Previously…
– Spencer awoke from his coma with no memory of anything after Thanksgiving 2015. Tim and Claire had to explain to him that Philip was the Footprint Killer.
– Matt was desperate to find a way to save Harbor Boulevard before the building is sold and demolished.
– Diane’s life was turned upside-down after Tempest revealed that Samantha had been conceived as a result of Diane lying to an amnesiac Tim to trick him into having sex with her.

The first thing Natalie Bishop notices is the light coming through the bedroom curtains. She gazes into it for a very long moment, allowing her mind to be content and empty. With it still being summer, the sunlight doesn’t tell her much about what time it is; it could be barely 6 a.m. or much later in the morning. A deep yawn takes momentary control of her, and the events of the previous night drift back to her. Her dinner out with Jason… his proposal under the stars in the backyard… the adrenaline rush that kept her from falling asleep. And then the sound of Peter crying through the baby monitor at 2:30 a.m., which pulled her out of bed and into his nursery for a good 45 minutes.

Only now does she dare to glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Its glowing numerals reveal that it is just after 8 a.m. Somehow, she managed to turn her fractured night into some decent sleep.

She rolls over to find Jason Fisher in much the same state as her: blinking against the light and getting his bearings. She scoots closer to him and brings a hand to his bare chest.

“Good morning, fiancé,” she says with a smile.

His face lights up. “Good morning, fiancée. I like the sound of that.”

“Me, too. I can’t believe we actually got some decent sleep in. He hasn’t woken up crying like that in a long time.”

“Yeah, thanks for getting up to take care of that. Next time is my turn. How long were you up?”

“Forty five minutes or so.” She traces a light circle over his chest. “Even if I were dead-tired, though, I’d still be too excited to care. We have so many people to tell. And a wedding to plan.”

“Yeah, we do.” He sighs. “You want to draw sticks to decide who gets to drop the bomb on Helen?”

“That’s all you, handsome.”

They share a laugh as Jason rolls over and picks up his iPhone from the nightstand. Natalie watches as his casual expression deepens, his brow furrowing and then his eyes widening.

“What is it?” she asks.

“A text from my mom. From right after we went to bed last night. It’s Spencer.”

Natalie bolts up. “What happened? Is he okay?” She hates herself for even entertaining the thought that Jason’s nephew might have died, but it absolutely would make her life less precarious. And it wouldn’t actually be her fault…

“He woke up.”

It feels as if all the blood flowing through Natalie’s veins halts abruptly, stopping in its path at once.

“And?” she leads, desperate to know what she is facing here.

“Just that he’s okay but has a long road ahead of him.” He turns the phone so that she can read the message. It is lengthy for a text, but there isn’t much in the way of specifics — except for one thing.

“What’s that about his memory?” she asks.

“Hmm. Yeah. I guess it wouldn’t be too surprising if he didn’t remember the fall.” Jason pulls himself to a sitting position. “I’ll call Tim and find out what’s up.”

“Okay.” Any semblance of peace that Natalie felt a minute ago is a distant memory now. The pit of her stomach churns as she watches Jason dial the number and lift the phone to his ear. She glances at the engagement ring on her finger. This could be it. This could be the end of everything.

Please don’t let it be, she pleads inside her mind, scrambling to figure out what she’ll do if the news is as horrible as she fears.

—–

The enticing scent of hot cinnamon rolls draws Travis Fisher toward the kitchen of his grandmother’s house.

“Morning,” he says as he finds Paula pulling a dish from the oven and Matt Gray seated at the table with a steaming mug of coffee.

“Good morning!” Paula smiles broadly at him as she sets the tray of rolls on the table. She removes her oven mitt and hurries to give her grandson a hug. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

“You, too.” Travis glances between the two of them with confusion. “Does someone wanna tell me what’s going on? Why did I need to come over here at the butt-crack of dawn?”

“It’s hardly dawn,” Paula says with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

“It’s about the restaurant,” Matt explains. “Want some coffee?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ll get it. What about the restaurant?”

