Previously…
– Hoping to salvage his relationship with Sabrina, Jason took Sophie to therapy — where she made a startling demand of her father.
– Christian was shocked when he saw Sabrina exchanging phone numbers with a guy from her photography class.
– Brent was confused when Natalie insisted that she never saw Loretta at the Moriani home on the night it exploded.
– The Fishers’ Christmas took an ugly turn when Rosie and Travis got into it with Molly and Brent over Gabrielle and a potential custody suit.

“Then if you really want to put me first,” Sophie Fisher declares, “do something for me and dump your girlfriend.”

Both her father and Dr. Janice Wiggins look to Sophie with shock. The trio sit in the therapist’s office, with Jason and Sophie on the navy sofa across from Dr. Wiggins.

“Sophie,” Jason says, unable to muster any other response.

“We aren’t here to make demands of one another,” Dr. Wiggins says in an even tone. “We’re here so everyone can feel heard.”

Sophie’s brown eyes do not blink. “That’s what I want to have heard.”

“What if I can’t do that?” Jason cuts in.

“So you won’t put me first?” Sophie says. “I’m your daughter–“

“My daughter, not my ruler.”

“Let’s all take a pause and a deep breath,” Dr. Wiggins says as she adjusts her purple-framed glasses. “Remember that we’re here because we love each other and want to get to a better place.”

Sophie lets out a loud, overly dramatic groan.

“You know I love you,” Jason says, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees. “You are my world, Sophie.”

All she offers in return is a confrontational stare.

“But I care about Sabrina,” he continues. “Very much. So let me ask you this: what if I can’t do what you’re asking me to do? What if I stay with Sabrina? What happens then?”

—–

In one of the freezer aisles inside J&M Supermarket, Rosie Jimenez stands before a closed door, scanning the multitude of options. As much as she hates to give Gabrielle food with too many preservatives, sometimes convenience wins out over ambition — and lately, she feels as if their little family unit is barely keeping its head above water. If dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets will keep Gabrielle happy and fed, then Rosie will keep them as part of her arsenal.

She opens the freezer to grab a box, and as she places it into her shopping cart, she looks up and sees the familiar face of a blonde woman several feet away. Rosie stops mid-movement, half-hunched over the cart. The freezer door closes behind her with a thwack.

“Hi, Rosie,” Sarah Fisher Gray says. She takes a few steps nearer; she has a light gray wrap coat cinched at her waist, and her black leather boots clack against the store’s linoleum floor as she approaches.

“Hey.” Rosie searches her husband‘s aunt’s face for any hint of what this encounter might entail. Suddenly she notices the chicken nuggets in her cart, and a hot spike of panic surges inside her.

“Oh, um, these are just– Travis likes them sometimes,” she stammers.

The slightest hint of a grin turns up one corner of Sarah’s mouth before she says, “It’s okay. I’m not judging you or your parenting. I’ve survived two toddlers. I get it.”

Rosie lets out an involuntary sigh of relief, and her shoulders drop from somewhere around her ears back down to their normal level. Still, the encounter with a member of the Fisher family feels too loaded, too dangerous, right now, and Rosie clamps her hands onto the handle of her cart.

“I should get going,” she says. “Good to see you.”

As she pushes the cart past Sarah, though, the blonde speaks again.

“Rosie, wait,” Sarah says.

Almost in spite of herself, Rosie stops moving.

“Do you have a minute?” Sarah asks. “To talk?”

—–

To say the dining hall on the campus of King’s Bay University is lively would be putting things lightly. Students, excited to be back on campus after winter break, fill the space, bouncing between tables as they reunite with classmates and catch up on their holiday exploits. A blanket of raucous conversational noise, punctuated by the occasional, even louder burst of laughter or shrieking, covers the entire dining hall.

In a back corner, next to a window, Christian Taylor sits at a small table by himself, with a tray of food in front of him. With Bree and Marcus on a date at Windmills and a half-hearted offer from his twin brother and Jasmine to join them for dinner, he decided to come to the dining hall himself and have a quiet dinner. Of course, he also had something in mind to fill his time — something he didn’t want to do in the dorm room with Caleb and his girlfriend mere feet away.

Hunched over his phone in hopes of keeping anyone from seeing the screen, Christian is trying to reviews the photos that he has added to his brand-new Grindr profile. But distractions keep pulling his attention away, like an invisible hand grabbing him by the shirt and yanking him backward. He keeps seeing the image of his uncle’s girlfriend, who takes photography classes on campus, seemingly flirting with a guy who was very much not his Uncle Jason.

You don’t know that it was flirting, he tells himself silently.

But it looked like Sabrina was putting her number in his phone, a competing voice says.

Christian doesn’t really have the type of relationship with Jason where he can simply call him up and tell him that Sabrina was giving her number to another guy, but he also feels some sense of obligation to alert his uncle, just in case.

