Written by MichaelSeptember 25, 2020October 5, 2020

Episode 1038

Previously…
– After remembering her argument with Caleb, Molly went into early labor. Once Molly gave birth, she panicked that the child wasn’t crying, and medical staff quickly rushed the baby out of the delivery room.
– Spencer tricked Loretta into admitting that she had somehow used Elly during Peter’s custody hearing to ensure that the judge would rule against Jason.
– Jason angrily confronted Sabrina after learning that she helped Helen Chase run the DNA test that proved he wasn’t Peter’s father. He went to drown his sorrows at The Wild Lady and was surprised when Natalie showed up there, too.

When the doors part with a ding, Tim Fisher hurries out of the elevator and toward the waiting area inside King’s Bay Memorial Hospital. He finds his mother frowning at a dated Time magazine, no doubt attempting to no avail to distract herself from the evening’s tense situation, while his teenage nephews sit nearby, focused on their iPhones.

“Mom,” Tim says, and immediately Paula looks up. She casts the magazine aside as if grateful for a reason to disregard it and rises to embrace him.

“Is there any news yet?” Tim asks as he wraps his arms around Paula.

“I’m afraid not,” she says. “We’re all just keeping our fingers crossed.”

“Plenty of women deliver this early. It might mean a few weeks in the NICU for the baby.”

“I’m doing my best to think about that,” Paula says with a brave smile.

“Hey, Uncle Tim,” Christian Taylor says as he, too, stands.

“Hey, guys,” Tim says to the twins, and even Caleb glances up from his phone and waves.

“Where are Sarah and Jason?” Tim asks.

“Sarah’s at home with Billy, since Matt is working tonight,” Paula explains. “I haven’t been able to reach Jason… but there was a bit of trouble earlier.”

Tim cocks his head. “What kind of trouble?”

“Something between him and Sabrina. It’s– well, actually, you should talk to Helen.”

“What does Helen have to do with this?” Tim asks, grimacing slightly.

“It’s a long story,” Paula says, “but it all springs from an encounter she had with Loretta Ragan. Helen is convinced that Loretta had her mugged the night before Jason and Natalie’s wedding.”

Tim draws a deep breath as he takes in this information. “Do I even want to ask why Helen Chase thinks Loretta had reason to have her mugged?”

“It has to do with the DNA test that Helen did on Peter. Regardless–”

Before she can finish the thought, however, all of them see Brent Taylor emerge through the swinging doors. He has his sleeves rolled up and an unmistakably exhausted expression on his face.

“Brent! How are things going?” Paula asks frantically. “What are the doctors saying?”

“Molly delivered already,” Brent says. “It was fast…”

Paula, Christian, Caleb, and Tim all stare at him as he trails off.

“Brent, what’s going on?” Tim asks, leaning forward anxiously.

Instead of answering immediately, Brent swipes a hand over his face.

“Dad?” Christian presses. “How are they? Are Mom and the baby okay?”

—–

As a Sam Hunt song plays over the speakers inside The Wild Lady, Jason Fisher sits at the bar, taking a drink of his IPA and watching a gaggle of young women crowd around their friend, who has just taken a tumble off the mechanical bull in the far corner.

“Wow. She looks like I feel,” a voice says from behind him. It is so familiar that it activates Jason’s instincts before he can even process it on a logical level, and when he turns his head, he is less than pleased to see Natalie Bishop standing there.

“And it looks like you’re having a rough night, too,” she says, wasting no time in seating herself on the stool right beside him.

Jason rolls his eyes and takes another big gulp of his beer. “I am now.”

“Don’t be such a drama queen. It doesn’t suit you.”

“If I asked you for advice, I must’ve had about 20 more of these than I realize,” he says, indicating the beer.

Undaunted, Natalie flags down a bartender sporting a man-bun and orders a martini.

“So what is it?” she asks as she watches her drink being made.

Jason continues staring straight ahead at the display of liquor behind the bar. “What’s what?”

“What’s got you drinking alone at a bar? Where’s Sophie?”

“She’s at camp.”

A laugh sputters out of Natalie. “You convinced her to go to camp?”

“It’s a zombie-themed camp.”

“I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“Oh, it’s a thing. It’s kind of a STEM-themed camp with this whole zombie thing going to make it more fun. I’m hoping she learns something and has some fun. Maybe makes some friends.”

“She’s a good kid,” Natalie says as the bartender delivers her martini. “I bet she’ll enjoy that.”

