It looks to me as if the zone
property returns the name of the "zone interval" which is applicable for the specified time. So for a summer time it will return "EDT" but for a winter time it will return "Easter Standard Time". (It's odd that it uses an abbreviation for one but not the other, but hey...)
So it is using the same time zone for both - those are just different aspects within the same time zone: sometimes it's standard time, sometimes it's daylight saving time.
If you print Time.now.localtime
it should show you a -05:00 to show that the current offset from UTC in Eastern Time is -5 hours (i.e. Eastern Time is currently 5 hours behind UTC).