The Inmate

When they are 10, Tim gives Brooke a necklace with a snowflake pendant. The pendant has diamonds on the snowflake’s points. Brooke wears this necklace daily and often plays with it when she is thinking or worried about something. The necklace symbolizes Tim’s deep love for Brooke; to see Brooke in this necklace offers Tim some encouragement that she might eventually return his feelings. This is likely why, years later, Tim buys Brooke a similar necklace, a sentimental gift that speaks of their deep affection for each other.

For Brooke, this necklace takes on a much more sinister meaning after Shane uses it to try to strangle her. The necklace breaks that night and disappears, but Brooke never forgets the feel of it around her neck or the sensation of being choked. When Tim gives her another necklace for her birthday, the thoughtlessness of the present causes Brooke to doubt Tim’s innocence, justifying her conviction that Tim is capable of horrific crimes later when he is arrested for the murder of Kelli Underwood.

Shane lives with his mother in a rundown farmhouse. Brooke is taken aback by its shabby roof, broken door frame, and leaning porch—evidence that she has at least some of the same biases as her parents, who don’t approve of the lower-class Shane.