Previously…
– Sarah and Matt told Tori they wouldn’t be contributing money to her and Zane’s wedding. When Tori reacted badly, Matt attempted to have a heart-to-heart with her about his and Sarah’s concerns regarding Zane’s temper and judgment.
– Sarah received a call from a source claiming to have located Sonja Kahele.
– After news spread that Molly and Brent were suing the hospital over their baby’s death, Loretta angrily confronted Elly, demanding that she find a way to stop the suit. She continued to hold blackmail information over Elly’s head.

Elly Vanderbilt tries her hardest to distract herself by watching the true crime documentary playing on her TV, but her attention keeps wandering, and she finds that every time she refocuses on it, she realizes that she has missed several minutes of important developments. The program continues to drone in the background, all but forgotten, as she paces back and forth over the carpet in her small apartment.

Finally there is a knock at the door. She hurries toward it but looks through the peephole before turning the lock.

“I got out of work as fast as I could,” Spencer Ragan says. He wears a dark gray wool coat over his dress shirt and slacks; when he speaks, Elly can see his breath as a white plume rising through the air. She feels the January cold, too, and quickly motions for him to come inside.

“I’m guessing whatever happened is bad if you couldn’t just put it in a text,” he says.

“Yeah, because your psycho mother probably has my phone tapped.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this is about Loretta, and not that you had some weird encounter with Claire…”

“Give this man a prize,” Elly says, her voice tangled with stress. “Yes, the mother who did time in prison and has been torturing me and God knows who else.”

“You know, I didn’t have to come running to help you–“

“I know. Sorry. I’m just… she really has me on-edge, Spencer.”

“Loretta Ragan has that effect on people.” He claps his hands together. “So what’s going on now?”

She sucks in a sharp breath, as if it might fortify her, and then lets out a harried explanation of how Loretta showed up here, irate that Molly filed a lawsuit against the hospital and demanding that Elly find some way to sink it.

“I think I convinced her to grant me a stay of execution for now,” Elly tells him, “but who knows how long that’s good for? Right now, she sees it as useful to have me on the inside and able to feed her updates on Molly’s case–“

“–but she could change her mind at any time,” Spencer says. 

Elly nods gravely in response. 

“And she doesn’t want the lawsuit to ahead why, exactly?” he asks. “Because it’ll somehow make Molly look less volatile?”

“I guess? And then she’ll get reinstated at Objection. Loretta seems very determined to have Molly lose that company now.”

“Something isn’t adding up,” Spencer says. “She couldn’t have planned all this out, could she?”

“I wouldn’t put it past that woman to figure out a way to get Molly tossed out of her own company,” Elly replies, “but you’re right — there’s something we’re missing here. And now I’m back in the same shitty position of representing Molly, who trusts me and has been so good to me, while I also have to be Loretta’s little double agent.”

She lets out an anguished groan.

“Plus, if I make one wrong step, she could go straight to the Bar Association and tell them my exam results were fixed–“

“You don’t actually know that they were.”

“No, but Anatoli said he’d make sure I passed, so I have no idea if I actually did or if he somehow changed my results.”

“That’s it,” Spencer says, his eyes suddenly widening.

“What?”

“I know exactly how we can turn the tables on my mother.”

—–

Tori Gray turns the knob on the front of the stove. She presses it in as it makes the prolonged ch-ch-ch sound that it always makes before the spark actually catches. A blue flame leaps up from the burner, and Tori places the pot full of water atop it. 

Once she has covered the pot, she picks up from phone from the counter and unlocks it. On the screen is a YouTube video she bookmarked, so she hits play and watches as she leans over the counter, occasionally checking on the water, which remains frustratingly still inside the pot. When she hears a key unlocking the front door, she hits pause on the video.

“Hi there,” she says as Zane Tanaka enters the apartment and immediately wriggles out of his white sneakers and sets down his backpack.

“Hi yourself, beautiful.” Zane winks at her as he removes his jacket and slings it over the back of the sofa. “How’s it going?”

“Good. I’m making pasta for dinner.” 

“Sounds delicious.”

Zane sidles up behind her and wraps his arms around her. Then he notices the open YouTube window on her phone.

“What are you watching? Getting wedding inspiration?” he asks.

“It’s a guide to a DIY wedding,” she explains. “I thought I’d do some research.”

“How DIY are we talking?”

“I mean… everything. Or as much as we can.” Tori stands up straighter and turns to face him. 

Zane lets his arms fall to his sides. “Does that mean your chat with your parents didn’t go too well?” 

He responds with a loud groan. “Why am I not surprised? What happened?”

“They said they don’t have much to give us,” she says.

“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to it than that?” Zane asks as he grits his teeth. 

“It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing, clearly — unless you’re talking about what they’re contributing to their only daughter’s wedding! Which is bullshit. What went down today?”

A nervous current travels through Tori’s body as she recalls her father‘s attempted words of warning from earlier:

“Say it was a total misunderstanding. Zane still beat the crap out of him. You think your mom and I want you to marry someone with — with violent tendencies like that?

“No one’s perfect. But you’ve gotta see why that concerns us. Especially since he also blackmailed your mom and your aunt, and hid footage from the cops during a murder trial, and–“

“Tori,” Zane says. “Tell me what happened today.”

Her eyes dart over toward the pot on the burner, where the faintest ripple of bubbles has just appeared on the water’s surface.

