Previously…
– Travis was released on bail after being arraigned for Loretta Ragan’s murder.
– Samantha suffered complications from anesthesia after donating bone marrow to TJ, but her condition later improved.
– Jason urged Sabrina to see a doctor about her increasingly painful headaches.

Headlights wash over the driveway of Jason Fisher‘s home as he steers the black BMW into its parking space. It is merely evening, but it appears much later due to the onset of fall in the Pacific Northwest town. In the passenger seat, Sabrina Gage lets out an exhausted sigh as Jason shifts the car into park.

“I really hoped we’d be coming home with more info,” she says.

“Getting you checked out was important,” Jason tells her as he unclips his seatbelt. “And we don’t have the results of those scans yet. Maybe the doctor will see something…”

She turns toward him, her demeanor more jagged than her usual softness. “Is that what you’re hoping? That they find something wrong with me?”

“No. I didn’t say that.” Jason’s lips flap helplessly for a moment. “I just mean– I want answers. I know you do, too.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“How does your head feel right now?” he asks as he opens the door and steps out of the car. He jogs around to the other side to get her door for her.

Sabrina is already stepping out into the chilly evening when he gets there.

“It’s fine right now. I just want this to be over,” she says with more than a tinge of weariness in her voice.

“Let’s head inside, and I’ll make us some dinner. You should relax tonight.”

She nods dutifully as Jason locks the car. Sabrina hugs herself against the cool air as they approach the house. Jason sees it before she does. At first, he doesn’t think much of it — he assumes it is a flyer, or an envelope left by a delivery person. But then he sees that it is a folded piece of paper, sitting on the porch and weighed down by a rock. His senses begin to tingle.

“What’s wrong?” Sabrina asks from beside him, obviously not having spotted the paper yet.

Jason steps forward and picks up the rock. Slowly, he unfolds the sheet of paper. He can feel Sabrina watching over his shoulder as he does so.

When he opens it, he immediately tries to shield Sabrina from seeing what is inside — but he knows it’s too late.

—–

The living room of the Jimenez home is lit by only a single floor lamp that stands in the corner. The TV is off, and a mug of coffee from earlier sits cold on the walnut coffee table. Rosie Jimenez stands by the window, flipping through mail, when her husband enters from the hallway, pulling on a midweight down jacket.

“I’m heading out to meet Conrad,” he says.

Rosie looks up and, after a beat, nods. “Good luck.”

“We’re going to start going over evidence. Timelines, witness accounts, all that. You could come.”

She stares back at him — not harsh, exactly, but closed off. “I have an early shift tomorrow. I should probably turn in early.”

“It won’t be a late night,” he says. “And it might–“

“Good luck, Travis,” she replies, turning her attention back to the mail, which he knows cannot be that fascinating.

Tension hovers in the air between them for seconds that stretch on painfully.

“Rosie,” he finally says. “I hate this. I’m sorry I didn’t share all the details with you right away. But I need you right now.”

She pulls her lips tight, then slaps the mail down on the table that sits beneath the window. “Do you need me? Or do you need a wife who looks like she’s supporting you so you seem less guilty?”

He recoils. “That’s a low blow. You know I love you–“

“And I love you, too, Travis. But I’d be lying if I said this situation wasn’t testing my trust big-time.”

“I need you to believe me. You know everything now.”

Another pause elongates itself between them.

“And I need a little time,” she says. “Go strategize with Conrad. I’ll… I’ll jump on the train when I’m ready.”

There is a finality to her tone that crushes him, but he suspects this is as close to positive as the interaction is going to get right now.

“Thanks,” he says, and he turns to leave the room. He grabs his keys, opens the front door, and steps out of the house — and though he lingers a moment longer, Rosie does not come running after him.

The halls of Objection Designs are nearly silent, the buzz of the workday long gone. Soft light spills from Molly Taylor‘s office, where she sits hunched over a scattered collection of sketches and fabric swatches. A pair of reading glasses are perched low on her nose. She hears the soft knock on the doorframe but takes a moment to pull herself out of her work and glance up.

“You’ll go cross-eyed if you keep staring like that,” Paula Fisher says gently as she steps inside, holding an insulated tote bag.

A soft smile plays upon Molly’s lips. “What are you doing here, Mom?”

“Rescuing you from becoming a permanent exhibit. Businesswoman, circa 2025. Turned to stone at her desk.”

“Very funny,” Molly says as she removes the glasses and sets them on her desk.

“Tori came in from work and announced that you’d sent her home but had to work late,” Paula replies.

Molly pushes out her chair and stands. “There was no reason for her to hang around all night. I’m making last-minute adjustments to a few holiday items before we send them back to the manufacturer. Sometimes it’s easier to do it myself, you know?”

“Mm-hmm.” Paula sets the bag on the end of the desk. “I thought you could use some dinner. The receptionist recognized me and let me in.”

“You’re a life saver.” Molly rounds the desk and greets her mother with a hug. “I didn’t have it in me to deal with food delivery. I was going to eat whatever was in the refrigerator whenever I got home.”

“Well, now you have something to eat.”

“Thank you, Mom. How are you? There’s so much going on…”

“Truth be told, bringing you dinner let me feel like I could do something for someone,” Paula says, a note of weariness in her voice. “I feel so helpless.”

“How’s Samantha doing?” Molly asks. “Tori told me she seems to be out of the woods.”

“She does. Yes.” Paula purses her lips. “We’re optimistic. And the transplant went well. Now it’s a matter of waiting.”

“That’s what Tim said. We have to be patient and have faith, I guess.”

“Sometimes that’s all we can do, frustrating as it might be.”

Molly gestures at the chairs across the desk from her own. Paula carefully lowers herself into one, and Molly sits back down in her leather desk chair.

