Previously…
– Rosie cleared Travis of Loretta’s murder by exposing the fact that Sonja, desperate to return to King’s Bay so that TJ could seek a bone marrow transplant, had secretly snuck back into town and poisoned Loretta.
– Spencer hired Elly to represent him in his divorce from Natalie. He and Natalie told Peter about their split, and the boy took the news calmly.
– Sophie’s “Shannon” persona continued to control her psyche.

Sometimes I like to hide in the shadows
Create a new persona
A different identity
I can be whoever I want to be

“Thanks for coming.”

Jason Fisher stands from his office chair and rounds the desk. His teenage daughter stands in the entry to the office on the second floor of Edge of Winter Arena; Tempest Banks sits at her desk, positioned at a 90-degree angle to Jason’s.

“No problem,” Sophie says. “How’s work going?”

“It’s fine. We just got swamped with some permit renewal stuff,” Jason says. He looks to Tempest. “Really exciting, isn’t it?”

Tempest holds up a stack of papers. “The Parks Department did their big one with this round.”

“I’ll be ready to go to dinner soon,” Jason tells his daughter. “Think you can keep yourself busy for 20 minutes or so?”

Sophie grins. “I’m sure I can.”

“You could go down to Thaw and get a coffee or matcha or whatever,” Tempest suggests.

“I just might,” Sophie says. “No rush.” As she turns and steps out of the office, that same grin spreads, and something darker, more ominous, pools behind her eyes.

“I have just the thing in mind,” she says to herself as she descends the stairs.

Whenever I doubt you,
I have a premonition
And I can see clearly where I should be
You set me free with your love sensation

The private dining room at Windmills is quieter than the main restaurant, insulated from the clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation beyond the door.

When the maitre d’ leads Elly Vanderbilt into the room, she stops with shock. A table for two has been set in the middle of the room.

“Spencer?”

He looks up from the folder in front of him. “Hi.”

“I thought we were meeting for a drink to go over paperwork,” she says.

“We are.”

Spencer quickly thanks the maitre d’, who exits, leaving them alone in the room.

“This doesn’t look like drinks,” Elly says.

“It also doesn’t look like a conference room or your office, which I consider a positive.”

Despite herself, she laughs. “So you rented out a private room.”

“It’s not a room.”

“It is literally a room.”

“It’s a table that happens to be located inside a room. Now sit. Please.” He stands and helps her into her chair.

As he returns to his own seat, he passes the folder to her. “Everything you asked for is in there. Financial disclosures, account statements, property records, retirement accounts, itemized annual expenses for Peter, paperwork for my new condo…”

She opens the folder and flips through the neatly organized documents.

“Wine?” he asks, gesturing at the bottle of cabernet on the table. “I know you like a cabernet. And this is an excellent one.”

Elly looks at the bottle of Far Niente, with its understated, old-world label, featuring a black-and-white sketch of an estate vineyard, bordered by curling grapevines and traced in soft gold.

“What? Should I have gone with the giant bottle that comes with sparklers?”

“This looks great. Thank you.”

He pours her a glass as she continues studying the file.

“You sort of did my job for me,” Elly says. “This is very thorough.”

“Still plenty of hours for you to bill.” He lifts his glass. “Shall we toast to that?”

“I do like billable hours.”

They clink glasses, and for the next few minutes, the conversation stays exactly where it is supposed to stay: assets, timelines, procedural requirements, all the practical things that come with dismantling a marriage and household. The waiter arrives, takes their orders, and then disappears again.

“I actually think that’s everything for now,” Elly says as she closes the folder.

Spencer pauses, his glass halfway to his lips. “There is one other thing.”

The redheaded attorney eyes him cautiously. “Uh-oh.”

“No. It’s good.” Nevertheless, he takes a glug of the wine. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you.”

“Okay…”

“Elly.” He sucks in a deep breath. “I love you.”

Silence. Not shocked silence, at least not entirely.

“Where is this coming from?” she questions. “Grief? Trauma? Gratitude because I helped you through a tough time at the courthouse?”

“It’s more than that,” he insists. “And it’s been there for a long time. I just didn’t recognize it.”

She laughs softly, but not cruelly. “You’re in the middle of what could very well be the divorce from hell. You have a son who needs to adjust. You just found out your former nurse killed your mother. And I’m famously kind of a mess.”

