Previously…
– After her probation term ended, Sarah promptly went to Zane’s apartment and exposed his blackmail scheme to Tori.
– A stunned Tori was angry not only at Zane, but at Sarah for keeping secrets from her for so long.
– Desperate to prove her theory that Natalie pushed Spencer down the stairs to keep a life-altering secret, Helen stole one of Peter’s dirty diapers for use as a DNA sample.

The sky over the King’s Bay waterfront is gray and foreboding as Sarah Fisher Gray parks her SUV in the small lot beside Pier 22. Her body thrums with an unsettling mixture of adrenaline and anger, as it has ever since she left Zane Tanaka’s apartment. She had hoped that, once the truth was exposed, she would feel an overwhelming sense of relief, as the stress of the past year would evaporate knowing that Tori was finally through with Zane. But her daughter’s furious reaction toward her, coupled with the anxiety of what comes next, have left Sarah feeling distinctively less than unburdened.

She hurries down the wooden pier and finds her husband already waiting outside the restaurant, beneath the large sign that reads Bill’s on the Pier. Matt wears his white chef’s coat, marked by the scars and scuffs of the cooking he has done so far today, and his black work pants.

“I know you’re busy, but this is important,” she says when she is still ten or fifteen feet from him. “I need to tell you something.”

He levels a gruff expression at her. “Tori was already here.”

Sarah stops in her tracks. “What?”

“She came to see me right after she left Zane’s.”

Sarah could kick herself for not coming here straightaway. She drove around and called Molly to fill her in, though she knows what she was really doing was steeling herself to face Matt.

“She was hysterical,” Matt says. “What the hell did you do?”

“I did the only thing I could do.” Her confidence reemerging, she takes several steps to close the gap between them. “I didn’t have any other choice. Zane is a monster. I’ve been biting my tongue for so long–”

“Except when you wrote someone a check for $100,000 behind my back.”

His sharp, unbending tone takes her aback.

“Where’d that money come from?” he demands, glancing toward the restaurant’s door to be sure they aren’t overheard.

Sarah’s eyes drop toward the knotty, gnarled planks of the pier. She has never been proud of this part of things, although she had no other option.

“From the sale of Graham’s house,” she admits quietly.

“That money was supposed to be Billy’s! We agreed on that.”

“I know!” Her shoulders sag as she forces herself to look back at him. “I know. I’m not sure how much Tori told you, but I needed decoy money to bait him at the chili cookoff. And then my plan worked, so I put the money back in the side account I’d opened…”

“Side account?” His eyes flare wide, in a show of exaggerated emotion that Matt rarely displays. “What else have you been doing behind my back?”

“I wasn’t doing things behind your back–”

“You weren’t keeping me in the loop, that’s for sure.”

“I’m sorry a criminal decided to blackmail my sister and me. What would you have done?”

“Gone to the police?”

“When? How? I’ve been on probation,” she says forcefully. “I would have lost my P.I. license. My entire career.”

“Then you should’ve told me!” he snaps back. “We could’ve figured something out.”

“That would’ve made you an accomplice.”

He sucks in his lips, turning his mouth into a tight seal of frustrated energy. Sarah recognizes the gesture well; it’s what he does when he knows his point has been shot down.

“You have no idea how painful it’s been,” she says, pouncing on the opportunity. “I’ve had to watch Zane parading this farce of a relationship in front of me, while Tori was totally oblivious to what was really going on. I couldn’t take it anymore. I really thought that if I gave him that money, he would just go away. Yeah, Tori was going to get hurt, but helping her through a break-up seemed a hell of a lot more pleasant than watching her throw away her life while a criminal manipulated her.”

Matt’s stony silence gives her just the opening she needs to drive her point home.

“Come on, Matt. Can’t you understand why this was the only way I could handle things?”

—–

Tori Gray studies herself in the mirrored wall of the elevator. She has done her best to dry her face and fix her smeared makeup, though her eyes and cheeks are still puffy and red. As much as she didn’t want to cry, she couldn’t help it when she was telling her father everything that happened. It was as if, in that moment, the reality of it all truly hit her, and she couldn’t help herself. After assuring her dad that she was okay to drive, she broke down again  in the car. She realized that there was no way she could go to her classes today, so she redirected herself to one of the few places that feels safe.

After one final check in the mirror, she steps off the elevator and moves down the hallway. She feels as though she is moving through a world of molasses; every movement drags and requires so much energy. She is exhausted as she knocks on the door.

“Thank god you’re here,” she exclaims when Travis Fisher opens the door.

“Yeah. What’s up?” he asks as he lets her into the apartment. “Your text sounded…”

Tori flops down on the couch. “It’s a disaster.”