“Leave it for now,” he tells himself. “It isn’t any of your business.”

Still unsettled, he turns his attention back to the photos. One is a solo shot of himself in a tuxedo from Prom last spring; another is from a group photo that he, Marcus, and Bree took last fall, although he has zoomed in and cropped it so that only he — plus part of Marcus’s shirt and arm — are visible.

The third and final photo is the one that he keeps questioning. It is a shirtless photo that he took in the mirror of his bathroom at his mother’s house over winter break. He wasn’t even sure why he was taking it; he had no one to send it to, but he felt like his body looked good after a run. Now, glancing through the other Grindr profiles nearby, he sees that showing some skin is almost necessary. But he still feels awkward uploading a half-naked photo onto the app.

Drawing a deep breath, he hits the Upload button, then quickly sets down his phone and reaches for his fork.

It’s not like I’m actually naked, he tells himself as he eats a bite of the lasagna that was one of the dining hall’s main offerings tonight.

He has barely finished chewing when his phone vibrates on the table. When he glances over, he sees that it is a notification from Grindr. His heart begins to race as he picks up the phone.

The message is from a user whose name is simply CAMPUS, and its contents are simple enough: How’s it going stud?

Christian grins to himself as he clicks through to the user’s profile. Although there is no accompanying face photo, he does find several pictures of a lean, chiseled torso with a moderate amount of hair on it.

With slightly shaky hands, he begins to type a response.

When Molly Taylor enters the police station, she is surprised to find it busier than she expected. Given that it is January, the sun has already set, and the darkness outside has made the world seem sleepy. In here, however, it is noisy and borderline chaotic. Two uniformed officers rushing for the door nearly bowl her over as she makes her way to the front desk.

Before she can announce herself to the receptionist, however, she sees her ex-husband emerging from a door to the left.

“She’s with me,” Brent tells the receptionist, and he escorts Molly back through the door from which he came.

“Thanks for coming down,” he says. “The sooner we can get you on record, the better.”

“Of course,” Molly replies. “Did you move offices?”

“Hmm?”

“Your office is in the other direction, isn’t it?” she asks. “Or it was.”

“I’m bringing you to another detective’s office,” Brent explains. “I can’t be the one to take your statement.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” They turn a corner as she continues, “I don’t understand why Natalie would change her story. She told Travis and me that she’d seen Loretta go into the Moriani house.”

“Probably because Loretta threatened her. That’s not exactly the biggest leap to make.”

“No, it isn’t. But why would Natalie have even been there in the first place?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Brent says as he stops at a closed door. “And you giving us a statement that contradicts what Natalie told me is the first step to doing that. All ready?”

“I guess so,” Molly says. “Anything I can do to make Loretta pay for what she’s put us through — I’ll do it.”

Brent nods in fervent agreement as he knocks on the detective’s door.

—–

Sophie’s eyes widen. “You’re picking her over me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jason replies as calmly as he can, even though he feels on the verge of exploding. “I asked what’ll happen if Sabrina and I stay together.”

“I’ll run away,” Sophie blurts out.

“You’ll run away? How?”

“I–” Sophie sputters. “I’ll go live with Grandma Helen and Grandpa Don.”

Dr. Wiggins, who has been allowing father and daughter to have this exchange, clears her throat. “Sophie, let me ask you something else.”

Both Jason and Sophie turn their attention toward the therapist.

“Let’s say your father does end his relationship with Sabrina,” Dr. Wiggins says.

Jason again leans forward. “I’m not going to–“

“Let me finish the question. Sophie, if your father does end things with Sabrina… what then? Do you expect him to stay single forever?”

“Not forever. But, like…”

“What if he does meet someone else? Someone with an entirely different, neutral name? What then?”

Sophie appears genuinely thrown, as if she hasn’t ever thought ahead to that possibility. The dark-haired teenager sits back, nearly being swallowed by the deep sofa. Jason watches her intently, while the doctor again folds her hands in her lap and waits with what Jason considers a maddening amount of patience.

Seconds and seconds pass, stretching out among them, before Dr. Wiggins finally speaks up again.

“Would you be able to accept someone without any of that baggage?” she prompts.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Sophie mumbles. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” Jason says. “You’re my daughter. You liked Natalie, didn’t you?”

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

“Who’s Natalie?” Dr. Wiggins asks.

“My ex-fiancée,” Jason explains. “We came very close to getting married, and I thought we had a son together.”

Dr. Wiggins crinkles her nose. “Thought…?”

“We all thought Peter was my brother,” Sophie says. “Until literally the day of her and my dad’s wedding. Like, as they were getting married. That’s when we found out Dad wasn’t Peter’s dad.”

“I see,” the doctor says, slowly nodding. “Were you close to Natalie, Sophie?”

