Previously…
– As Tori and Landon’s romance heated up, Lucy continued to stay at Landon’s apartment for protection from her abusive ex, Bryce.
– Rosie told Travis that she is pregnant, leading to a breakthrough and reunion for the couple despite his impending murder trial.- Sarah, Landon, Conrad, and Rosie pursued leads to figure out how the vial of poison could have been planted in Travis’s gym bag.

Juanita Jimenez is at the small kitchen table, sorting mail, when she hears the front door of her home open. Peering out into the hallway, she sees her daughter and son-in-law, coats half-off, moving with an ease that had not existed between them for months.

“Good news?” she asks cheerfully.

Rosie and Travis walk past the chipped banister of the staircase and toward the kitchen. Their eyes lock together, exchanging a look that isn’t just playful, but meaningful.

“Is there news about the case?” Juanita asks eagerly. Travis’s impending trial for the murder of Loretta Ragan has been sucking all the oxygen out of the house for weeks.

“No. I’m afraid not,” Travis says.

“It’s good to see you two smiling,” Juanita comments. “It’s been a long time.”

Travis slips an arm around Rosie’s waist without thinking about it. Just as instinctively, Rosie leans into him.

“Am I allowed to ask?” Juanita inquires.

The married couple exchanges another look, this one heavier.

“Actually,” Rosie says, the word hanging tentatively off her tongue, “we were just talking about that in the car.”

Juanita studies them from her post at the table.

Rosie half-whispers to Travis, “Should we? Now?”

His front tooth bites down on this lower lip as he considers the situation.

—–

In the basement of the Fisher home, Sarah Fisher Gray stands by the old dining table that now serves as the conference table of her private investigative practice. Landon Esco sits at the table, attention fixed on his laptop.

“I ran both of them every way I know how,” he is saying. “Which, thanks to your tutelage, is a lot of ways. I can’t get any traction on that woman from the gym security footage. Clean record, steady job–“

“What kind of job?” Sarah interjects.

“Insurance claims adjuster.”

“Oh.” Sarah throws back her head in frustration. “I was hoping you’d say pharmacist. Then we could be getting somewhere with the poison.”

“No such luck,” Landon replies. “And the hockey coach: married, kids, nothing suspicious in his background. Neither of ’em has any connection to Travis, Loretta, Spencer — nothing.”

Sarah absorbs this, her frustration threatening to reach a boil.

“No overlap at all?” she asks, a note of desperation creeping into her tone.

He shakes his head. “I wish I had something. You know I want to save Travis as bad as you do.”

“I know,” Sarah says. “I really thought we had something here. And now our big lead is… a big ball of nothing.”

“Right.” Landon pushes his chair back from the table. “Which means Travis is either the unluckiest guy alive, or we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Sarah stares out the hopper window near the top of the basement wall. The opening offers a strange perspective on the backyard, placing the grass above eye level.

“How’s it feel?” she asks.

Landon cocks his head. “What do you mean?”

“When the trail runs cold,” Sarah says. “You unfortunately have to get used to it when you’re a P.I. One of the worst feelings.”

He shifts awkwardly in the chair. “Yeah, doesn’t feel great. What do you do when this happens?”

Sarah turns back toward him. “That’s the problem: it’s on us to figure out what comes next.”

Lucy Champlain pushes through the swinging doors that lead from the kitchen to the main dining area of Bill’s on the Pier. As she tightens her strawberry blonde ponytail, she observes that the lunch crowd has thinned considerably, leaving only a handful of diners left in the place. She spots Tori Gray sitting on a swivel stool at the restaurant’s bar and makes her way over.

“Sorry, I had to finish up a few things before I clocked out,” Lucy says. She drops onto the stool beside Tori with a tired sigh.

Tori slides her a glass of white wine. “On the house. By which I mean my dad.”

“Who’s technically ‘the house,'” Lucy says with a giggle as she reaches for the wine.

Picking up her own glass of wine, Tori raises a toast. “To free afternoons.”

“To free afternoons.”

The two women sip their wine in peaceful quiet for a few seconds.

“You seem relaxed,” Tori comments. “Or as relaxed as someone can be after a busy lunch shift in a restaurant kitchen.”

Lucy smiles as she sets down her wine. “I had forgotten what it was like to feel this way. And I do still think about Bryce and whether he’s going to show up somewhere. But it’s been quiet since Halloween.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“I owe a lot of it to you and Landon,” Lucy says. “You since you tossed Bryce into the water out there — and Landon for letting me stay at his place long enough that I could feel safe again.”

“You feeling safe again is what’s most important,” Tori says.

Lucy leans forward. “Now what’s going on with you and Landon? He plays a little coy, which is good, but he comes home from a date with you and he’s practically walking on air.”

