Laurie sees Jo and Amy from his window and joins them, leading Amy to recall her physical intimacy with him last night. She also recalls fighting with Beth just before that.

Jo calls 911 from her cell phone and then runs home to bring Mrs. March to the scene.

Meg March is at Harvard, where she shares an apartment with Sallie Gardiner and Annie Moffat. Jo calls to tell her that Beth has died. Too hungover to drive, Meg takes an Uber ride home. The Uber driver, not realizing who she is, mentions that the March sisters live in Concord, too.

It’s the summer before Beth’s death. Meg, home for summer break, argues with Jo about their father’s book. Rob March wrote the book, titled Little Women, about his daughters. Meg is furious about it, but Jo convinces her to attend the launch party. They arrive to find a crowd of protesters, angry that the author exploited his daughters’ stories to advance his career. Jo tries to defend her father to the crowd but is unsuccessful. Flipping through the book, Meg finds painfully personal details about her life.

The March home is surrounded by police and reporters when Meg arrives. She meets Detective Freya Kirke, who tells her that Beth may have been murdered. Meg blames her father’s book and the negative attention it has drawn to the family. Amy says that the book made Beth question her value and wonders if she might have died by suicide. Meg tells Kirke that they’ve had trouble from protesters, vandals, and an intruder who planted a recording device in their home. She also reveals that Beth dies at the end of the novel.

Since Little Women’s publication, Beth has felt like she’s being watched and judged. Controversy over the book has increased sales and put it at the top of bestseller lists. In real life, Beth recently survived a car crash. Now, she wonders why her father changed the outcome, making her character’s death the only fictional aspect of his so-called novel.

Many readers believe that Beth is actually dead, including the editors at Teen Vogue, who ask to interview Jo, Meg, and Amy. When they learn that Beth is alive, they grant her an interview and a chance to claim her share of the public’s attention.

Jo and Meg inform Detective Kirke that criticism of their father turned to hatred and death threats after the Teen Vogue interview. After someone wrote “killer” on their garage door in June, Rob went to Canada either to protect his family, in Jo’s opinion, or to hide out, in Meg’s. When police investigated the recording device incident in July, Detective Davis concluded that Jo had faked the intrusion to get attention, earning the Marches’ animosity toward Concord police. Now, he’s joining the investigation of Beth’s murder, despite protests from Mrs. March. Jo expresses her refusal to cooperate with him, but he’s more interested in talking to Amy.

Detectives Davis and Kirke interview Amy. They already know that she had a fight with Beth at the New Year’s Eve party. She tells them that the fight was about Beth’s plan to attend Plumfield boarding school, though this is far from the whole truth. They catch Amy in a lie: She says that she slept at her cousin’s house, but Laurie already told them that Amy spent the night with him.

In June, Jo scrubs paint from the vandalized garage door in an attempt to convince her father not to leave. He comes outside to say goodbye and tells her that this is “just a chapter” (56), one of his favorite metaphors about the transience of life’s hardships. Jo hopes that it will be a short chapter, like the single-sentence chapter in Stephen King’s novel It.

Chapter 10 consists of one sentence: “A lot of stuff happens without Dad” (59).

Needing an outlet for her emotions surrounding Beth’s murder, Jo writes about her experiences that morning. She thinks about Nan Dashwood, an editor who contacted her last summer and asked her to write her own story in response to her father’s book. Nan found Jo’s first draft boring and urged Jo to include more drama and intrigue. Jo realizes the current situation would make a thrilling book. She’d title it: “Beth Is Dead” (61).

Henry Hummel shows up at the house in a panic, having just heard the news. He tells the detectives that he’s Beth’s boyfriend.

The first week of Beth’s junior year has been the worst of her life due to her sudden notoriety and the gossip that’s followed. She feels intense pressure to do something meaningful after saying, “My story ends in the book, but wait and see what I do next” (65), in the Teen Vogue interview. Then Beth meets Henry, who just moved to the area after his mother died. His interest in her seems genuine. She tells Henry about her death in the book and how she’s trying to be different from that version of herself.