Written by MichaelOctober 18, 2020October 22, 2020

Episode 1044

Previously…
– The doctor told Molly and Brent that their newborn son had died soon after birth — but the doctor later met with Loretta, who had seemingly paid him off to tell the Taylors that story.
– On the cruise, Diane had a fling with a younger doctor named Ben, to whom she introduced herself as “Ann Marie.” When he fell asleep, she crept out of his cabin and went to pack her bags.
– Jason was shocked when a teenage Sophie returned home from camp ahead of schedule and with no warning.

When Molly Taylor was young, she would take any chance she could get to practice her runway strut. She would emulate the models she saw in magazines, in the movies, and in whatever clips of fashion shows she got to see, remembering to stand tall, not to swing her arms too much or too little, and to keep her gaze fixed on something in the distance to avoid any distractions. As she grew older, she realized that it was the fashion, not the modeling herself, that she loved; besides, as a teenager, she quickly discovered that she was too short to be a model, and having that many eyes focused solely on her made her uncomfortable.

Today, however, she is summoning those old lessons as she walks through the corridors of Objection Designs. A few weeks have passed since that horrible night at the hospital — the one that still feels like a nightmare, except when she wakes up from her fitful sleep, shrouded in darkness and fear, she remembers that it is all too real. She went into labor early, and her son was born but never really had a chance to live. The doctors had to rush him into surgery, and the next thing Molly and Brent knew, their son had died. And the more she hung around the house, resting as instructed, receiving visits from family and friends, the more she thought about it. Over and over.

And so, today she finds herself back in the office, dressed in a beautifully tailored black suit with stilettos and a ruched pink blouse (to keep the ensemble from looking too morbid), and recalling those same runway rules that she practiced as a kid. As much as she normally tries to make eye contact with and smile at any and every person she can at Objection, she doesn’t think she can handle it yet, so she fixes her stare upon whatever wall is at the end of a given stretch and walks as tall as she can. Still, she can feel their eyes on her, can hear the whispers they’ll be sharing as soon as she passes.

Do you really think she’s okay?

I wonder what she did to go into labor so early.

Is she really in any shape to run this company?

The imagined voices nearly become too much, and she feels herself ready to burst into tears by the time she reaches her own office suite. Thankfully, her first assistant, Ashley, isn’t at her desk, and there are no visitors waiting, so the only other person in the space is Molly’s niece and new second assistant, Tori Gray.

“Hey,” Tori says, her sad eyes falling upon Molly in exactly the way Molly has feared.

Molly forces a smile. “Any messages?”

Tori indicates a stack of messages written on paper slips. “Gia has called about ten times. Do you want me to get her for you?”

“I’ll e-mail her. She gets so worked up that she won’t hear me and will have to call back anyway. It’s easier if I put it in writing.” Molly moves through the anteroom toward her own private office. “Give me ten minutes and we can start running through the rest of those.”

“Okay.” Tori swallows a visible lump in her throat. “How are you?”

“I’m good. I promise.”

“Are you really?” Tori asks as she stands from her desk chair. “Aunt Molly, I’ve been through what you’re going through. Are you sure you’re ready to be back here?”

—–

Elsewhere on the eighteenth floor of Winston Towers, Trevor Brooks stands over a fax machine in the copy room, where a perpetual plume of muggy air seems to linger.

“Dammit,” he mutters as the sheet of paper he is attempting to fax once again feeds right through the machine, seemingly without being scanned or faxed or whatever it is supposed to do. A moment later, however, the machine spits out a sheet of glossy fax paper, as well… but when Trevor checks it, the sheet is blank.

“Ugh!” He snatches it from the machine’s tray, crumples it up, and tosses it behind himself with annoyance.

“Whoa!” an alarmed voice exclaims, and Trevor turns to see Objection’s new receptionist, Finn Campbell, being smacked in the chest with the projectile.

“Oh, god. I’m so sorry,” Trevor says.

Finn laughs, one corner of his mouth drawing up into a lopsided grin. “It’s okay. I’ll just consider myself lucky it wasn’t the entire fax machine you chucked at me.”

Trevor shakes his head in despair. “I cannot get this stupid thing to send a fax.”

“Here. Let me see.” Finn moves to the machine, takes Trevor’s document, and sets it in the tray. He points to the number printed at its top. “Is this the number it’s going to?”

“Yeah, if it ever works.”

Finn punches in the number, along with a sequence of buttons, and within seconds, the machine is slowly sucking in the paper, amidst a chorus of archaic-sounding beeps and boops.

“Is it working?” Trevor asks with amazement.

“Fingers crossed,” Finn says, and a few moments later, the machine emits a confirmation sheet.

