In Chap­ter 19, Mikael Blomkvist inves­ti­gates Hen­rik Vanger’s files on Lis­beth Salan­der and dis­cov­ers a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Zala linked to a mur­der case. He finds no sol­id evi­dence of Salan­der’s guilt but is con­flict­ed due to her past help in sav­ing his career. Blomkvist grap­ples with doubts about Salan­der’s men­tal health, influ­enced by her psy­chi­atric his­to­ry and Dr. Teleborian’s com­ments on the state of men­tal health­care in Swe­den. Despite his uncer­tain­ties, he resolves to sup­port Salan­der if she is impli­cat­ed.

In Chap­ter 19 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint reflects on her past as she watch­es an emp­ty hive from her yard. The mem­o­ry of a vis­it to this same place with Patch two years ago resur­faces, evok­ing nos­tal­gia and warmth. As they nav­i­gate the wood­ed area, he men­tions he carved their ini­tials into a near­by oak tree, sig­ni­fy­ing a youth­ful promise. Saint express­es a mix of play­ful irri­ta­tion and affec­tion when he jok­ing­ly acknowl­edges the act as defac­ing nature.

Saint invites Patch to her birth­day din­ner, anx­i­ety bub­bling beneath her casu­al ques­tion. Their con­ver­sa­tion takes a humor­ous turn when Patch dis­cov­ers wolf scat, prompt­ing him to sug­gest they pre­pare for poten­tial dan­ger. Saint feels pride as she retrieves a repli­ca flint­lock pis­tol she has car­ried, thrilled to have a sem­blance of pro­tec­tion as they explore.

The cama­raderie con­tin­ues to build as Saint inquires about the cake she is prepar­ing for her par­ty, even­tu­al­ly reveal­ing it’s a pirate-themed cake dec­o­rat­ed with skull and cross­bones. This lit­tle white lie fills her with embar­rass­ment and excite­ment, but Patch’s delight feels infec­tious, and he promis­es to attend with a gift in hand.

Their play­ful ban­ter trans­forms as they jour­ney into the wilder­ness, encoun­ter­ing thorny net­tles, heavy rain, and the sense of adven­ture. In this moment, lying togeth­er on the ground, Saint asks Patch about the changes she might face now that she is turn­ing a year old­er. Their exchange remains light-heart­ed as he teas­es about her phys­i­cal appear­ance, yet they delve deep­er when Saint reveals the back­sto­ry behind her name, giv­en by her grand­par­ents in hon­or of her deceased moth­er.

As the rain falls soft­ly around them, Saint reflects on her iden­ti­ty tied to her name, and Patch affirms both her beau­ty and intel­li­gence, cre­at­ing an inti­mate bond. This chap­ter cap­tures the nuances of youth, friend­ship, and the long­ing for con­nec­tions that tran­scend the ordi­nary, while the chang­ing world around them serves as a back­drop to their evolv­ing rela­tion­ship.

In Chap­ter 19, the atmos­phere is charged as Lila’s wed­ding rehearsal unfolds at the Break­ers. Patri­cia, Lila’s moth­er, is sober and express­es her fatigue, while atten­dees are arranged by Nan­cy, the event plan­ner, in an order of sig­nif­i­cance. Laugh­ter echoes when Nan­cy advis­es every­one to refrain from touch­ing the venue. After her depar­ture, the ten­sion eas­es. Mar­la intro­duces her son, Oliv­er, to Phoebe, reveal­ing his enthu­si­asm for lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Per­cy Jack­son series. Mean­while, Phoebe feels a dis­con­nec­tion from her dis­tant hus­band as she ignores his call.

Con­ver­sa­tions at the rehearsal din­ner reveal per­son­al strug­gles and con­nec­tions, illus­trat­ed through Mar­la’s inse­cu­ri­ties about her mar­riage and Phoe­be’s bur­geon­ing inti­ma­cy with Jim, Lila’s broth­er. As they nav­i­gate the event, Phoebe observes the cou­ple sign­ing away their pasts in the wed­ding’s rit­u­al. She con­tem­plates poten­tial action with Jim, a younger man whose com­pa­ny feels unex­pect­ed­ly safe amidst emo­tion­al chaos.

As the din­ner unfolds, humor and ten­sion intermingle—Lila is torn between her mother’s overt dis­play with a provoca­tive paint­ing of her­self and her need for auton­o­my on her spe­cial day. Jim’s speech, a touch­ing trib­ute trans­form­ing into a comedic onslaught, brings emo­tions to the fore­front, demon­strat­ing the deep famil­ial bond and love present at the cer­e­mo­ny.

How­ev­er, the set­ting also reveals under­ly­ing tensions—Lila’s agi­ta­tion with Jim’s quirks and the mount­ing frus­tra­tion over the omit­ted palate cleansers once again leads to a rift between Lila and Gary, hint­ing at deep­er issues in their rela­tion­ship. The moment cul­mi­nates in Jim’s poignant speech that speaks of love, grief, and famil­ial bonds, unit­ing every­one despite the chaos.

In the after­math, Lila’s inse­cu­ri­ties and rela­tion­ships are strained as she and Phoebe grap­ple with hon­esty and expec­ta­tions amid famil­ial oblig­a­tions and per­son­al desires, lead­ing to a tense con­ver­sa­tion regard­ing loy­al­ty and love. As emo­tions unrav­el, a dark turn of events occurs with Juice, high­light­ing the frag­ile state of their fam­i­ly. The chap­ter con­cludes with Phoebe reflect­ing on her com­plex inter­ac­tions with Gary as the exter­nal fes­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ue, fore­shad­ow­ing fur­ther emo­tion­al devel­op­ments.

Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

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 di�erent. Some women have an easy time of it. I was terri�ed of
giv­ing birth nat­u­ral­ly. When the doc­tor o�ered 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
un�t. 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.