“What is?”

“My entire life.” She drops her face into her hands, grateful for the momentary blackness.

“Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“It’s Zane,” she says, lifting her eyes back toward him. “And my mom.”

“Zane and your mom?” A look of horror crosses his face. “You don’t mean…?”

“No. No, no, no.” That possibility hadn’t even entered her mind, amidst all the chaos. “It’s worse. Somehow. I think.”

Travis takes a seat across from her. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

After a deep breath, she launches into a recap of the whole sordid mess: how Zane was blackmailing her mom and Molly, how he only got close to Tori to put the screws to Sarah, and how Sarah paid him off in hopes that would get rid of him. Tori cringes as she remembers all the instances in which she was completely blind to what was going on.

“I’m such an idiot,” she says, having told enough of the story. “They both stood by and let me make a total idiot of myself.”

“You’re not an idiot. You were being lied to,” her cousin says.

“How did I not notice? Am I that stupid?” She feels tears beginning to well again and focuses her energy on suppressing them.

“You’re not stupid. Zane’s a…”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Yeah, that. But a manipulator, too. Like a sociopathic one.”

She sniffles and says, “I can’t go home. Not with my mom there. And if I go to Uncle Jake and Mia’s, they’ll let her come see me. I don’t know…”

“Then stay here. I’m serious. Crash here for as long as you want. We’ll work it out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! That’s what cousins are for, right?”

“Thank you.” She closes her eyes again. “God. What am I going to do?”

“You’re gonna get through this,” Travis says, moving over to join her on the couch and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I promise.”

Helen Chase sits at a table for two in the cozy main room of Cassie’s Coffee House. She cups her hands around the latte in front of her, as she casts frequent glances toward the front door. She wonders again if a bar might have been a better setting for this meeting. Although it is a bit early for a glass of wine, some alcohol might help to grease the wheels — that is, of course, if her appointment actually happens at all.

She feels both relief and surprise when the person whom she is supposed to meet actually enters the shop. Sabrina Gage glances around timidly, still dressed in the white t-shirt and black pants from her job at Thaw, and finally notices Helen.

Helen waves her over, and Sabrina navigates through the moderately busy coffee house.

“Hi, Sabrina,” Helen says. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Um, no, but thank you.” Sabrina stands awkwardly, holding her purse in front of herself with both hands clutching the straps. It is a plain, inexpensive black bag.

“Have a seat, then. Please.” Helen gestures to the chair across the table as she sits back down. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“I was a little surprised when you called Thaw,” Sabrina admits as she settles into the wooden chair. “And I’m not really sure there’s much else for us to say to one another…”

“I didn’t call you here to scold you,” Helen says. “I promise.”

“Oh.” Sabrina’s entire body visibly relaxes. “What’s this all about, then?”

“It’s very important. And I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to keep this meeting confidential.”

With a dark eyebrow raised, Sabrina leans forward slightly. “Why?”

“I need your help with something. Something rather… sensitive.” Helen looks over the table at the shy woman, who sits with her shoulders pulled slightly forward and her hands in her lap. “I promise you that it’s for a good cause.”

“What kind of good cause? I don’t understand what I could possibly do for you, Mrs. Chase.” Sabrina’s eyes widen. “Is this some kind of charity in Courtney’s honor? I’d love to help, I really would, but I don’t earn much money–”

“It isn’t money I want from you,” Helen says. “It’s cooperation.”

“Okay. But I don’t…” Suddenly Sabrina lets out a gasp. “I thought you said you believed me about having nothing to do with Spencer’s accident. I told you the truth.”

Sabrina scrambles out of her chair and picks up her purse.

“Sabrina, I’m not accusing you of anything,” Helen says quickly. “Actually, quite the opposite. I need your help nailing the real culprit.”

Frozen over her seat, Sabrina turns back toward Helen. “The real culprit?”

“Yes. I know who it is.” Helen pauses for a drink of her latte. “And you’re exactly the person to help me prove that it wasn’t an accident at all.”

—–

Sarah waits for Matt to say something. A man and woman exit the restaurant, and Matt clamps his mouth shut, waiting until they are much further down the pier before he speaks.

“You shouldn’t have let it get this bad,” he finally says.

“It’s not like I chose to be blackmailed,” Sarah retorts. “Molly is the one who lied to the police to begin with. If she had just been honest…”

“But you went along with it.”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

He shrugs off the question, his anger overriding logic. “You’ve been lying to my face for how long? Two years?”

“I didn’t have a choice!”

Again he falls silent.