“Thank you so much,” Trevor says with a sigh of relief as he takes his original document off the tray. “You’re my hero.”

Again Finn shoots him that asymmetrical smirk. “That’s all it took? I’ve been aiming way too high.”

“You have no idea. I’m Trevor, by the way. Trevor Brooks. I’m on the marketing team. I’ve seen you at reception.”

“Finn,” the receptionist responds as he sticks out his hand. “I knew you looked familiar. You used to model for Objection, didn’t you?”

“Wow. You really do know your stuff.”

Finn’s cheeks flush. “I’ve been a fan for a long time. Of the company and of yours. I hope that isn’t weird to say.”

“Not at all. Thanks. And I really do owe you. This has been…” Trevor gestures at the paper. “It’s nonstop.”

“I hope I’m not stepping on any toes,” Finn says, “but I assume you’re dealing with something major?”

Trevor nods. “My dad passed away a little while back.”

“Oh, god. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks. A lot of logistics to handle, and it’s, like, the last thing I want to think about most of the time.”

“I don’t blame you. But hey, at least this fax is out of the way, right? One less thing.”

“Oh, this is only the first step,” Trevor says. “And it’s something I really, really don’t want to deal with.”

—–

“I don’t see what’s so bad about this,” Paula Fisher says as she sits at her kitchen table, watching a video on the iPhone that her youngest son is holding up.

“Just wait,” Jason Fisher responds. On the phone, a piano instrumental of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” plays, while Sophie stands onstage in a shapeless, flowing black dress, holding a microphone.

“It’s funny how we feel so much, but cannot say a word,” Sophie sings. “We are screaming inside, but we can’t be heard…”

“She’s not the best singer I’ve ever heard,” Paula says, “but why would they kick her out of the camp for this?”

Jason holds up his index finger, as if to say, Here we go.

Right on cue, the sound of a chainsaw’s gnashing teeth cuts into the track, and Sophie whips open her cloak, revealing a plastic — but quite realistic — chainsaw.

“I will dismember you!” she wails at the unseen audience as she swings the chainsaw through the air. “Will you dismember me?!”

“Oh dear,” Paula says as she brings a hand up to cover her mouth.

“I’ll spare you the part where she makes it look like she’s cutting her own throat with the chainsaw,” Jason says, pressing a button to stop the video. “But yeah, turns out that it wasn’t an entirely mutual decision for Sophie to leave camp.”

With eyes widened in disbelief, Paula says, “And they made her leave immediately after the talent show? Without even calling you?”

“No, Sophie called an Uber and told them it was her father picking her up. I’m still not sure how she managed to keep them from calling me. The camp director was all too happy to forward this video when I accused them of letting a 14-year-old leave on her own in the dead of night.”

“Thank goodness she made it home safely, I suppose.”

“At least there’s that. Yeah.” Jason sighs and places the phone down on the table. “And she’s not leaving the house except to go to school for the foreseeable future. As you can imagine, she’s been trying to re-litigate that every day since.”

“You can always send her over here if you need a break,” Paula tells him.

“Thanks. Between you guys and the Chases, I feel like I’m not alone in this, but whew… I don’t think there’s any way to be prepared for having a teenager.”

“That’s the thing no one tells you about parenting: you’re constantly learning as you go. Even when you think you have a particular stage figured out… you don’t.”

“That’s reassuring,” Jason says. “But yeah, I keep reminding myself how lucky we are that she made it home all right and that she’s safe. I keep thinking about what Molly’s going through…”

“My heart breaks for her and Brent and the boys. Her due date would be any day now. It’s so sad.”

“I went by the other day, and she was very… not what I expected.”

“How so?”

“She was in the middle of cleaning the house top-to-bottom,” Jason explains, “and she had just finished baking cookies.”

“It’s her way of handling grief, I suppose,” Paula says. “Staying busy.”

“It’s very Molly of her. And I guess I’m in no position to judge anyone’s grieving process.”

Paula reaches over the table to take her son’s hand.

“And just like we were there for you when you lost Courtney, even when you tried to push us away,” she says, “we’re all going to be there for Molly. That’s the only way she will really get through this.”

“You got off the ship mid-cruise and never looked back? This feels like an episode of Dateline.”

Sarah Fisher Gray stares in disbelief across the table at her best friend, who is enjoying a salmon salad for lunch. The pair sits at a table near the center of Bill’s on the Pier, which is quite busy at the height of the lunch hour.

“I didn’t vanish into the night,” Diane Bishop replies. “I got off at the next port, took my luggage, and told someone on the crew that I’d be flying home from there.”

“And you didn’t tell your maritime boyfriend that you were leaving?”

Diane shakes her head vigorously. “No. No, no. What happens on the cruise ship stays on the cruise ship.”