“I hope so.”

Natalie takes a careful sip of the martini and then says, “I miss Sophie. She really brings such an, um, X-factor to even the most routine of days.”

Jason can’t help but chuckle a little; he knows exactly what she means. “Yep. That’s Sophie.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s getting to do that. Now what about you?”

“What about me?”

“This is about Sabrina, isn’t it?” Natalie says. “What did she do?”

He simply stares back at her, dumbfounded.

“I know you, Jason,” she says, fingers coiling around the stem of the martini glass. “And as a woman who has personally driven you to drink, I know exactly what mode you’re in. Instead of shutting everyone out the way you usually do, why don’t you use me as a sounding board? It’s the least I can give you after what I put you through.”

Jason bites his lower lip as he considers her offer.

“Come on,” Natalie tells him. “I’m serious. What happened with you and Sabrina?”

“Do you want any more cocoa?” Spencer Ragan asks his son, who is ensconced in the depths of a large, well-worn armchair inside Cassie’s Coffee House. Peter crinkles his nose, shakes his head, and then refocuses on the iPad in his lap.

Spencer leans back in his own chair, across a weathered oak coffee table, and checks his phone. The coffee shop isn’t exactly busy, but there are enough people swirling around that he keeps double-checking to be sure that he hasn’t somehow missed the person who has agreed to meet him this evening. The tones of a woman’s softly crooning voice and a strumming guitar come through over the sound system.

He is reaching for his coffee cup once more when he glances toward the entrance and sees her. Spencer raises his arm and waves, and a second later, Elly Vanderbilt spots him. She heads directly toward him.

“Hey,” she says, making no effort to hide her confusion at his request for a meeting.

“Thanks for coming. Can I get you something? A coffee? Tea?”

“Um, I’m good. Thanks. I’ll be better when you tell me what was so important that I just had to come down here.” She notices Peter, nearly swallowed whole by the cushy chair. “Hi, Peter.”

If the boy hears her, he doesn’t so much as flinch, let alone acknowledge her.

“Noise-cancelling headphones,” Spencer explains. “I don’t know how people raised kids before these things existed.”

“You bought a toddler Beats By Dre headphones?”

Spencer shrugs. “They’re nice. They work. Why wouldn’t you?”

Elly scoffs and rounds the table. She seats herself in the rust-orange armchair next to the one Spencer is occupying.

“So let’s get to it,” she says. “What am I doing here? Why couldn’t this just be a phone call or an e-mail?”

“Because I need you to respond and not ignore me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve tried to have this conversation with you before, and you always shut me down,” Spencer says.

Elly flips her red hair over her shoulder. “Are you kidding me? Is this about your crazy-ass mom again?”

“Yes.”

She grabs her purse and gets up. “I’m not doing this.”

“That’s the thing,” he says. “It’s about the custody case… and my mother… and also your internship at Anatoli, Stallsmith, and Kelley.”

Spencer watches her intently, and he sees the way she freezes as soon as he says those words.

“So, Elly,” he continues, “are we finally going to talk about this, or what?”

—–

Brent inhales deeply, his face ashen, and watches as a nurse pushes an elderly patient in a wheelchair past the waiting area.

“Mom is okay,” he says. “She’s asleep right now. The labor took a lot out of her.”

The four sets of eyes fixed upon him wait as the tense silence stretches on.

“And what about the baby?” Paula finally blurts out.

“They had to take the baby out of the delivery room,” he says. “I don’t know — it all happened so fast.”

“They didn’t say what was going on?” Tim asks.

Brent shakes his head. “There wasn’t any crying. God, I don’t even know if the baby’s a boy or a girl. It was a total blur in there.”

“It’s good that they moved so fast, right?” Christian says. “They’re doing whatever they can.”

“That’s right, buddy,” Brent says. “All we can do is say our prayers and cross our fingers.”

“Can we see Molly?” Paula asks. “Even if she’s asleep, I should be there with my little girl.”

“They’re moving her to another room, but yeah, I’ll bring you back as soon as she’s settled,” Brent tells his former mother-in-law.

Paula covers her mouth with both her hands. “I can’t believe this is happening. Molly has been so careful about resting and avoiding stress…”

Caleb, who has been silent this entire time, catches the all-too-knowing look that Brent shoots his way. He immediately averts his eyes.

“What’s important now is that the doctors do what they have to do,” Tim says.

