Previously…
– The day of Zane’s sentencing arrived. Tori was heartened when Landon came to support her, but her spirit waned when Zane’s attorney tried to minimize his wrongdoing by discrediting Tori’s account.
– Travis and Rosie nervously awaited the results of the DNA test being done to determine whether Gabrielle is Molly and Brent’s missing child. Travis received a call about a burst pipe at Bill’s on the Pier and went to check it out, but when he got there, he found nothing amiss.
– Loretta tried to blackmail Natalie into switching the DNA results, but Natalie insisted it would be impossible. Loretta came up with some sort of alternate plan and later confirmed that Natalie had made the phone call to Travis.

“There you have it, Your Honor,” declares the woman representing Zane Tanaka in today’s sentencing hearing. She sports a tweed suit and a blunt bob with aggressive highlights, and she hands several documents to the bailiff before returning to the defense table. “The very minister who called 911 after Tori Gray handed him a note gave a statement under oath that she did not appear to be in distress or being held under duress at any time during his encounter with her and Mr. Tanaka. Furthermore, the manager of the property where my client and Ms. Gray were staying saw them exiting the cabin dressed for their wedding, and he is certain that Ms. Gray was walking to the vehicle of her own accord, several feet apart from Mr. Tanaka, and that she got into the vehicle without being forced to do so.”

Two rows back, on the other side of the courtroom, Tori sits and watches the scene unfold with horror. It felt as if all oxygen was being sucked out of the small courtroom as Zane’s attorney read the affidavits from witnesses who claimed that Zane was using neither force nor a weapon to keep her with him. 

Still unable to believe that this is happening, Tori turns to her right. Her parents are just beside her, and next to them on the same bench are Helen Chase, her husband, and Landon Esco. Landon shoots Tori what she knows is supposed to be a reassuring look, but there is no amount of secondhand confidence that is going to make her feel okay right now.

“As such,” Zane’s attorney continues, as Zane himself sits behind the defense table in his orange jumpsuit, hands folded and body motionless, “the defense requests leniency in Mr. Tanaka’s sentencing. He has taken responsibility by pleading guilty, but we hope fervently that these witness accounts will prove that what happened between him and Ms. Gray was a relationship dispute that was neither violent nor life-threatening.”

“He had a knife!” someone shouts, cutting through the staid air in the courtroom. All heads turn to see Sarah Fisher Gray on her feet.

The judge wastes not a moment in furiously banging his gavel. “Ma’am!”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, and her voice sounds as if it is being dragged down to an appropriate volume against its will. “But this is crazy–”

“Sarah,” Matt says gruffly as he places a hand on her forearm.

“–that man had a knife!” Sarah continues, undaunted. “And he knocked her out to get her out of King’s Bay in the first place.”

“Mrs. Gray,” says Audrey Tam, the District Attorney. “Let me handle this.”

Sarah glares at the prosecutor uneasily.

“Mrs. Gray, I’d suggest that you have a seat now, or I’ll have no choice but to hold you in contempt of court,” the judge says.

A tense moment passes before Sarah nods and then sinks back down to her seat.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d done much more than that,” Helen whispers from down the row.

“Your Honor,” District Attorney Tam says, “if the defense is through, I have a victim impact statement from Victoria Gray that I’d like to read for the court.”

The judge frowns at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and Tori feels another wave of nerves ripple through her body. She felt so confident when she gave the statement that it would be the key to putting Zane behind bars for a long, long time — that between his guilty plea and her words, there would be no question. But now, after his attorney read those affidavits, everything seems topsy-turvy.

“You may proceed,” the judge tells Tam.

Tori doesn’t know what comes over her, but she springs to her feet before the D.A. can utter a word.

“No,” she says loudly. “You can’t read that.”

—–

Still confused from being summoned to the pier, Travis Fisher walks quickly over the path that connects the parking lot to the apartment building where his family lives. He has no idea why someone would have called him about a burst pipe at the restaurant, or why the number that made the call has already been disconnected, but the best he can fathom is that it was some sort of stupid prank. At least they called him and not his Uncle Matt, whom he knows has more important things to worry about today, with Zane’s sentencing taking place. 

And so do I, Travis thinks as he inserts his key into the lock on his front door. He hardly has any more energy to give to whatever that call about the pipe was, since he knows that he and Rosie have to get to the hospital to learn the results of Gabrielle’s DNA test. 

Doing his best to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach, he unlocks the door and lets himself into the apartment. He expects to see Rosie kneeling on the floor, playing with Gabrielle, or perhaps in the compact kitchen, making their daughter a snack. But when he steps inside, the apartment is strangely quiet.

“Rosie?” he calls out, but the only response he receives is silence. 

“Gabrielle?” he asks, as he begins to move through the apartment. There is no sign of his wife or their daughter in any of the handful of rooms.