Travis moves to a cupboard and grabs a mug — one of his late grandfather’s favorites, bearing the old blue-and-yellow Mariners logo — as Matt speaks.

“I had Conrad go over the lease,” he says. “There’re no loopholes or anything. We have no claim on the building once our lease is up. Basically, we’re screwed.”

Paula frowns. “So we’ll have to close the restaurant? That’s it?”

“Looks like it. Yeah.”

She channels her upset into plating cinnamon rolls for all three of them. She distributes the plates.

“Did you make these already this morning?” Travis asks. “How long has everyone been up?”

“I made a few batches and froze them,” Paula says. “I’ve been trying to keep busy.”

Travis offers her a sympathetic grin before turning back to Matt. “So that’s the news? That we definitely have to shut down when the lease is up? That’s only a few weeks.”

“I can’t believe it’s really happening.” Paula shakes her head sadly. “Bill put so much care into opening this restaurant. It meant the world to him. To have it go away now…”

“So we relocate,” Travis says with determination. “It’s not ideal, but we just move the operation. Different space, same restaurant. We can make it happen. We’ll do everything Grandpa’s way.”

“Then we need to search for a space right away,” Paula says.

“That’s actually why I wanted to talk to you guys.” Matt pulls out his cell phone. “I was driving last night, and…” He turns the phone around and shows them a photo. Using his index finger, he scrolls left.

“That’s the perfect idea!” Paula exclaims. “Is it available?”

“That’s the thing,” Matt says. “Technically, yeah. But it could be kind of a challenge.”

Travis finishes a gulp of coffee and sets down his mug forcefully. “Then we’ve gotta make it happen. That’s the perfect location. We have to do this — for Grandpa.”

“That was Jason,” Tim Fisher says as he returns to the table beside the window of Cassie’s Coffee House, where his latte and Diane Bishop await him. “Just wanted to give him the full rundown on Spencer’s condition.”

“It does sound like, all things considered, his prognosis is looking good,” Diane says.

Around them, the coffee shop is busy with morning activity. The line at the register snakes back around the side of the long display case and counter, and a dense crowd waits at the other end of the bar for their orders. A OneRepublic song plays over the sound system, nearly drowned out by the heavy buzz of conversation.

“Definitely. He’s pretty lucid. The memory loss is tough, but aside from having to make him relive learning the truth about Philip… it’s manageable.”

“And they think he’ll walk again?”

“It sounds like it. He’s going to need a lot of occupational and physical therapy, but there’s no medical reason he shouldn’t be able to recover.” He quickly checks the time on his phone’s screen. “Speaking of, I should get going in 20 or so. The insurance company is sending over a live-in nurse for me to interview.”

“Go when you have to. I appreciate you making time to see me at all.” She wraps her palms around her own cup of coffee. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t even want to look at me ever again.”

“Come on,” he says. “We’re past that. You know it.”

“Maybe we are, but now that Samantha knows…” The events of last night flash in her head like the strikes of a lightning storm. She spent hours lying in her bed, thinking about the utter disgust on Samantha’s face as she blasted her mother. Even though Diane always knew this might — this would — happen, it is still difficult for her to process that her daughter finally knows the horrible truth about how she was conceived. “She’s never going to look at me the same way again.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be angry forever. This is a lot for her to take in.”

“To say the least. Just promise me you’ll keep a close eye on her, okay? I want to give her space, but…”

“She’ll be under my roof and safe. I’m going to keep talking to her. I don’t think you should cut yourself out of her life.”

“I don’t want to. But she seems to have made that choice for me.”

“It might just take a few more days.” He gazes out the window as he thoughtfully takes a sip of coffee. “We’re all going to get through this.”

“Doesn’t feel like it right now,” she says. “How are you doing? It’s probably weird of me to ask you that, given… everything, but I do care about you.”

“I know that. You don’t need to remind me.” He looks her in the eyes. “Diane, we’re friends. We are.”

“After what I did to you… It’s crazy how arrogant it was of me to presume that you’d want to be anywhere near me.”

“You didn’t presume. I did want to be. I do,” he says insistently. “Listen, this entire situation is screwy. I know it isn’t normal for people in our… positions to have the kind of relationship that we do.”

