Chapter 4 Summary

Carey Carr picks Helen Loftis up to take her to the funeral home since Helen has refused to go there with Milton. On the way to Helen's house, he remembers the day he and Helen began their friendship, six years earlier. He remembers thinking then what an odd, intense woman she had seemed that first time she had come to their house in the rain. That day, six years prior, Helen had admitted to Carey that she hated her daughter Peyton and that Milton was having an affair with a woman Helen refused to name. They drank whiskey and Helen chain smoked, regaling Carey with her sad, self-pitying tale of betrayal and martyrdom. Her first private conversation with Carey is a series of things remembered; things Helen never told anyone else.

One of Helen's reminiscences entails a meeting she had with Dolly Bonner...