“Matt, she was talking about moving in with him. I had to do something,” Sarah explains, doing her best to keep her voice calm.  “I know it was wrong of me to pull that money from Billy’s account, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

Matt rubs his jaw for a long moment. “If Zane had taken the money and left, you were never gonna tell me what happened, were you?”

“I– no. I guess not. Why would I?”

“Because I’m your husband! I’m supposed to be your partner in all this stuff. Because it’s my business, too. These are our kids!”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I am. I just don’t know what else I could’ve done.”

Matt gazes off toward the placid, dark blue surface of the water. “I think I’m gonna stay at Jake’s tonight.”

“What? No–”

“Yeah.” He looks at her again and shakes his head, as if unable to reconcile the person in front of him with the person he has been living with this whole time. “I need some space.”

“Matt–”

“Sorry.” He rotates back toward the restaurant’s entry. “I’ve gotta get back to work.”

“Let’s talk about this. The kitchen will be fine.”

“There’s some pots-and-pans rep coming to meet with me,” he says. “I’ll stop by the house to get my stuff tonight.”

“Okay. We can talk then.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything else to talk about.”

“Matt…”

But instead of responding, he makes his way back to the door and goes inside the restaurant. Sarah stamps her foot against the pier and lets out a yell of absolute frustration. But it simply drifts off into the gloomy air, leaving her alone and helpless on the pier.

——

“I really don’t understand,” Sabrina tells Helen. “How can I possibly help? I swear, I didn’t see anything when I was at Spencer’s house that day. I found him lying there. That was it.”

“It isn’t about that.” Helen glances furtively around the coffee shop and leans forward, lowering her voice. “I need someone to help me collect a DNA sample from Spencer.”

“What? Why? What makes you think I have any way of doing that?”

“Because you’re friendly with him. Aren’t you? You were visiting him in the hospital,” Helen says.

“Yeah, but…”

“You just need to get into that house and get something that I — we — could use. A hair from a comb, a toothbrush, a used can, anything like that.”

Sabrina appears either too stunned or too confused to move.

“Please, sit back down,” Helen says. “You’ll attract attention.”

Sabrina swivels her head from one side to the other as she looks around. “You think we’re being watched?”

“You can never be too careful!”

The younger woman takes her seat again and says cautiously, “Mrs. Chase, I don’t get what Spencer’s DNA would have to do with any of this.”

Helen sips her latte in thought before explaining, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you the whole story yet.”

“Then I don’t know why I would have to lie and steal some kind of sample from Spencer. That’s creepy!” Again she picks up her purse. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, but–”

“No,” Helen says. “Don’t go.”

Sabrina waits tensely for some kind of explanation.

“I have reason to believe,” Helen tells her, slowly, “that the person responsible for Spencer’s so-called accident is… Natalie.”

“What? Why would she do that?” Sabrina hoists her purse into her lap. “No, she was with Jason when I called to tell him what had happened.”

“And how long after his fall was that, really? If she left the scene of the crime right away, it’s more than possible that she made it home.”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what to think about this,” Sabrina says. “If someone did try to hurt Spencer, I want them to be punished as much as you do — but why Natalie? Why would she hurt Jason’s nephew?”

Helen had hoped to avoid going this far with the conversation. She considers simply sending the girl away and trying to handle the situation herself, but she isn’t confident that she could snag a second sample on her own.

“I’m going to take a leap of faith and confide in you,” Helen says. “But, so help me God, if you turn around and cause trouble for me, I’ll have you back in Illinois so fast your head will spin.”

“Iowa. I’m from Iowa.”

Helen flaps a hand through the air. “Same difference. But this has to remain between us, Sabrina. Because if there’s a criminal investigation and someone is tipped off–”

“But what about Jason?” Sabrina asks. “You can’t blindside him with something like this.”

“I don’t want to blindside him,” Helen says. “I want to make sure there’s solid proof before I say anything.” She hesitates before dropping the bomb: “I already collected a sample from Natalie’s son.”

“What? Why would–” Sabrina stops mid-sentence as she processes this information. “No! That’s not possible.”

“I have reason to believe that it is. But you can understand why I’d want proof before I say anything. Don’t you agree that Jason has been through enough?”

“He’s such a nice man,” Sabrina says, with a sympathy that sets off alarm bells in Helen’s head. She couldn’t possibly be following in her deranged predecessor’s footsteps, could she? Then again…

“He is,” Helen says, “and he deserves to be happy. That’s why I don’t want to cause trouble if there’s none to be had. And I can’t get the police to investigate a hunch like this without something solid. But don’t you think Jason deserves to know if Natalie is passing off another man’s child — his own nephew’s child — as his?”

