Written by MichaelMarch 1, 2021March 6, 2021

Episode 1067

Previously…
– A frustrated Tempest kissed Samantha, hoping to prove that their feelings for one another are still very real, but Samantha shut her down and ran off.
– Spencer confronted Natalie about the night she answered the door to Elly and made it clear she and Spencer were consummating their marriage.
– Jason invited Sabrina over for dinner to get to know Sophie, but the evening took a nosedive after Sophie raised a series of gruesome conversation topics.

Natalie Bishop undoes another of the buttons on Spencer Ragan‘s Oxford shirt, revealing the middle of his hairy chest.

“You’re desperate to blow off some steam, aren’t you?” she says. The nail of her index finger lightly scrapes against his chest, and Natalie can see the need, plain as day, in her husband’s eyes.

His hand reaches up and encircles her wrist. She braces for him to toss her down on their son’s twin bed and take her right here and now; a current of fear surges through her as she recalls Loretta‘s admonitions — threats, really — about keeping her relationship with Spencer platonic. But now Natalie feels her own desire building, too.

What’s once more? she thinks. The old crone will never know.

But instead of tossing her onto the bed, Spencer pulls her hand away from his body.

“I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore,” he says, but his tone is not so much confused as declarative — as if he is pleased to have the upper hand now.

She jerks out of his hold and does her best to recalibrate. “So it’s true.”

“What is?”

Her red lips curl into a sneer. “That you have a thing for Elly.”

“Please,” he says, punctuating the statement with a giant eye roll.

“Then say it.”

“Say what?”

“Look me in the eyes,” she says, “and tell me you don’t have feelings for her.”

—–

In his painfully silent home, Jason Fisher boxes up the remnants of the evening’s disastrous, aborted dinner. He eats a few bites of his own food while standing over the counter and then stores everything in the refrigerator. Quiet though it is, he swears he can feel Sophie‘s anger radiating down from her bedroom. Finally, hoping that he has given her enough time to cool off, he climbs the stairs.

His knuckles rap against her door. “Soph? Can I come in?”

A tense quiet stretches over several seconds. He is about to knock again when he hears her through the door:

“Fine.”

Slowly, he turns the knob. Sophie sits on her bed, still clad in her black dress, black-and-white-striped leggings, and dark makeup. She has her legs crossed and her iPad in front of her.

“How’re you doing?” he asks softly.

“I’m fine.” She answers without even looking up from the tablet.

“Okay.” He takes a few more steps into the room. She has the curtains pulled shut, blocking out any remaining hints of daylight, and a single lamp on the nightstand casts its moody glow through the room. “Can we talk?”

“If you want.” She risks a sideways glance at him. “I’m sure you want to yell at me, so go ahead.”

“I don’t want to yell at you. I never want to yell at you, Sophie.”

When she doesn’t respond, he comes nearer to the bed.

“I’m disappointed in how you acted at the dinner table,” he says, hoping that he is somewhere in the ballpark of that impossible balance required of a parent in a situation like this. “Sabrina was a guest in our home–“

“Your guest.”

He bites his tongue for a moment before answering, “Fine. Yeah. I invited her. But how would you feel if you invited a friend over and I acted like that?”

“It’s different, Dad.”

Even though he already knows the answer, he senses an opening, so he asks, “How is it different?”

“You know.”

“Explain to me. Please,” he says. “Sophie, I’m asking because I genuinely care. What was up at that dinner table tonight?”

—–

Tempest Banks tries her key in the door of the apartment that she shares with Claire Fisher. Although it is locked, she can hear the television even before she turns the key, and she braces for Claire’s cheerful questioning.

Sure enough, Claire calls out, “There you are!” before Tempest even has the door open fully. As she enters the apartment, she can see that Claire is emptying the dishwasher while listening to a Netflix crime documentary playing on the TV.

“Hey,” Tempest says, slipping off her Nikes.

“How was Travis and Rosie‘s? Isn’t Gabrielle adorable?” Claire asks.

Tempest hovers near the couch, eager to make a break for her room. “Yeah. She is.”