Sophie rolls her eyes. “She was basically my stepmom. And Bree — that’s her daughter — was like my sister.”

“It must have been hard for you when your dad’s relationship with Natalie ended,” Dr. Wiggins says.

“Yeah, it sucked. They all moved out overnight. Like, I had a stepmom and a big sister and a little brother, and then everyone found out Natalie lied, and they just were gone.”

“Do you see them anymore?”

“Bree graduated from my school last year, so not really,” Sophie says. “Dad still coaches her, though.”

“It was a really hard transition,” Jason adds. “Losing Peter was horrible.”

“You’ve both been through a lot of loss,” the doctor says. “Loss is traumatic. It unsettles us, shakes our realities.”

“It’s what always happens,” Sophie says, a bitter edge to her voice. “My mom was gone before I could even remember her. Grandpa and Uncle Ryan died. Then Natalie and Bree and Peter all went away.”

Dr. Wiggins leans in. “Do you worry about your dad getting serious with someone else because that person might go away, too?”

Sophie stares at the therapist and swallows hard. “Maybe.”

“Do you think — please just hear me out — that you’re worried that both you and your dad will get attached to Sabrina, and then she’ll go away, too?”

Of course, Jason thinks, feeling the energy in the office shift ever so slightly.

“Who knows?” Sophie says. “She could even be lying to us now. Natalie was. It just took a long time to find out.”

“You know what?” Dr. Wiggins says. “I think we’ve made some progress here.”

Sucking in his lips, Jason nods.

“Sophie, you’ve been really brave and open with both your dad and me today,” the doctor says. “Thank you. I think I might see a way forward here.”

“I think I do, too,” Jason agrees.

“I don’t know,” Sophie says. “Dad, why can’t it just be the two of us? It always has been.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “but it’s also been us, and Grandma Paula, and Alex, and Uncle Tim, and Grandma Helen and Grandpa Don… think of all the people who haven’t gone away.”

Sophie quietly takes this in. For the first time in weeks, Jason feels a swell of optimism inside his chest — a chance that they really will be able to work this out.

—–

Rosie finds herself stuck in place in the freezer aisle, her legs suddenly immobile.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she tells Sarah. “Considering…”

“I’m sure Christmas was terrible for you.”

“I think it was for a lot of people. We never should’ve come or brought Gabrielle there.”

Sarah shrugs. “Maybe not. But you wanted to see if there was a way to find peace with… everything going on.”

“We wanted to try, yeah,” Rosie says. “But all it did was make Travis and me realize how impossible it’s going to be raising our daughter with Molly and Commander– Brent always around. And look, I know they’re in a lot of pain–“

“Molly can be intense. Believe me, I know that better than almost anyone. I’m not sure how much Travis has told you…”

“He told me about how you used to be married to Brent.”

“I did. Imagine how it feels losing your husband to your sister,” Sarah says. “Of course, they both did me a favor in the end, because if I hadn’t been trying to keep Brent away from Molly, I wouldn’t have met Matt.” Her gaze grows hazy for a moment, as if she has been transported into a world of memory, but she soon refocuses. “My point is, there’s never been any love lost between Molly and me. So I’m not here to jump down your throat the way other members of my family might.”

Rosie runs her fingers over the scuffed handle of the shopping cart, unsure of what the proper response might be.

“That’s really all I wanted to say,” Sarah adds. “You and Travis do have at least one ally in the family.”

“Thanks.” Rosie looks over at an assortment of frozen pizzas in the case to her left. “It feels like we aren’t even living our real lives. Every day, I try to keep things normal for Gabrielle, but all I’m thinking about is whether we’re about to be served with a suit.”

“That has to be awful.”

“Beyond. I would’ve thought they’d have served us by now.”

Sarah chews her lower lip for a few seconds.

“What?” Rosie asks.

“Brent knows what he’s doing, in terms of timing. He’s making sure they have their case solid before they file.”

“Do you think?”

“That has to be it,” Sarah says. “I don’t blame you for bracing for impact. You’re being smart.”

“I just wish smart was enough to get us out of this. Do you think we have a chance?”

“A chance?”

“At winning,” Rosie says. “Travis and I. Am I being crazy for thinking a judge could side with us?”

“Honestly? You probably do.”

“Really?”

“You’ve raised that kid for two years. You’re the only parents she knows. And — look, I’m far from Molly’s biggest fan, but I wouldn’t wish a nightmare like this on her. But the thought of you and Travis losing your child is…” She shakes her head.

“We’re gonna fight,” Rosie says, setting her jaw. “I don’t care if it’s crazy. The minute we get those papers, it’s on. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I don’t lose my daughter.”

END OF EPISODE 1167

How far will Rosie go to keep Gabrielle?
Will Sophie give Sabrina a real chance?
Is using Grindr the right move for Christian?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

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