“Messes can fall in love, too.” For a moment, he stares at the flickering flame of the votive candle in the center of the table. “I’m not asking you for anything. No promises, no declarations, not right now. I needed you to hear me. That’s all.”

“I hear you,” she says.

“Good. What am I asking you is for you to tell me if I’m wrong.”

“I can’t tell you how you feel.”

“Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

The room goes very still. Elly opens her mouth, then closes it again. She looks down at the white tablecloth.

A smile appears despite her best efforts. “You’re impossible.”

“And that’s not a no.”

“No. It’s not.” She meets his eye. “So what happens now?”

“We enjoy dinner. How does that sound?”

“It sounds perfect,” Elly tells him as she takes another sip of her wine.

I trace the line of what you have sewn
Keep my own design
Make it a landscape
Make it alive

Natalie Bishop finds her daughter exactly where she expected to: curled up in one corner of the sofa in Conrad Halston‘s townhouse, applying white tape to her skating boots.

“How are those skates holding up?” Natalie asks.

Bree looks up. “Actually pretty well. They’ve got another season in them, for sure.”

“That’s good.” Natalie lowers herself onto the sofa. “I need to tell you something.”

“I figured you weren’t just coming over to watch TV,” Bree says, clearly a little uncomfortable. “Nobody’s dead, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s good.”

Natalie exhales. “Spencer and I are getting divorced.”

Bree blinks once. “Oh. Okay.”

Natalie laughs, in spite of herself. “Between the two of my children, I thought I’d at least get some drama.”

“How’s Peter doing? You told him?”

“Yeah. He seems fine. I think he’s always known that his father and I don’t have the most conventional marriage. I mean, we’ve had separate bedrooms for as long as he’s been alive. He was mostly worried about whether he has to move.”

“How are you handling all that?” Bree asks.

“Spencer is letting me stay in the house. Peter’s room will stay the same. Spencer has a new condo downtown, and he’ll have a room for Peter, too. But we don’t want to turn his life upside-down.”

“That’s good.” Bree sets her skate down on the floor, careful to balance it by the base of the sofa. “How about you?”

“I’m okay,” Natalie says, not very convincingly. “It is what it is.”

“It’s nice that Spencer is letting you keep the house.”

“Yeah. It is.” Natalie sighs. “I think he wants this to be as quick and painless as possible.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“It is.” But Natalie’s tone continues to betray her.

Bree fiddles with the roll of tape. “You know, Spencer never really felt like my stepdad. I mean, it’s weird to even call him that.”

“Because he’s younger than me?”

“That, and you guys were never, like, a real couple,” Bree explains. “And I didn’t spend a ton of time with you together.”

“There’ll be a room at the house for you now. I know you didn’t want to be there while Loretta was living there, but…”

Bree picks at the edge of the tape. “Thanks. I like my space here when I’m not at the dorm, but you never know.”

“You never know,” Natalie says, trying to rouse a little optimism.

“But I appreciate the offer, Mom.”

The silence that follows feel different, somehow. Heavier. More serious.

“I hope you won’t make the same mistakes I did,” Natalie says.

Bree sets down the tape. “What mistakes?”

Natalie considers her next words for longer than she expects to. “I… When I was younger, I thought being with someone and being safe were the same thing.”

Folding her hands in her lap, Bree listens.

“I’ve done a lot to hold onto men because I don’t know how to be on my own,” Natalie admits.

Bree studies her mother carefully. “Is this about you and Spencer?”

“And your dad and me, and Jason and me, and even Julian and me,” Natalie says. “It’s what more things in my life have been about than I care to admit.”

Bree reaches over and squeezes her mother’s hand. “You’re going to be okay on your own.”

Natalie looks down at their hands. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“It’s the truth,” Bree says.

For the first time in a long time, Natalie allows herself to wonder if what Bree is saying could be right — if there really could be something out there for her beyond this divorce.

The ones that you love
Will keep you above

The basement of the Fisher home has gradually transformed into the headquarters for Sarah Fisher Gray‘s investigative business. Filing cabinets line one wall, and an uncharacteristically bare corkboard occupies another. As Travis Fisher descends the stairs, he finds his best friend sitting at the old dining room table that now serves as the center of the operation. Landon Esco stares at a notepad — then rips off the top sheet and crumples it up.

“Ready to head to dinner?” Travis asks.

Landon barely glances up. “I guess. I could sit here for ten more hours and not get anything done.”

Travis notes the graveyard of crumpled sheets adorning the table. “Why do you look like somebody just cancelled Christmas?”