—–

“I think I ran a stop sign or two getting here,” Tim Fisher says as he follows his sister into the living room of the house in which they grew up. “I’m lucky I didn’t get a ticket.”

On the television, the local evening news plays at a low volume. Tim notices footage of a blood drive taking place downtown, but he forgets the item as soon as he looks away. He is too occupied with the topic that Sarah called him over to discuss.

Sarah stops in front of the coffee table. “Me, too. Especially since this all goes back to a traffic stop, too.”

Tim looks at her with confusion. “How so?”

“That’s how my source got a lead on Sonja,” Sarah explains. She takes a seat on the sofa and gestures for Tim to sit, as well, but he hovers uneasily over her as he awaits the news that she called him here to share.

“She got stopped by the police? For what?”

“Speeding. It wasn’t even a big thing — she was doing 53 in a 45. But since she got a ticket–“

“It went into the system,” Tim finishes for her. “So where is she? And was TJ with her?”

“I wasn’t able to find out whether she had a kid with her,” Sarah says, “but she’s in Scottsdale. Not far outside Phoenix.”

“And she’s in custody? For speeding? How does that work?”

“No, she’s isn’t. That’s where this gets a little dicey.” Sarah fiddles with the tassels on one of Paula‘s throw pillows for a moment. “The stop happened yesterday. By the time it made its way into the system and got flagged for my source, it was outdated info. But it’s something.”

“Yeah, for sure.” Tim intertwines his fingers and works them together as he thinks. “So what do we do now? If there’s a chance she’s living there…”

“The car wasn’t registered to Sonja,” Sarah tells him. “But it was registered locally. So it’s possible that’s the address she’s been staying at — maybe with a friend or family member.”

“I have to go to Arizona,” Tim says as he scrambles to pull out his phone.

Sarah stands again. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“I think I can handle this.”

She watches as types intently on his phone. 

“Be careful, Tim. You really don’t know much about this woman–“

“–and yet she’s potentially running around the world with my son,” he says with a steely determination. “That’s why I need to find her as soon as possible.”

—–

The optimism in Spencer’s expression triggers a similar feeling in Elly, but it fades as quickly as it appeared.

“Is this going to be some batshit crazy idea?” she asks.

“No! It’s, like, the most straightforward thing you could imagine,” Spencer says. “You have to go see Anatoli and get the truth out of him.”

Elly’s entire body tenses up. “No. I don’t want to see that bastard–“

“It would be for the greater good.”

She begins to respond again, but before she can even speak, his words penetrate. She knows that he has a point, that she is reacting purely out of instinct and trauma. The thought of facing that man again sends a shiver up her spine. 

Spencer’s entire demeanor softens all of a sudden, and the transformation takes Elly by surprise.

“I know that has to be pretty unpleasant for you to think about, at the very least,” he says. “But think about the upside: you get to put that asshole in his place and get Loretta off your back.”

“Why would he even tell me the truth now?” she questions. “That’s his leverage to keep me quiet about the…” She takes a deep breath. “…the abortion.”

“Because the abortion is your leverage over him. This only worked in his favor when he was the only one who could expose that your bar exam was fixed. But if Loretta beats him to the punch there–“

“–then he has no leverage, and I could speak out if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

“But you could.”

“Yeah,” she agrees before sighing loudly. “How is this my life?”

“That’s what we’re trying to fix,” Spencer says. “You go talk to Anatoli, you force him to admit whether he actually fixed your exam or he just let you think that to have leverage over you, and we go from there.”

She finds herself slowly nodding. “You’re almost making sense. But I really just… I don’t know if I can face him. He has this– this power–“

“Over you? You’re one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks. You’re so kind,” she says. “But I mean it. But there’s so much history there — painful stuff that I’ve spent years trying to put behind me. I don’t know if I can do it.”

Spencer thinks on that for a moment and then tells her, “Get that laptop.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he says, a gleam in his eye, “we’re booking flights to the Bay Area. I’m going with you.”

—–

With Matt’s impassioned words about Zane running through her head, Tori tries her hardest not to let any of it show on her face. The prospect of Zane hearing what her dad had to say — let alone relaying it herself — feels beyond daunting. Scary, even. 

“Same stuff. That’s all,” she says quietly, turning back to examine the water, which still has only the faintest bubbles on its surface. “You know.”

“I can’t believe they’re being this unsupportive,” Zane says. “Didn’t we get past all this shit?”

“I had hoped so.”

“This is such bullshit. For them to put on happy faces during the holidays and then turn around and do this to you–” He slams his fist down on the counter. 

“Zane, we’ll figure this out,” Tori says. “We don’t need a ton of money to have a nice wedding. We love each other, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m going to watch some videos and listen to some podcasts. Get myself inspired. Maybe Aunt Molly will even pitch in — she could make me a dress–“

“I have a better idea,” Zane says, a sudden twinkle appearing in his eyes. 

Tori cocks her head to the side. “What?”

“Forget all the DIY stuff. We don’t need it.”

“Well, we don’t have much money for a wedding, soooo…”

“Forget all of that,” he says, grinning as his arms encircle her waist. “Let’s just elope.”

Tori gazes into his eyes and can see how serious he is about this idea. On the stovetop, the water finally begins to boil.

END OF EPISODE 1115

Will Tori marry Zane before anyone even knows it?
Does Spencer’s plan have a chance of succeeding?
Will Tim finally get the truth about TJ from Sonja?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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