“And it’s so nice they had all of you over. I don’t think they’ve had much time to do anything besides go to work and take care of the baby.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Head down, Tempest attempts to slink toward the back hallway, but she hears the loud clink of dishes against the countertop. Without even glancing back, she can tell Claire’s eyes are boring a hole into her.

“What happened?” Claire asks.

Tempest groans to herself. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing.”

After another moment of standing still — like Claire is some sort of predator and all Tempest has to do is blend into her surroundings to throw her off — the younger woman sighs with defeat and turns around.

“You ran into Samantha, then?” Claire asks.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I know you were worried about facing her and Jaq.”

“I didn’t have to see Jaq,” Tempest explains. “They were coming separately.”

“What happened, then? Did you and Samantha have it out?”

Tempest gulps, recalling their impulsive, passion-riddled kiss. It has been years since she and Samantha kissed, but it transported Tempest back to a better time for them, a happy time, before everything went to hell. She could tell in that moment that Samantha felt it, too — the only problem is, Sam won’t admit that.

“I dunno,” Tempest says. “It was okay.”

“You seem upset.”

“It was fast. But Sam’s with Jaq now. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter if you’re feeling hurt,” Claire says as she rounds the breakfast nook. “And I’m sorry about that. I know how you feel about Samantha.”

“I wish I could go back and–” Tempest stops and swallows the lump in her throat. “–and not do what I did to Sam’s mom. Then we’d still be together.”

Claire nods sympathetically. “I know.”

“And it’s not like Jaq is perfect,” Tempest says, half-under her breath.

“What does that mean?”

“They’re not some saint, that’s all. No one is. Sam’s gonna see that one day. I’m not perfect, but no one is.”

“No one is,” Claire says as she pulls Tempest into a hug. Although Tempest keeps her arms stiffly at her sides at first, she begins to relax.

“But you’re going to be very happy with someone one day,” Claire continues. “Maybe the timing was wrong for you and Samantha — but you have so much to offer and you’re going to be an incredible partner to someone. Know that.”

Tempest doesn’t respond, instead simply relishing the comfort of Claire’s embrace.

—–

Spencer stares back at Natalie. Their gazes lock upon one another, playing out a game of silent challenges.

Finally, he is the one to break the silence:

“Stay out of my personal life.”

“Your personal life? I’m your wife.”

“Legally, sure. But we both know what this is, Natalie,” he says. “We knew what this was from Day One. We shouldn’t have muddied the waters.”

“It wasn’t that long ago you were begging me to–“

“Yeah, and now I’m not.” He takes a step backward. “I’ll go start dinner.”

“Fine,” Natalie says. She shoots him a final withering glare before turning her attention back to putting away Peter’s folded laundry, but he hardly even has time to notice it, for as quickly as he exits the bedroom.

—–

“You really shouldn’t carry things with you if you don’t intend to keep track of them,” Loretta Ragan tells her grandson as they arrive back on the porch of the house. “That’s why Mimi always brings her bag with her.”

She pats the Hermes bag hung over her shoulder for effect, but Peter looks blankly at the front door.

“Where’s Doggo?” he asks, holding out his hands as if he expects her to hand over his prized stuffed animal.

“That’s why we came back,” she says. “He wasn’t anywhere along the route we walked to the park, so he must still be in the house.”

She tries the knob and is unsurprised to find it unlocked; she didn’t lock the door when she and Peter left, since both Spencer and Natalie were at home. But she freezes when she hears Spencer’s voice from the second floor of the house.

“I’ll go start dinner,” he is saying, and she glances upward, though the cracked door, to see him on the landing, stepping out of Peter’s bedroom — and buttoning his shirt.

“Fine,” Natalie’s voice says, from somewhere inside the room.

Loretta’s blood boils as she quickly backs out of the door and softly closes it to avoid detection.

“Did you find Doggo?” Peter asks.

“I’m afraid not,” she says. She does her best to force down the thoughts rushing through her mind, but it is nearly impossible. “Let’s retrace our steps one more time before we check the house.”