“Let’s just say I’ve only solved one case lately,” Landon remarks, “and the conclusion is: I’m not very good at this.”

“Where’d that come from?” Travis asks, studying him. “Aunt Sarah says you’re a natural.”

“That’s what she thought.” Landon rubs a hand across his forehead. “I honestly thought I did something great.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I found Sonja.” He holds up his fingers and makes air quotes. “‘Found.’ All I was doing was following breadcrumbs that she had scattered on purpose.”

“That doesn’t make you a bad investigator.”

Landon ignores this and adds, “And then when it actually mattered… when it came to finding something that could clear you… I whiffed it. Bad.”

Finally Travis pulls out a chair and sits opposite his friend.

“You know what I see?”

“Please don’t say potential.”

“I won’t. I see someone who’s measuring himself against a woman who spent literal years manipulating doctors, police, my dad, everyone. You weren’t outsmarted by a beginner, Landon.”

“I guess that’s something.” Landon shakes his head. “I still should’ve seen through it.”

“Maybe you only think that because you know the ending now,” Travis offers. “My aunt hired you for a reason.”

“Maybe. But now I’m all in my head. I can’t even see straight to solve the simplest stupid case.” He gestures at the crumpled wads of paper. “Worker’s comp fraud! This should be easy. But I can’t find a way to get it to work.”

“So keep working.”

Landon leans back in his chair, still uneasy.

“Look at it this way: you eliminated avenues that paved the way for Rosie to figure out it was Sonja,” Travis says. “That whole thing with the gym and the locker — we could’ve been stuck on that until the end.”

“When you put it that way…” Landon looks around the basement — at the files, the corkboard, the organized chaos. It all suddenly feels a little less intimidating.

“You know, that corkboard was full of stuff from your case,” he says. “And now it’s completely empty.”

“A fresh start,” Travis says. “For all of us.”

He stands and claps a hand on Landon’s shoulder. “Now how about we go get some dinner? I’m starving. You can even talk out this worker’s comp case over some onion rings if you want.”

“Okay, if there’s onion rings on tap, I might be able to do this,” Landon says as he pushes out his chair.

I know where the bodies are buried
Don’t try to shut me up

Edge of Winter Arena is quiet at this time of the evening. The youth teams are gone, and the public skating session concluded half an hour ago. Only the low hum of refrigeration equipment remains.

Sophie — her body, at least, controlled as it currently is by Shannon — moves briskly around the end of the rink and checks to be certain that the coast is clear. Her father and Tempest are still upstairs in the office, but otherwise, there shouldn’t be anyone here. Once she is certain that she is alone, she goes behind the skate rental counter, reaches between two shelves, and fumbles around until she feels the loose panel in the wall. Moments later, she is pulling out the plastic baggie.

She inserts the battery and SIM card into the burner phone. Her thumb hesitates over the contact — the only contact in the phone — for a second, then presses Call.

Two rings.

Three.

Then a click.

“Hello?” The voice that answers sound cautious, tired.

With a tap of her thumb, Shannon activates the voice changer app. “Sabrina?”

A pause. “Who is this?”

“I’ve got something I wanna talk about.”

A beat of silence stretches over the line before Sabrina Gage replies, “No.”

“Oh yes. You know, I really thought you’d have figured it out by now.”

“Please don’t do this. I thought this was over–“

“You thought wrong.” Shannon smirks to herself. “I bet that little break made you breathe a little easier. How are the headaches?”

“The headaches? How do you know–“

“I know everything. I’ve watched you for a long time, Sabrina.”

“I’m calling the police,” Sabrina says with panic.

“Go ahead. I need to get going anyway. Just wanted you to know that I’m still thinking of you. I’ll be in touch… when you least expect it. Ta-ta.”

“Wait–“

Before Sabrina can get out whatever banal thing she is about to say, Shannon ends the call. She removes the phone’s battery and SIM card, seals it all back inside the plastic bag, and stashes the bag behind that loose panel. She stands up, takes a deep breath, and makes her way out from behind the counter.

She climbs the stairs up to the office, slipping back into Sophie’s cadence and carriage as she calls, “Dad, are you almost ready? I’m starving!”

END OF EPISODE 1308

What else does Shannon have planned for Sabrina?
Will Landon be able to regain his confidence?
Is Spencer and Natalie’s divorce going to go smoothly?
Confess your reactions in the comments below!