Previously…
– Trevor and Finn’s bond deepened after Finn and Jaq rented the Brooks family home.
– Jaq received a threatening anonymous letter.
– Tim and Claire tracked down Sonja in Hawaii, but she refused to give them the time of day. Claire impulsively returned to try and get her to talk and was shocked to see Sonja with a young boy.

In the humid Hawaiian afternoon, Claire Fisher ducks behind a parked car and watches as Sonja Kahele steps out of her house — and holds open the door for someone to come out behind her: a small, toddler-aged boy.

“Come on, TJ,” Sonja says to the child.

Claire watches in confusion as Sonja locks the front door and takes the child’s hand to lead him to the garage door. Sonja stoops down to open it manually, using the handle at the bottom, and the door rumbles as it slides upward. Claire finds herself standing up straighter, peering at Sonja and the boy over the top of the vehicle. As they move into the garage to get into the car parked inside it, Claire bolts across the street.

“Sonja!” she calls out.

The raven-haired woman turns, startled. Her gaze fixes on Claire and then hardens. Sonja pushes the toddler behind her legs.

“I told you to leave me alone,” Sonja says.

“I know. But I had to come ask…” Claire gulps and tries to find the right words and the correct tone. “I thought we could talk, woman-to-woman.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Sonja. Please.”

Sonja simply glares at her over the hot pavement of the driveway. The sticky air surrounds Claire, pressing at her clothes and every inch of exposed skin. 

“I thought the reason you might not have wanted to talk before was because you had someone inside the house,” Claire says. “A man. That you didn’t want him to know who Tim was. But now I see…” 

“I’m sorry,” Sonja says. “Whatever is going on back in King’s Bay — I don’t want to be involved. I’m not involved. Please leave me out of it.”

Claire nods, even as she begins to say, “The reason you don’t want to be involved… is it because of him?”

Sonja sets her jaw. She holds her hands behind herself, as if wanting to give the child every additional bit of shielding that she can.

“I heard you call him TJ,” Claire says. “Who is this? Whose child is he?”

—–

Back in King’s Bay, dribbles of water trickle out of a shower head, plopping against the bottom of the bathtub in an uneven rhythm.

“This has been doing this for years,” Trevor Brooks says. “I’m glad you called.”

Finn Campbell, who stands a few feet back from the shower, folds his arms as he watches Trevor work. “So it isn’t a big deal?”

“Nah. You just have to tighten this–” Trevor uses his wrench to grip the shower’s knob at its base and twists. “–and usually it fixes itself. This thing has a way of getting loose.”

“I was worried I’d broken something,” Finn says.

“Not at all. See?” Trevor finishes twisting the wrench — and the shower head sprays out water at its full volume. Aimed the way it is, it immediately strikes Trevor.

Finn shrieks as Trevor jumps backward, nearly hitting him. Instinctively he holds up his hands to catch Trevor.

“Dammit,” Trevor says.

“Are you okay?” Finn asks, his hands lingering on Trevor’s shoulders.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Trevor exhales loudly, then steps forward to jut out his arm and turn off the shower. “See? Good as new.”

“I don’t know if I’d say the same for your hair,” Finn says with a grin, “or your shirt.”

Trevor looks down at himself. His gray t-shirt is drenched and clinging to his torso, highlighting his defined chest and making him all too conscious of the fact that he has skipped some crunches in the past few months.

“Ugh,” he says. “How bad is my hair?”

“I mean, I’m sure the flat-ironed look will come back into vogue any day now.”

Trevor can’t help but smirk back at his tenant and colleague. “This should make for a fun drive home.”

“Oh, stop. You can borrow one of my shirts.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. It’s my fault you got drenched in the first place. Come on, get out of that.”

Trevor contemplates this for a moment longer. He uses two fingers to pull at the side of the wet shirt, which smacks back against his body with a thwack. Then, with a sigh, he grabs the shirt at its bottom and tugs it upward. The damp material sticks to him, making the task difficult, but he finally wriggles out of it. 

As he pulls the shirt over his head, he sees Finn’s eyes fixed on him. Suddenly he is very conscious of being half-naked in front of Finn for the first time. When Finn notices that Trevor has caught his stare, he quickly averts his eyes.

“Sorry,” Trevor says, not even sure why he is apologizing.

Finn waves a hand through the air. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one whose shower got your shirt all wet–“

“Technically, it’s my shower, so it’s my responsibility.”

“Okay. You got me there. Still. Let me get you a t-shirt.” Finn pauses. “And don’t be sorry for giving me a glimpse, either. It’s not every day I get to see a former international model with his shirt off.”

Trevor’s cheeks grow hot, and he self-consciously touches a hand to his stomach. “I’m not exactly in modeling shape anymore.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Finn says. Their eyes meet, and Trevor is all too aware of an electrical current that seems to pass between them.

“Is everything okay up here?” another voice asks, cutting the moment — whatever it was — short. Jaq Pearson appears in the bathroom doorway, with Samantha Fisher right behind them.

“We heard a scream,” Samantha says, but the two stop when they see Finn and Trevor standing there, the latter’s torso bare and his shirt in his hand.

—–

Claire waits as patiently as she can, simply watching Sonja and the little boy squirming slightly behind her. Seconds feel like minutes as she hears the name over and over in her head. TJ. It can’t be…

“He’s my nephew,” Sonja says. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Your nephew?”