In the middle of the bedroom, he stops, racking his brain to see if he has missed something. Their appointment at the hospital lab isn’t for another hour and a half. He doesn’t have any calls or texts from Rosie indicating that she ran out to pick up toilet paper or cereal or something else they might have needed. 

With a strange feeling of dread, he dials Rosie’s number. It rings and rings, four times in total, before kicking over to voicemail.

“Rosie, it’s me,” he says. “I just got back from the restaurant. It was– never mind. I’m at home. Where are you and Gabrielle?”

Unsure what else to say, he hangs up. The quiet and stillness inside the apartment are somehow palpable and overwhelming. 

“Rosie?” he asks the empty dwelling one more time. Nothing. Panic fills his body.

A luscious bouquet of pink roses rests in the crook of Natalie Bishop’s elbow as she strides down a hallway inside the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit toward her niece’s room. Her mind replays the call she received not long ago…

“Tell me,” Loretta Ragan coos. “Did you do what I asked?”

Natalie sucks in a breath before answering: “It’s done, yeah. Was some crank call about a burst pipe really worth blackmailing me over?”

“Yes, a call about a burst pipe was that important. Good work, Natalie –you’re off the hook. For now.”

“Loretta, what are you–” But the line goes dead before Natalie can get the question out. 

She still has no idea how calling Travis about an alleged burst pipe at the restaurant has anything to do with the DNA test that Loretta originally wanted Natalie to switch, but she assumes it was some kind of distraction tactic — and she is grateful it wasn’t anything more involved. After making sure that the apps that created her burner number and disguised her voice were permanently deleted from her phone, Natalie headed to her favorite florist downtown to pick up something to bring Samantha. Normally she would be too distracted to come visit her niece after dealing with one of Loretta’s plots like that, but today, it is imperative that Natalie gather some information on another front. 

When she reaches Samantha’s room, Natalie is pleased to see that her sister is there, as she hoped she would be. She knows that Diane often comes to see her daughter after she does her morning show at KBAY; a part of her feels a deep, aching empathy for Diane, as she imagines making it a part of her own daily routine to come sit with Bree or Peter if they were in a state like Samantha’s. 

After pausing a moment at the open door, Natalie taps her knuckles against it. Diane turns, looking a bit startled. 

“Oh. Hi,” Diane says, exhaustion apparent in her tone. 

“Hi. I thought I’d bring…” Natalie holds out the flowers awkwardly. “I don’t know. I wanted to see her.”

“Thank you, Natalie.” Diane points to a small table beneath the window. “You can put those over there. I’ll put them in a vase when I clear out some of the old flowers later.”

Natalie goes to the table and sets the arrangement of roses on its side. 

“Any updates?” she asks.

Diane shakes her head. She has on far less makeup than Natalie is accustomed to seeing her in, and her outfit is a simple black v-neck t-shirt and black skinny jeans. 

“The doctors were optimistic because they thought they detected some promising brain activity,” she explains, “but there hasn’t been any change. She’s just…” She gestures at Samantha, lying so still in the bed. “…here.”

“I’m sorry, Diane. Really. I can only imagine how horrible this must be for you.”

“Yeah, it sucks. That bastard Zane is being sentenced today. I told Sarah to suggest to the judge that they break protocol and give him the chair.”

“I don’t think too many people would be upset about that,” Natalie says. She waits a beat before asking, “How’s Tim holding up?”

Diane shrugs. “He’s hanging in there. I think we’re both in shock — we didn’t expect her to be like this for so long, you know?”

“Of course not.” Natalie’s brain goes into overdrive as she devises a way to steer the conversation where she needs it to go without giving herself away. “I know he has a lot going on. I heard about the thing with Travis’s daughter…”

Aside from a nod, the only response Diane gives is a flat, “Yeah.”

Natalie takes a breath and then forges ahead: “And I heard something else…”

Diane looks up. “What?”

“That that nurse he was seeing is back in town. The one who took care of Spencer,” Natalie says. “Is it true? She came back to King’s Bay?”

—–

Only once Tori feels every eyeball in the room burning into her does she fully realize what she has done.

“Excuse me?” Audrey Tam says, clearly attempting to use a soft tone of voice since Tori is supposed to be the sympathetic figure here, the one who is key to securing a fitting sentence for Zane. 

“It’s okay,” Matt tells his daughter quietly. “Let her read it.”

“What is the meaning of this?” the obviously frazzled judge asks. “Ms. Gray, is there some reason you do not want your victim impact statement read?”

Again Tori glances around the room. She sees Zane staring right at her; although his expression is neutral, she can see something in his eyes — a glimmer of sorts — that sends a chill down her spine all over again. When her gaze lands upon Landon, he mouths something:

“You okay?”

It takes her a beat, but she nods and then focuses back upon the judge.