“Let me get this straight: you went on this cruise to escape real life, and once you found an escape, you escaped from that by jumping ship early.”

“First of all, you’re a judgy bitch,” Diane says with a teasing smile. “And secondly, yes.”

“I’m just saying, it sounds like you had a good time.”

“I had a great time! It’s what I needed. Why hang around for diminishing returns?”

“Okay, I guess I can understand that.” Sarah pauses to take a sip of her iced tea. “How are you feeling about everything?”

“I feel great,” Diane says, her shoulders rising and falling in a dismissive shrug. “I got a vacation, I saved some slob from drowning, and I got to play cougar for a night. What’s not to love?”

“About everything else,” Sarah says as she sets her glass down for emphasis. “You got dealt a huge blow.”

“Oh, you mean finding out my entire life has been a lie and I should’ve been Ann Marie DeLuca for the last five decades?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Not much I can do about it,” Diane says. “At least now I know why my mother always thought Natalie was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“I guess it probably helps to understand where all of that came from. Even if it doesn’t change it.”

“I can’t change anything except what I do going forward. I’ve always been my own woman, Sarah. I’ve never needed that family — not my parents, not Natalie. I have Samantha, and I have a best friend like you. I have a fantastic career. What’s there to mope over?”

“As long as you’re happy, and as long as you know you can always lean on me,” Sarah tells her, reaching for her own fork as she watches Diane resume eating — and, Sarah thinks, trying a little too hard to act cool and composed about the recent upheaval in her life.

—–

Tori looks across her desk at her aunt, hoping that a personal appeal might help Molly face the reality of her feelings.

“When I lost the baby, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she continues when Molly offers only a tight-lipped nod. “Everything felt so overwhelming.”

Molly draws in a sharp breath, one that makes Tori think she might open up.

“Tori. Honey,” she says at last. “What you went through was horrible. And so is this. That’s why I need to stay in motion. Keep myself occupied.”

“I just… I hope you’re taking the time you need to process everything.”

“I’ve had weeks. Dwelling on the baby and…” Molly seems to get lost in her thoughts for a moment, until suddenly she snaps out of it. “What I need to do is work. That’s the only way I’m going to move on from this.”

She punctuates the statement with such an intense stare that Tori has no choice but to begin nodding in agreement.

“Give me ten minutes to e-mail Gia, and then we’ll do those calls,” Molly says as she floats toward the inner office, with such a bright smile on her face that it’s as if Tori never broached the topic of their mutual losses at all.

Tori watches as she disappears into the office and closes the door, and she finds it difficult not to see the closed door as a decisive statement from her aunt.

—–

Finn leans one hip against a Xerox machine and folds his arms. The fabric of the navy blue poplin shirt, which sports a small geometric print, stretches taut over his toned arms.

“What is it?” he asks Trevor. “Unless I’m overstepping–”

“No, not at all,” Trevor replies. “My mother passed away a few years ago, so with my dad gone, my sister and I inherit the house. I don’t know if it’s ‘cause she’s in California, or I’m overly sentimental, or what, but she’s ready to put it on the market, and I’m…”

“Not there yet. I get it. Is it the house you grew up in?”

Trevor nods. “It’s so weird to think of it being someone else’s house.”

“Both my parents died before I had even finished college. My mom was living in a rental when she died, so it wasn’t even a house I was that attached to, but it was wild to not have that home base a month after she was gone.”

“Wow,” Trevor says. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Finn responds with a half-shrug, a reaction that Trevor guesses has been honed by years of pretending not to be as affected by the loss as he really is.

“Thanks. It really threw me off-track for a while — guess that’s why I’m only now getting my career in gear. I lost a lot of time being… well, lost.” He meets Trevor’s eyes again. “But we’re talking about you, not me.”

“I don’t mind listening,” Trevor says. “Gets me out of my own head for a minute.”

“I know the feeling. But really, if it feels like it’s too soon to sell the house, is there any rush?”

“Not really. I think my sister would rather not have it hanging over us. And my husband keeps pushing me to rip the band-aid off.”

“Husband, huh?” Finn says with a light laugh. “I was going to ask, but I didn’t want to presume…”

“Yeah, we’ve been married about three years. We have a little boy. Chase.”

“Oh, wow. So you have a lot on your plate.”

“It feels like it these days,” Trevor says wearily.

“I can imagine,” Finn responds. “If you ever want to get lunch or a drink and vent, just ask. I could use some friends in town.”

“Thanks, Finn. I’d like that.”

“Me, too,” Finn says, once again grinning at Trevor. “I’d like that a lot.”

END OF EPISODE 1044

Can Finn help Trevor move past his grief?
Is Molly ready to be back at work so soon?
Did Diane make a mistake leaving the cruise?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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