“It isn’t.”

“But nothing about my life was, for a long time. After you had Sam and we got custody, I wanted nothing more to do with you. I thought Sam could get to know you as an adult if she chose to, but I would have been content never seeing you again. But then I was kidnapped.”

The weight of what happened to him settles over them like a dense storm cloud.

“I lost so much time,” he continues. “So many years of my own life, and my kids’ lives. When I came back, I was furious that you had custody of Samantha — at first. But then I saw you with her. And I interacted with you. You weren’t the same Diane you’d been when you left King’s Bay.”

“Being a good mother doesn’t erase what I did,” she says.

“No, but no one forced me to view you differently. I was seeing the entire world differently, though. And I chose not to hang onto my anger about what you had done. We had a daughter, and you were so good with her. You were good to me, too.”

“You’d gone through something that no one deserved to go through,” Diane says. “You had years of your life ripped away from you because of some insane woman’s vendetta against Claire.”

“And you were there to support me. You acted like a friend,” Tim says, his eyes briefly glazing over as he relives the shock of returning to King’s Bay and finding the life he once knew turned on its head. “You didn’t manipulate me or try to take advantage of the situation. Believe me, it was as strange to me as it was to anyone else, but I actually felt like we connected.”

She bows her head. It seems so silly now, to think that she could have actually had a life with the man she tricked and, in essence, assaulted. Even when it was happening, it hardly seemed real.

“You were lost,” she says. “Your entire life had been turned upside-down. You needed something to cling to.”

“It was more than that. You were there for me. When everyone thought I’d killed Nick, you were the one who truly believed in. I really came to care for you.” He reaches across the table to touch her hand. “I still do.”

She can endure the touch for only a second before pulling away.

“You don’t have to do this, Tim. It isn’t your job to try and make me feel better. I’m the one who–” Her eyes dart around uncomfortably as she lowers her voice. “–who violated you.”

“I know it isn’t.” He picks up his coffee again and chews the inside of his cheek as he thinks. “But you’re the mother of my daughter. And you’re my friend. What happened–”

“What I did.”

“–what you did was a really horrible mistake, and it isn’t something you can take back, but it is something that you can make amends for. Which you have.”

She isn’t sure whether to believe him. He seems sincere, and they have been fine all these years, but maybe she has simply had her head in the sand this whole time.

“When you ended things with me,” Diane says, “do you remember how easily I let you go?”

He nods.

“Deep down, I always knew it was going to happen,” she admits. “For me to be with you, after what I’d done, was ridiculous. So when you ended it, I just thought, Of course. I had no right being with him in the first place. It almost seemed like the universe had set it up that way: give me just a taste of a happy ending — of feeling like I’d somehow been redeemed — and then tear it away to really make it hurt.”

Tim bows his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize! Don’t you ever apologize to me.”

“Fine. But you don’t need to try and keep convincing me that you’re this terrible person who doesn’t deserve any kindness or love,” he says. “You’ve done a hell of a job with our daughter, and you’ve been a friend to me. Samantha needs time to process and heal. But we are all going to get through this.”

As much as she hates people feeling sorry for themselves, Diane has trouble shaking the fog that has consumed her. Because no matter how much Tim reassures her — which, she realizes, is as much him trying to neutralize the past so he doesn’t have to face it as it is anything else — she still has to live with the guilt of what she did and, even worse, the knowledge that she has caused this painful burden for her daughter.

“Thank you for being you,” she finally says. “I absolutely don’t deserve to have you as a friend, but know that I’m grateful. Got it?”

“Got it.”

—–

The elevator climbs through the hospital at an excruciatingly slow rate. As it makes stops at various floors along the way, letting some passengers off and others on, Natalie’s heart thuds against the inside of her chest. As much as she does not want to face this, she knows that she has to — putting it off will only make things worse.