“I’d like to deliver my statement myself,” she says.

“Honey, are you sure?” Sarah asks.

“I don’t think the statement I gave — I think it downplays how horrible my experience was,” Tori tells the court. “I’d like a chance to explain it myself.”

“Fair enough,” the judge says. “Ms. Tam?”

“Go ahead,” the D.A. says, although Tori can tell she is nervous that this might veer off-course. And Tori’s own shaky hands and uncertain legs give her the same fear as she makes her way to the head of the room, sits where the bailiff directs her to sit, and is sworn in.

“Whenever you’re ready, Ms. Gray,” the judge prompts her. She wonders how long she has again been staring out at the courtroom, which seems like a strange haze of colors and faces. But she forces herself to speak:

“I admit that I stayed with Zane — uh, the defendant — for a long time, and that might look weird,” she says. “But that’s the thing about an abusive relationship. The person being abused — you don’t even realize that’s what you’re in. It’s like I was brainwashed. Any time someone tried to tell me otherwise, or any time something seemed off, I just… rewrote the story in my head. Because I’d been through something so bad…”

She looks down at her hands, suddenly wondering if this was all a mistake. She gave a perfectly good statement. When she lifts her up, she is ready to tell them this was a mistake, that they can read the statement she gave, even if it makes her look like an idiot. But then she notices something. Behind the D.A., Landon clasps his hands together and mouths, “You’ve got this.”

For some reason, his simple act of inspiration allows her to focus, and the words begin to flow out again:

“I was attacked by the Footprint Killer years ago,” she says. “He almost killed me. And when I recovered — or when I was recovering — I had to take time away from college, and I lost all my friends, and I felt so isolated. That was when I met Zane. He had his own reasons for getting close to me, but we did like each other. We really did. Zane will say he loved me, or loves me, and I don’t think he’s lying. I think that’s why he did what he did. Any time I started to doubt being with him, he would say or do something to make me feel like he was the only person I could trust in the entire world.”

Zane’s glare hardens. She meets it for a split-second, then averts her eyes completely, focusing solely on her parents, Landon, and the Chases. 

“He pounced on anything my parents did to convince me that they just didn’t want me to be happy,” she continues. “He kept me from spending time alone with my cousins, and I even felt like I had to sneak around to see my little brother. It sounds crazy now. Why would you ever stay with a person like that? Because I really did start to believe he was the only person I could trust. He just wore me down until I couldn’t think about a life apart from him.”

Audrey Tam, standing by the defense table, picks up a pen and twirls it between her fingers. Tori assumes it is some kind of nervous tic and wonders if she is blowing this. But she has to get it out. 

“And if we’d had a chance to go to trial, I would have testified,” Tori says. “Because the day Zane kidnapped me, I found a tracker that he’d put on my car. He had been tracking me for — I don’t know how long. Months? I never went anywhere that he wasn’t aware of. When I found the tracker, it was like something clicked. I understood how screwed-up it all was. Love means you trust someone. It doesn’t mean owning them. It doesn’t mean controlling them.”

She draws in a deep breath through her nostrils and summons the strength to look right at Zane again.

“Zane, you never really loved me,” she says. “You were desperate to own me. To control me. And when I realized that, you knocked me out and took me up to that cabin.”

“Your Honor,” Zane’s lawyer says as she stands. “Objection. My client has already pled guilty to the kidnapping charge. This additional commentary that can’t be corroborated–“

“Overruled,” the judge says. “This is a victim impact statement. Ms. Gray deserves an opportunity to explain her side of the crime that your client already admitted to committing.”

Tori waits to resume until she gets a nod from the judge. 

“The reason it didn’t look like I was being threatened or held by force is because I realized what he was doing,” she explains. “I knew my only chance of getting away was to pretend I didn’t remember finding the tracker or him knocking me out. I knew that if he realized I remembered it all, he would… he would’ve hurt me, or killed me. Because the game would be over at that point. So I played dumb. You can’t imagine how scary it was, waking up in that cabin, praying that he wouldn’t see through my act. He took away my phone and told me it wouldn’t turn on. I had no idea where we were. I had to act normal when we met the minister because I needed Zane to get careless and leave us alone together — except he caught on and pulled a knife on me when the minister wasn’t there. He forced me to leave with him.”

She can see how white Matt and Sarah’s faces are as they listen. She wonders how much worse things would be for them if she hadn’t gotten away from Zane. It’s a thought that has kept her up many nights since then.

“I thought I was going to die. In that car — when he totally lost control and realized I had been playing him — I really thought he was going to kill me,” she goes on. “I thought this man who said he loved me was about to murder me. Think about how terrifying that would be. Think about being in a speeding car driven by someone who sees no way out of the situation but to kill you. It felt like we were in there forever. The luckiest thing for me was that Zane crashed — and that he was unconscious long enough for me to climb out of the car.”