“I mean…” Sabrina covers her mouth with her hand. “Yeah. Definitely.”

“Then say you’ll help. Say you’ll visit Spencer and get me some kind of sample that we can use to prove this.”

“Okay.” Sabrina nods slowly, looking more resolved with every second that passes. “I’ll help you.”

—–

“I just can’t believe that all of this was going on,” Paula Fisher says as she places a steaming cup of coffee in front of Sarah. “Right under our noses!”

“It’s not like I wanted to deal with it all by myself,” Sarah tells her mother, an edge of annoyance heating up her words. “I really had no choice.”

Paula sighs as she seats herself diagonally across from Sarah. “I was so sure that Zane was a nice young man.”

“That was the act. If I have to give him credit for anything, it’s that he managed to be pretty convincing with Tori — and with everyone else.”

“That poor girl. She must be devastated.”

“She is. And I don’t blame her. I knew that was a big risk in outing Zane… but I didn’t see any other way. It’s sparing her from getting hurt even worse down the road.”

“Still…” Paula contemplatively sips her own coffee. “Are you sure that you went about this the best way possible?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Sarah snaps. “It isn’t like I haven’t spent months and months thinking through every possible scenario.”

The women drink their coffee quietly for a few seconds.

“If I could just go back in time and make Molly tell the police the truth from the get-go,” Sarah says, “none of this would be happening.”

“Your sister had the best of intentions.”

“First time that’s ever been said about someone who went on trial for murder.”

“She was protecting me,” Paula chides. “There’s no use in trying to blame all of this on her.”

“She’s the one who set it all in motion! If she hadn’t lied about shooting Philip, there wouldn’t have been any blackmail material for Zane to use in the first place.”

“Well, it’s all water under the bridge. All we can do is focus on moving forward.”

“Which should be really easy, considering that both my daughter and my husband are furious with me,” Sarah says.

Paula reaches across to touch her daughter’s hand reassuringly. “Tori and Matt will come around. You were doing the best you could to protect someone you loved — just like Molly was. This will all work out.”

“I really wish I could believe that,” Sarah mutters as she stares down into the black of her coffee.

—–

“That’s wild,” Landon Esco says. He is sprawled on the beanbag chair in the corner of his and Travis’s living room, having just received a summary of the day’s revelations from Tori.

“We were talking about moving in together,” Tori says, again shaking her head in utter disbelief. “How far was he going to take this?”

“Sounds like he isn’t exactly right in the head,” Landon remarks. “I could always tell something was a little off about the guy, frankly.”

“The one time you met him?” Travis asks.

Landon taps his index finger to his temple. “I’ve got a sixth sense for this stuff.”

“I wish you could’ve sensed what was really going on and warned me,” Tori says, “though I bet I wouldn’t have believed you.”

She startles when she feels her phone vibrating in her hand. She looks at the screen when she freezes and sees that it is an incoming call from Zane.

“Do not answer that,” Travis warns from his seat beside her, noticing the name on the display.

“I won’t.” She moves to set the phone on the coffee table but hesitates. Despite what she has learned, it is tough to reconcile the man that her mother described to her — the man who admitted what he had done — with the guy with whom she’s spent the past year sharing, laughing, and falling in love. Part of her wants to answer simply to scream at him, and another part wants to hear him beg or try to prove himself to her.

“Do you think I should talk to him, just to get it over with?” she asks. “He’s already texted like 20 times.”

“No!” the guys reply in unison. Travis takes the phone from her and hits the button to send Zane to voicemail.

“Don’t give that douche the time of day,” Travis says. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Yeah. You deserve way better,” Landon adds.

Tori groans. “I don’t know about that. Look at my track record. First there was Ian, and then I was into Philip, and now Zane… What the hell is wrong with my judgment?”

Landon stands from the beanbag. “Nothing is wrong with you. You’re cool, and funny, and pretty, and… these guys are taking advantage of you. That’s not your fault.”

She manages a weak smile in his direction. “Thanks. Not so sure that’s true.”

“It is,” Landon says firmly. “Now, I think it’s an okay time to crack open some beers. Who wants one?”

“I think we all need one,” Travis says. Landon dips into the kitchen, and Travis looks to his cousin. “This is gonna get better. It sucks that you had to go through this, and I’m sorry. But there are way more awesome things out there waiting for you than some loser like Zane.”

Tori lets out a heavy sigh, unable to imagine how that could even be possible.

END OF EPISODE 914

How can Sarah put her family back together?
Will Tori turn her back on Zane for good?
Are you surprised that Helen and Sabrina are working together?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

 

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