“How about Travis?” Molly asks. “I know I’m probably the last person he and Rosie want to hear from.”

“That isn’t true.”

Molly levels a knowing glare at her mother. “Mom.”

“You’re family,” Paula says, “and family is what matters at times like this.”

“Do you… do you think he did it?”

“No. No.” Paula shakes her head, but her tone is less than convinced. “Travis wouldn’t kill someone.”

“Technically, you did,” Molly reminds her. “The circumstances were different, of course.”

“I shot Philip because you and Sarah were in immediate danger. There’s a world of difference between that and what Travis is being accused of — buying poison and sneaking into Loretta‘s house to kill her.”

“That woman pushed us all to the brink. Rosie and Travis’s lives were left in shreds because of what she did.”

“He still wouldn’t do that,” Paula says firmly. “That isn’t who Travis is.”

Molly purses her lips, recognizing her mother’s tone clearly. This is where she wants to leave the conversation, so they will.

“He has a great attorney in Conrad,” she says instead, “and he has all of us behind him — even if silently.”

“Exactly. Travis is going to make it out of this all right. I just know he is.”

—–

“Jason, what is it?” Sabrina asks, her voice pinched by urgency in a way that tells him that she knows what it is, even though she has not seen the paper yet.

“Jason,” she presses when he hesitates. Slowly he unfolds the page again, revealing the printed image of the two of them together — with vicious red Xs drawn over and through Sabrina’s face, obscuring it completely.

“Again?” she asks, suddenly sounding very fragile.

He looks over both shoulders, then spins around to face the driveway. There is no one there, at least no one he can see.

“Get inside,” he says. He fumbles with his keys, surprised that his own hands are shaking, too. Finally he manages to unlock the door.

In the uncompromising light of the entryway, the red marker scratches on the photo look even angrier. Jason recognizes the photo — blown up to fill an 8 1/2″ by 11″ sheet — as having been taken at the Objection Designs gala last year. He sports a crisp black tuxedo, and Sabrina wears a tasteful black evening gown with wide straps stretching over both shoulders.

He locks the door and pulls out his cell phone to place a call. Sabrina holds the paper and stares at it with horror.

“Brent,” he says as soon as the call is picked up on the other end. “Sabrina and I just got home, and there’s another–” But Brent understands what he means. “Yeah. It’s a photo.”

Sabrina sets down the paper but cannot stop staring at it. The red lines have been drawn and redrawn so many times that they have nearly sliced the paper. It is as if she is watching her own self be erased from existence.

“We’re inside with the doors locked,” Jason says over the phone. “Sophie is at Don and Helen‘s for the night.”

After a few more exchanges, he ends the call. The quiet filling the house feels more ominous than reassuring.

“Brent is sending someone over. We shouldn’t touch that anymore, in case there are fingerprints or something.”

Sabrina winces. Reflexively Jason reaches out for her. She begins to sob as he wraps an arm around her.

“My head is killing me,” she says through tears. “And I’m so tired of this…”

“Why don’t you go lie down while we wait for the police?” he suggests.

She nods weakly and allows him to steer her toward the living room, with its oversized sectional sofa. The defaced photo remains on the wooden console table by the door, the chaotic red scribbles and scratches jumping off the page.

—–

In Conrad Halston‘s small but efficient private office, a three-room suite in a two-story building in downtown King’s Bay, the attorney sits at the mid-sized conference table with a laptop and a file folder open before him. Conrad wears a black cashmere sweater with the sleeves pushed up his forearms. Beside him, Travis sits uneasily, trying to take in all the information being presented to him.

“I need to understand your exact movements that night, Travis,” Conrad tells him. “We have to make this timeline as airtight as possible.”

“I told you,” Travis explains. “Elly saw me stepping out of the house. We talked and agreed not to tell anyone we’d seen each other. It was like– two minutes? Then I went to the Wild Lady. Kathleen can vouch for that. And my credit card statement can, too.”

“Good. And I’m going to subpoena your cell phone records, too. If they show that you weren’t at the Ragan house long enough to do much of anything, that could help us.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

“What about before you went to the house? As in, right before? Is there anyone who can attest to your whereabouts? I want to narrow that window of time as much as possible.”

Travis shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Um… I mean, I was at home.”

“So Rosie could solidly give you an alibi?” Conrad asks.

“No. She was gone,” Travis says. “Her mom was there, though. That’s when she told me Rosie had gone to Seattle. That’s really what got me spiraling — that she didn’t even tell me herself first–“

“Rosie went to Seattle? What do you mean?”

Travis sighs. “Things were bad between us at the time. You know, after we lost Gabrielle.”

Conrad dips his head solemnly.

“She felt like she needed some space,” Travis continues. “So she went to stay with her brother in Seattle for a few days. Didn’t even tell me she was going.”

He waits for Conrad to respond, but the graying attorney chews on the end of his pen for several seconds, lost in thought.

“What?” Travis asks at last.

“I need to throw something out there, and I need you to consider it for a moment.”

“Okay…”

“I’m going to dig into this story of hers,” Conrad says, “but that’s a red flag to me, Travis.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rosie suddenly disappears from town without even telling you? And then someone who caused her enormous pain is murdered while she’s allegedly away?”

“She was in Seattle,” Travis counters. “I’ve seen photos of her and her brother from that time.”

“From the time Loretta was poisoned? Or later in the trip?”

“Later in the trip,” Travis says, his mouth suddenly feeling dry and heavy.

“It’s my job to explore all possibilities,” Conrad says. “And right now, as a defense attorney? I’m noticing a major gap that gives us a credible alternate suspect.”

Travis sits back in his chair, stunned by what Conrad is suggesting.

END OF EPISODE 1276

Could Conrad’s theory be accurate?
How much more can Sabrina take?
What else can Paula do for her family?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

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