Inside her body, something swells: rage, resentment, a huge, hot ball of emotion that she has been suppressing ever since she woke up in that Mount Hood hospital. She feels it stretch and burn and burst as the words come out:

“I was too hurt to walk. I was wearing this wedding dress that I wanted to be out of so badly — this dress that I was supposed to marry a monster in. And I had to crawl on my hands and knees, away from a highway, through the dirt and grass and mud and across a parking lot. I couldn’t even stand. And a little part of me thought, Maybe I’ll just lie down and die now. I couldn’t even imagine life feeling normal again. But I made it to a gas station, and somehow…”

She feels the anger tearing to sadness, or maybe relief, but the tears brimming in her eyes begin to spill out. 

“And he kept going!” she says, her throat tight. “He woke up and kept driving and hit another car. My cousin is still in a coma. She could… she could die. Because of Zane. Her mom and my friend — my friend Landon — they made it out okay, but that was pure luck. If my cousin Samantha dies because I was too stupid to recognize what Zane was doing sooner than I did…”

The emotions overtake her. She didn’t want to cry today, didn’t want to show weakness, but now she sees that only by expressing the full depth and breadth of her emotions can she make it clear to this courtroom and this judge what an absolute monster Zane is. 

“It’s okay,” the D.A. says, in a slightly clinical voice. 

Tori turns to the judge and sniffles. “Don’t go easy on him. Don’t let him be free to do this to someone else, or to come after my family and me. I know it might’ve looked like I wasn’t being threatened by Zane, but that was me fighting with every ounce of energy I had to survive.”

She can see the sympathy in the judge’s eyes. She can see how affected he is by what she has said. Without waiting for another prompt, she stands and hurries back to her seat, passing perilously close to the defense table as she does so. She braces, as if Zane might reach out and grab her, but nothing happens. 

In another instant, she is wrapped in her father’s arms, her entire body trembling.

—–

“Thanks for coming,” Travis says as he lets his uncle into the apartment. “Usually if I needed the cops, I’d tell Rosie, but…”

Brent Taylor steps just inside the front door and begins to survey the space.

“Nothing’s out of place, you said?”

“Not that I can tell,” Travis replies. 

“And you said the door was locked when you got home?” Brent asks, scanning the living room and kitchen.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Okay.” Brent takes a few more steps into the apartment. “Is her purse here?”

“What? Rosie’s purse? I don’t know.”

“Would you look for it?”

Brent remains in the living area while Travis pokes his head into the kitchen, then the bedroom and bathroom. He even looks in the closet, but he knows that Rosie never puts her purse there. It is almost always on one of the dining chairs or on the end of the TV stand. 

“I can’t find it,” he says, feeling yet another wave of panic rise within him.

“Hmm.” Brent brings his hand to his chin. “Travis, I’m going to be honest with you. If the door was locked from the outside, and there’s no sign of forced entry, plus Rosie’s purse — with her wallet and phone, presumably — isn’t here, well…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I know you’re going to say I’m biased, but keep in mind how much I care about Jimenez,” Brent says. “In my professional experience, it looks a lot like Rosie took Gabrielle and ran.”

—–

Diane’s expression remains inscrutable for a long moment before she responds to Natalie.

“What nurse? Sonja?” she says.

“Yeah. The one Tim was seeing who skipped town,” Natalie says. 

“Why would you even ask about her?”

“The woman read Peter’s DNA results out loud in the middle of my wedding because she claimed Loretta told her to. Not someone I’m going to forget.”

“Ah. Well, I don’t know a thing,” Diane says. 

Although she wants to groan and perhaps kick the wall — if it wouldn’t damage her designer heels — Natalie restrains herself and simply shrugs. 

“Why don’t I go put those flowers in some water?” Diane suggests. “It’ll give you a few minutes with Samantha.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure,” Natalie says, and within moments, Diane has gathered the bouquet of roses and a vase containing some dying flowers. She swiftly steps out of the room.

Natalie moves to Samantha’s bedside. 

“We’re all rooting for you to get better, Samantha,” she says. “I don’t know how you and Bree turned out so decent, having the mothers you have, but Diane and I would deserve something like this a hell of a lot more than you do.”

—–

Out in the hallway, Diane takes the flowers and vase to the ladies’ room. She sets both down on the water-spattered formica counter by the sinks and then pulls out her phone. She dials a number and then quickly surveys the stalls to be sure that she is alone before saying anything.

“Hey,” she tells Tim as soon as she picks up. “Natalie just asked me something that I think you need to know about. And don’t worry, I played dumb…”

END OF EPISODE 1144

Did Rosie actually go on the run with Gabrielle?
Has Natalie gotten herself into trouble by prying?
Will Tori finally be able to move on with her life?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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