew those things weren’t
always accurate. Charlie’s dad was supposed to be worth fifty million, but most of that was tied up in
real estate and trusts. Charlie was even on an allowance. A generous one, definitely, but it wasn’t
exactly carte blanche.
“I’m gonna go up to the room for a bit,” I’d told her, standing up from my chair and stretching,
letting her gaze slide over my bare chest, my abs. I’d been up early to hit the gym, a chore, but a
necessary one.
“Want company?” she’d purred, and I’d been sure to grin at her, chucking her underneath her chin.
“No, because I’m gonna nap, and I won’t sleep if you’re around.”
She’d liked that, and caught my hand, pressing a kiss to the tips of my fingers before shooing me
off. “I’ll be up in a bit, then. Rest up.”
I’d gone back to the room, but I hadn’t napped. Instead, I’d thrown most of my things back in my
bag.
I was good with people, figuring them out, predicting what they’d do, and I had a hunch Charlie
was on to something with the Lanai. Bea Mason hadn’t stopped to sit at our pool, after all, just
walked through.
And I was right, I learned later. She’d just been checking out our pool area because she was trying
to get an idea of what kind of bathing suit prints were popular among, as she put it, “normal women.”
Looking back, that probably should’ve been a hint, too.
At the time, I just patted myself on the back for guessing correctly.
I wish I could say there was some special trick to doing the kinds of things I do, some kind of

The provided text contains Chapter 32 from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. This chapter, titled “Comparisons: Information Rejected,” delves into the social and personal dynamics among the characters, focusing particularly on the relationships and character growth.

The chapter opens with reflections on Esther Hargrave, noting her development into a fine girl despite her constrained social environment. The narrative voice, presumably Helen’s, expresses a deep bond with Esther, fearing for her future based on her own disillusioning experiences with marriage and societal expectations.

The narrative then shifts to a heartfelt conversation in the garden between Helen and her friend Milicent, where they discuss their children’s futures and the importance of marrying for love rather than wealth or status. Milicent confides her worries about her sister marrying for the wrong reasons, urging Helen to influence Esther against such a decision. This conversation underscores the theme of women’s limited choices and the impact of marriage on their well-being.

Next, the narrative moves inside, where Helen encounters Mr. Hattersley and later, Mr. Hargrave. Hattersley reveals his affection for his wife Milicent, albeit shown through a problematic lens of dominance and submission, highlighting the complexities within marital relationships and the era’s gender dynamics. The following interaction with Mr. Hargrave exposes another layer of social interaction, where he hints at possessing significant but distressful information he wishes to share with Helen, emphasizing issues of trust, reputation, and the burdens of knowing potentially harmful secrets.

Throughout the chapter, the dialogue and internal reflections explore themes of love, marriage, gender roles, and the social expectations placed upon individuals, especially women, in the 19th-century British society. The characters grapple with their desires, obligations, and the societal norms that dictate their lives, providing a rich tapestry of emotional and moral complexities that are central to Brontë’s work.

Overall, this chapter paints a detailed picture of the interpersonal dynamics and societal pressures within the story, offering insights into character development and thematic depth that define *The Tenant of Wildfell Hall*.