Tori feels her cheeks flush. “Really?”

“You’d have to be blind not to notice it. It’s super-sweet.”

“I really like him,” Tori admits. “We were friends for so long — and he was Travis’s friend for even longer — that I thought it might feel weird to make it, I don’t know, romantic.”

“It sure sounds romantic!”

“It is. That just feels… corny?”

“So be corny! Who cares?” Lucy laughs and takes another drink from her wine glass. “You guys are lucky to have one another. And Landon — he’s a protector. Like he’ll really take care of you and watch out for you. That’s rarer than it seems.”

“Considering the past experiences you and I have had… that’s an understatement,” Tori says.

“For real. I hope Landon knows that I’ve got his back, too. Not that he needs it, but you know.”

“I’m sure he knows.” Before Tori can continue, her smartwatch begins to buzz with an incoming call. She checks it and tells Lucy, “It’s my grandma. I should take this, just in case.”

“Go right ahead.”

Tori pulls her iPhone from her purse and steps away from the bar to talk with Paula. Lucy scrolls through her own phone as she waits for her friend to return. When she opens the camera roll, she finds herself scrolling back to Halloween, when they all attended a party in this very restaurant. She stops on a selfie that she took, of herself and Landon in their costumes at the apartment before they came to meet Tori.

She stares at the photo a moment too long before she forces herself to scroll past it, though the feelings that accompany the photo continue to linger.

—–

“I think it’s time,” Travis says softly to Rosie.

She nods in agreement, then looks back at her mother. “I think so, too. Since we’re out of the first trimester.”

Juanita freezes. Her palms slap down upon the table, and her mouth gapes.

“Did you say…?”

“I’m pregnant,” Rosie confirms, emotion rising but controlled.

For a moment, Juanita does not move or even breathe at all. Then she pushes herself to her feet.

“Mija,” she says. “You’re really pregnant?”

“Sí. Vamos a ser papás otra vez,” Rosie tells her.

Juanita comes forward and pulls her daughter into a fierce embrace.

“You lost me after sí,” Travis says.

“I said sí, we’re going to be parents again,” Rosie says.

Travis draws in a sharp breath, his eyes stinging as the most bittersweet feeling envelops him. “Again.”

“Gabrielle will always be a daughter to you both,” Juanita says. “And now this new baby — is it too soon to know–“

“We won’t find out until the next ultrasound,” Rosie explains. “If we decide we want to know the sex.”

“I am so happy. For both of you, for all of us.” Juanita gives Travis a congratulatory hug, as well. “This house needed some good news.”

“I just wish we didn’t have all of this hanging over us,” Travis says somberly. “This should be a happy time. But I’m going on trial…”

Rosie straightens, resolve flickering in her eyes. “I’m going to clear your name. I don’t care how much time or energy it takes.”

“When they took Gabrielle, I watched both of you break in ways that nearly broke me,” Juanita says. “You’ve rebuilt yourselves and your marriage. It was faith that did that.”

“I wish faith could magically save me now,” Travis says.

Juanita sets her jaw. “Family protects one another. And that’s what we will do now.”

Both Travis and Rosie bob their heads in agreement, but the tense uncertainty of what lies ahead settles thick over the room.

—–

Sarah has rejoined Landon at the conference table, as they pore over open file folders of discovery in Travis’s case that Conrad has provided for them.

“If the vial wasn’t planted at the gym,” Sarah says, “then it has to have been planted somewhere else. He’s only taking his gym bag so many places.”

“Bill’s on the Pier?” Landon posits.

“That was my thought, too. But Matt says the staff lockers all lock there. So unless he didn’t use the lock, or someone knew his code…”

“Someone might’ve figured out his code.”

“True,” she says, as she chews on the end of a pen and thinks. “But that’s a tough area to get into. You’d have to go all the way through the kitchen, into the staff room, and ensure that it was empty so that you could plant the vial.”

“Still, I’ll see if there’s any security footage that could help us.” Landon quickly jots down a note on a Post-it.

“That does leave one place,” Sarah says.

He looks up. “Where?”

She waits. His face changes as the idea clicks.

“The Jimenez house,” Landon says.

“Precisely. Travis was living there that whole time. The bag would’ve been there, not secured in a locker or anything.”

They stare at one another, realizations dawning.

“Someone inside that house could’ve planted the poison,” Landon says in disbelief.

Sarah exhales slowly, floored by this new lead.

END OF EPISODE 1289

Could someone in the Jimenez home have planted the vial?
Will Rosie and Travis be able to enjoy this period at all?
Is Lucy starting to develop the wrong idea about Landon?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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