When she steps off the elevator and into the Intensive Care Unit, she holds the arrangement of flowers that she bought at the upscale grocery store down the street a little bit higher, so that they shield her face somewhat. She knows from Jason’s conversation with Tim that Claire was here all night, so she most likely isn’t working now and won’t be around to spot Natalie. There is no guarantee that Spencer won’t have visitors, but if he does, she will just have to cover the best she can. She told Jason that she was going to run errands — and she has their dry cleaning in the car to prove it — so she can simply say that she decided to drop off some flowers on a whim.

After checking in at the nurses’ station, she heads down the corridor. She scans the numbers posted beside each door; most of the doors are open, though she does her best not to glance inside any of the rooms. If she were a patient here, she would want whatever privacy she could get.

Outside Spencer’s room, she pauses and draws a deep breath, but it does little to calm her. Through the cracked door, she can see him, lying in the hospital bed with his head elevated, focused on the television in the corner of the room. She forces herself to rap her knuckles lightly on the door.

“Hey,” she says as he turns his head. “Up for a visitor?”

She watches him notice and react to her. His eyes narrow, and his confusion is apparent.

“Natalie, right?” he says tentatively.

“Yeah.” She steps inside the room and places the flowers on a table against the wall. “I brought these for you.”

“Thanks.” It is clear that he has as little interest in the flowers as Natalie does. “Hey, I don’t know if anyone told you, but there’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember…”

“I know. That’s why I wanted to come see you.”

“Okay…”

He watches intently as she pulls a chair toward his bed and sits down.

“You and I,” he says. “Are we… It’s been, like, two years. Have we been…?”

“I’m glad we have some time alone,” Natalie says, “because there’s a lot that I need to fill you in on.”

—–

Matt parks his truck in the lot at the edge of the pier. The summer sun shines overhead and reflects off the water of the bay as he and Travis make their way down the wooden structure.

“It’s, like, fate,” Travis comments as they walk.

“I could barely believe it when I saw the sign last night,” Matt says. “Moving the restaurant anywhere else would be weird, but this place…”

Travis smiles. “Yeah.”

When they reach the building further down on the pier, Travis takes it all in with wonder. He spent so much time here growing up, but he has barely walked down this pier since the explosion that destroyed Bill’s restaurant a decade ago. He remembers the old locksmith’s shop that was next door to the Fisherman’s Pier; now there is a novelty shop called Welcome to King’s Bay, whose windows reveal lots of t-shirts and keychains for tourists to bring home with them.

But what they are really interested in is next door. The two men move quickly, and Travis sees the “Restaurant Space For Rent” sign in the window.

“I’ll call the owner and tell her we’re here,” Matt says as he takes out his phone, but before he can even find the number, a woman emerges from one of the doors. She is not exactly the tycoon that Travis envisioned. Her short, curly hair, large eyeglasses, and colorful tracksuit are straight out of an ‘80s movie.

“You Matt?” she asks.

“I am. Matt Gray.” He shakes her hand. “This is my nephew and coworker, Travis Fisher.”

She shakes Travis’s hand, as well. “Dot. Nice to meet ya.”

“Looks like you have a restaurant space open,” Matt says. “We’re very interested.”

“Do you know the restaurant Harbor Boulevard? It’s on the other end of downtown,” Travis says.

Dot responds with a half-shrug, half-nod. “Think so.”

“That was my grandfather’s restaurant,” Travis explains. “Now Uncle Matt runs it for my grandmother. The building is being sold, and we’re looking to move locations–”

“Pretty sure I already have a tenant lined up,” Dot says. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“‘Pretty sure’?” Matt asks. “Do you remember The Fisherman’s Pier? It was the restaurant that was here before the explosion that destroyed everything. That was also Bill Fisher’s restaurant.”

“And we want to bring the current restaurant here,” Travis says. “As a way of honoring my grandfather.”

“That’s a nice thought,” Dot says, “but like I said, someone else got to it first. Just waiting for the last signatures on the papers.”

“Then tell us what we need to do to stop that,” Matt says. “Tell us what we need to do to make this our restaurant.”

END OF EPISODE 890

Will Matt and Travis be able to secure the new space?
Can Natalie convince Spencer to keep their secret for good?
What do you think of Tim and Diane’s friendship?
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