Paula reaches out and takes her son’s hand. “We just have to be patient. Everything will be okay. I know it will.”

—–

“Wow,” Natalie says as she downs the glass of her martini and sets the glass down on the bar. “I didn’t know Old MacDonald had it in her.”

“Natalie,” Jason says firmly. “Come on.”

“I’m just saying, I thought Sabrina was all about honesty and manners and all that crap.” She pauses to signal to the bartender that she’d like another drink. “But I’m sorry that happened to you. For what it’s worth, you don’t deserve any of what you’ve been put through.”

“Thanks.” He sighs and finishes his beer. “I know that she thought she was being helpful, but the fact that she didn’t even tell me after the fact…”

“It’s because she knew what she did was wrong. Take it from a professional truth-fudger.”

“You would know, huh?”

The bartender places Natalie’s fresh martini down in front of her.

“I’ll do another IPA, too,” Jason tells him. “Thanks.”

“What now?” Natalie asks.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re done with Sabrina? For good?”

His right shoulder shrugs up toward his ear. “I don’t know how else to handle it. I thought I could trust her, but knowing this…”

“In a way, it’s a good thing,” she says, picking up the martini glass.

Jason furrows his brow. “In what world is this a good thing?”

“You’re still young. You’re…” Her red lips hover over the rim of her glass. “You’re hot! You deserve to have some fun.”

“Natalie…”

“No way you’re convincing me that Little Miss Turnip Truck has been putting out.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“So I’m right!” She snaps her fingers excitedly. “I knew it.”

Jason starts to respond, only to pause when the bartender returns with his beer. He quickly thanks the man.

“What?” Natalie asks, seeing the lingering look on Jason’s face.

“You’re just surprisingly smug for someone who’s been trapped in a marriage of convenience for, what, two years?”

“Trapped?!”

“What, you’re going to try and convince me you’re in love with Spencer now?”

“I didn’t say that.” She lets out a huff and sips her martini slowly. “What Spencer and I have — it works for us.”

“What do you have? Mutual disdain and a felonious houseguest?”

Though she is poised to fire back, Natalie stops herself. She sets down her glass, and her expression softens.

“Honestly,” she tells him, “it’s not as chaotic as you probably think it is. Spencer goes to work and sees his friends, I go to spin class and take care of Peter, we have dinner together a lot of the time… It works.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

She recoils with offense. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You say you know me. That goes both ways, Natalie. I know you well enough to know you’re not the settling kind. Even if Spencer does have money for you to spend.”

As if caught, she goes silent. Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” comes on, and a squeal of excitement flies up from the group of women who have now moved a safe distance away from the mechanical bull.

“Believe it or not,” she finally says, “I am capable of growth. Everything that’s happened — it’s made me realize more than ever that my kids have to be my priority. And for now, this is what’s best. Even if Bree doesn’t see it that way.”

“You can’t blame her for not wanting to live in the same house as Loretta,” Jason says.

“I know. I don’t blame her. It’s just hard when I– I feel like I don’t have a choice.”

“You just said your kids have to be your priority, but then you let that nutjob live in your house over your daughter.”

“I really feel like I can’t win, Jason,” she says, her body sinking with despair. “If we set Loretta off, I’m scared she’ll take Peter, or do something even crazier. For now, we need to keep an eye on her. If that means Bree needs to be with Conrad, where she’s safe, I have to deal with that.”

Jason takes another lengthy, thoughtful pause before responding. “Okay. I get that.”

“I’m glad Bree has her father,” Natalie adds. “And you. You have no idea how happy I am that you’re coaching her again.”

“You know I love Bree,” he says, “and if there’s anything I can do to help her, I will.”

“Thank you. I mean it.”

She scans the bar area for the bartender, who is nowhere to be seen. Instead she catches the eye of Jimmy Trask, who is unloading a tray of clean glassware onto a rack.

“Can we have two tequila shots?” Natalie calls out.

“Are you crazy?” Jason asks.

“I think we could both use ‘em,” she says as Jimmy leaves the glasses and hurries toward them.

“Am I nuts, or are the two of you doing shots together?” he asks.

“We are,” Natalie says, and when Jason opens his mouth to protest, she cuts him off: “Think of it as a long-overdue peace treaty.”

After a moment, Jason closes his mouth and shrugs.

“Two tequila shots, coming up,” Jimmy says, reaching for a bottle.

—–

Inside Cassie’s Coffee House, Elly clutches her purse in front of her body.