“But Mimi–“

“Do as I say.” She grasps the young boy’s hand and leads him back down the driveway, the very last vestiges of daylight falling over them as she pretends to search for the stuffed animal — well aware that they will not find it here.

That Natalie has crossed me for the final time, she thinks bitterly.

—–

Jason waits as patiently as he can, hands in the pockets of his pants, for Sophie to formulate an answer. He knows from experience that waiting her out is a much better strategy than forcing her to respond, but that knowledge doesn’t lessen the awkward tension as he waits.

“It’s not like I was making stuff up,” Sophie says at last. “Sabrina really did work for Philip. And that really did happen to Mom.”

“I didn’t say you were making things up or lying. But can you see how talking about those things right off the bat would’ve made Sabrina uncomfortable?”

“I don’t get why you even had her come over.”

“Because I like her, Sophie. I like spending time with her. She’s a nice person, and she wants to get to know you, too. I bet you’d like her.”

“And what does it matter if I do?”

“I want you to like anyone I’m spending time with–“

“Yeah, until she goes away, too.”

There it is. Jason draws in a breath slowly, allowing the revelation space to land so that they can properly address it. Before he can do so, Sophie presses on:

“I liked Natalie. A lot. And you kicked her out and I basically never saw her again.”

“That isn’t exactly how it happened,” he says.

“It basically is.”

“Natalie broke my heart. I thought Peter was my son. I loved Peter like he was my son. And I know you loved him like a brother.”

Sophie nods.

“But after the way she lied to me,” he says, “I couldn’t trust her. You can’t be in a relationship with someone you don’t trust. I’m so, so sorry that you got hurt as a result of that, too.”

“Then why even bring someone else over?” Sophie asks. “She’s just gonna go away, too.”

“You don’t know that, and neither do I. But yeah, that’s a risk in any relationship. Would you rather I just be single forever?”

She stares down at the iPad.

“Maybe you would,” he says, inserting a forced chuckle in hopes of adding some levity to the situation. “But you’re going to grow up and go out into the world and have a life of your own. Do you really want your dad to be in this house all alone?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know this is hard, Soph. All I’m asking is that you try, and that you be honest with me.”

Another interminable band of silence elongates itself between them. Jason uses all the patience he can gather to remain quiet and wait.

“I wish it could just be you and me and Mom,” she finally says.

Jason feels his own heart wrench at the confession. “I know.”

“It’s not fair. Everyone else gets to have that, and all I have is you–“

“Gee, thanks.”

The crack actually elicits a hint of a smile from Sophie before she continues, “And pictures and stories and news articles about Mom. Like she wasn’t even a real person.”

“She was. She is. She’s real to us, even if she isn’t here the way you or I am,” Jason tells her. “Your mom was– God, Sophie, you remind me so much of her.”

“I do?”

“Yes. And not just physically. I mean, you have her hair, and her coloring, but you have her spirit, too. Your mom could be so strong-headed. No one could make her do a damn thing she didn’t want to do.”

“Really?”

“Really. I know this sucks, and I know it’s something most kids don’t have to deal with. I wish I could snap my fingers and change that for you. But I can’t.”

She looks at him sadly and then says, “Yeah.”

Jason can feel the shift in the air. His body relaxes in a way that it hasn’t since the moment Sabrina arrived for dinner.

“What do you say we go downstairs and eat some of that food?” he suggests.

“I don’t know if I’m hungry.”

“Okay, well, I am, and it’s way sadder if I sit there eating it all alone. So I’d love to have company.”

“Can we eat in front of the TV?” she asks.

“Yeah. I think that sounds great.”

“Okay.” She hops off the bed. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I know.” He reaches out with his right arm and pulls her toward him. “Come on.”

As they walk out of the bedroom, Sophie clings to his side in a way that she hasn’t in years, seeming more like the little girl that he thinks of her as than the teenager she has grown into. Jason reminds himself to be thankful for the closeness, because it won’t be like this forever, as badly as he might want it to be.

END OF EPISODE 1067

Will Sophie give Sabrina a chance now?
How will Loretta react to Natalie’s apparent disobedience?
Can Tempest finally move on from Samantha?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

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