“Yes. Why are you insisting on harassing me? This is — you’re trespassing on my property. Practically stalking me.”

“I’m not stalking you. And I’m not trespassing.” Claire puts both her hands in the air and steps backward until she is off the driveway and back on the sidewalk. “See?”

Sonja simply glowers back at her and then turns over her shoulder to the toddler.

“Come on,” she tells him. “Let’s get you in the car.”

“I know you can help us,” Claire calls out. “Please, Sonja. My family’s safety depends on it.”

Sonja opens the back door of the car and lifts TJ up. Claire can tell that she is strapping him into a carseat.

“What do you know about Loretta?” Claire presses. “Please.”

After she finishes with the carseat, Sonja closes the car door. She steps out of the garage and points her index finger toward Claire.

“I’m asking you for the last time to leave,” she says. “That horrible woman threatened my mother and me once before. The last thing I want is to have her out for my blood again. Please, leave me and my family alone!”

Without awaiting a response, she rounds the back of the car and hops into the driver’s seat. Claire stands on the sidewalk as the engine starts up and Sonja backs into the driveway. Then the car stops, and Sonja steps out of it again. Claire’s heart leaps.

But when Sonja gets out of the car, she goes back to the garage door, pulls it down, flips the lock, and then returns to the running vehicle. She spares only the briefest of glares for Claire, who then has to step out of the way as Sonja puts the car in reverse and exits the driveway.

Claire watches in despair as Sonja drives off, the top of the little boy’s head showing through the back window as they disappear into the distance.

—–

Trevor stands shirtless in the upstairs bathroom of his family’s home, with Finn beside him. They stare with surprise at Samantha and Jaq, who have just come rushing in.

“I was fixing the shower,” Trevor says, but the words tumble out chaotically. “It got me–“

“I was getting him a new shirt,” Finn adds.

“Oh,” Samantha says. “We thought someone got hurt or something.”

Trevor and Finn both shake their heads. 

“All good in here,” Finn says.

Awkward silence lingers until Jaq points to the shower. “Is it fixed?”

“Oh. Yeah. It should be working fine now,” Trevor says before turning to Finn. “Where is that shirt?”

“I’ll go get you one,” Finn says, and he slips past Samantha and Jaq to exit the bathroom.

“Did you check the mail yet?” Jaq asks him. 

“Not today, no,” Finn replies before disappearing down the hallway.

Jaq tips their head in the direction of the staircase, just outside the bathroom, and says to Samantha, “Let me go do that real fast. I’m waiting for that reimbursement check from my dentist.”

Samantha and Jaq step out of the bathroom, and Jaq turns back quickly to tell Trevor, “Thanks for fixing the shower!”

All alone in the bathroom, Trevor looks at his reflection in the mirror and sighs, now all too aware of the fact that he is half-naked in a place that is no longer his home.

—–

Downstairs, Samantha turns to head for the kitchen, while Jaq goes toward the front door to check the mail. Samantha is getting a La Croix from the refrigerator when Jaq returns, their usually rosy complexion now white as a sheet. 

“What’s wrong?” Samantha asks.

But she understands as soon as she watches Jaq hold up a sheet of paper, two long creases in it signifying that it was folded inside an envelope.  Then she sees the mismatched, cut-out letters pasted onto the sheet to form a message:

I TOLD YOU TO DIE, SICKO!

“It’s another one,” Jaq says, their voice trembling. 

Fear overtakes Samantha’s body as she reads the message again.

—–

Claire’s mind swirls as she watches the numbers in the elevator light up one by one, ticking off the floors as it ascends through the hotel. She keeps replaying her encounter with Sonja in her head; something about it simply isn’t sitting right. She knows that she shouldn’t have just let Sonja drive off with that child, but she didn’t know what else to do in the moment. None of it seems to make any sense, or relate directly to Loretta — which is why they came to Hawaii in the first place — but it almost feels more relevant. Too relevant.

The elevator lurches to a stop, and Claire steps off onto their floor. She turns left and is startled to see Tim in front of her room, his fist raised as if he has just knocked on the door.

“There you are,” he says as soon as he spots her. “Did you not get my texts?”

“I went out,” she says as she does her best to affix a pleasant expression on her face. “I– I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.” He turns and takes in the sight of her. “Where’d you go?”

“I just… I got some coffee. And food. I don’t know. The time change has me all thrown off.”

“Already?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah. I guess.”

All she can see in her mind is that child — TJ, she hears, the letters and his age too perfect to be a coincidence — and the picture of Sonja driving off with him. Maybe she is going to call Loretta and warn her, if they are somehow in cahoots. Maybe Loretta is already planning some kind of tactical strike when Claire and Tim return to King’s Bay. Maybe she just ruined it all by returning to Sonja’s house.

“Are you hungry?” Tim asks. “I could use some dinner.”

She smiles, ready to tell her ex-husband that they should go downstairs and enjoy what the hotel’s well reviewed restaurant has to offer. But the thoughts are too much, and she makes a split-second decision.

“Wait,” she says, grasping his forearm. “I did something that was– maybe it was stupid. But there’s something you need to know.”

Tim’s expression hardens. “What did you do?”

She draws a deep breath and steels herself to explain.

END OF EPISODE 1077

What will Tim think about Claire’s news?
Is Jaq’s life in serious jeopardy?
Are Trevor and Finn flirting with disaster?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

Next Episode