“What do you care about an internship I did in law school?” she asks.

“What I care about is why you left that internship four weeks early,” Spencer tells her, “especially since, from the looks of it, you were the star intern.”

“It wasn’t a good fit. There were a lot of… weird politics and stuff.” She waits, seemingly for that to deter him, but when he simply continues staring, Elly snaps, “What else do you want me to say?”

Spencer casts a careful glance at Peter, who is still absorbed in the program on his iPad, and then stands, too.

“I want you to be honest with me, Elly.”

“I don’t know how else to tell you that my life is none of your business.”

“That’s the thing. It is–”

“Oh, shut up, Spencer.”

“–or, this part of it is,” he says confidently. “I know that this is what my mother used to get you to do whatever you did with that P.I. to make Jason lose the custody case.”

She rolls her eyes, but there is something broad, something exaggerated, about it, and it reads as false to Spencer as he expected it might.

“What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense,” Elly replies. “Loretta blackmailed me because I dropped out of an internship? Looks like Sherlock Holmes’s job is safe from you for the time being.”

Again she moves to leave, but before she gets more than a few steps, Spencer spits out, “Then why did Anatoli’s wife call you to testify at their divorce hearing?”

Elly stops mid-movement. For several seconds, Spencer faces the back of her flowing red hair, waiting to see if she will address what he just said or simply flee.

Finally, she turns around. With a fiery new intensity in her eyes, she marches toward him, allowing her to speak in a voice barely above a whisper and still be heard.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, her words as brittle as the look on her face.

“It wasn’t that hard to dig up,” Spencer says. “You know, I looked up this Anatoli guy. Not a bad-looking dude at all. Actually kind of a stud if you’re into that super-corporate vibe. And I’d give you hell about his age, but here I am married to a woman who–”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I know my mother forced you to help her rig the custody case, and I want her out of King’s Bay and away from Peter. And I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t mind neutralizing her so she can’t hold whatever this is over your head anymore.”

“I haven’t had any contact with Loretta in a while,” Elly says. She sounds broken, exhausted, now.

“That doesn’t mean she won’t call in a favor when she needs one,” Spencer tells her. “So what do you say? Are you finally going to help me? Are you finally going to let me help you?”

—–

Brent uses his knuckles to rap lightly on the half-open door of Molly’s new room. When he peeks inside, he sees her awake in the bed, her body a tangle of tension and panic as she fights tiredness and holds herself up off the pillow.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“I’m fine. What have they told you about the baby? They won’t tell me anything.”

“Nothing yet. I’m sure if they have to operate, they’ll have to tell us soon.”

Molly’s lips, which still wear most of the pink lipstick that she had on earlier even though the rest of her makeup has run or sweated off, flatten out into a terse line.

“This isn’t how I thought this would go at all,” she says.

He comes to her bedside. “What’s that saying? ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’”

She groans. “They have to have some news by now.”

“I’ll go ask a nurse to find Dr. Longo and get an update,” he says. “How’s that?”

“That sounds good. Thank you.”

Brent reaches out and takes one of her hands, cradling it between both of his.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he says. “We just have to have faith and be patient.”

“I hope you’re right. I’ll feel a lot better when we have some solid information, though.”

Another quick knock at the door snatches both their attention. They look up to see Dr. Longo, his graying hair still covered by a blue surgical cap, standing there.

“How’s our baby?” Molly asks, pushing through a wince as she bolts upright in the bed. “Is it– did we have a boy or a girl?”

“You gave birth to a son,” the doctor says, but there is something reserved about the way he speaks, something that sends a chill through Brent’s body.

He knows what Dr. Longo is going to say before the man can even say it.

“Unfortunately, the baby was born too prematurely,” he tells them. “I’m so sorry. Your son — he didn’t make it.”

Brent feels all the air rush out of his body. He grips Molly’s hand tighter, as much to reassure her as to steady himself.

“No,” she says, wagging her head back and forth insistently. “No. That can’t– it can’t be happening.”

“I am so sorry,” Dr. Longo repeats.

“No!” Molly cries, as a guttural sob overtakes her being. She collapses against Brent as he folds in toward her, unable to find even the strength to cry.

END OF EPISODE 1038

What will the baby’s death mean for Molly and Brent’s family?
Will Elly finally help Spencer bring down Loretta?
Where will Jason and Natalie’s new ‘peace treaty’ lead them?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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