Stacy Willingham
Prologue
The narrator talks about the sensation of feeling someone watching you and monsters lurking in the shadows. She remembers after the school bus would drop her off, she would run down the gravel road to her house and the assumed safety of her father’s arms. She thought fear should be progressively learned, but it was heaped in her when she was just twelve years old.
MAY 2019
1. Doctor Chloe Davis feels a tickle in the back of her throat and wonders if she is getting sick or if it could be allergies. She clears her throat and the girl that has been talking, 15 year-old Lacey, comes back into focus. Lacey has been getting so angry that she cuts her arms to calm down. Chloe asks where she thinks the anger comes from. Lacey admits that her dad left two years prior without warning. She is mad at her dad, her mom, and herself. Chloe shares with her that her dad “left” when she was twelve. She can relate to the girl’s situation.
2. It is the end of Friday and Chloe send’s the recording of Lacey’s first session to her phone as she drinks some Emergen-C mixed into her water. She is amazed at how technology has advanced since she was the one sitting in the chair staring at her own file in a folder. She sends an email to her fellow doctor, Shannon Tack (Lacey’s pediatrician?), suggesting a low dose of Prozac. Shannon replies quickly approving the suggestion and asking about drinks to discuss detail in the upcoming “big day.” Chloe calls in a couple of prescriptions. The phone rings and she answers. There is a reporter on the line from the New York Times wanting to get an interview with her regarding the 20 year anniversary of when her father went to prison for the murder of multiple girls. He prods for answers about how she, her brother, and her father have changed, but she ends up hanging up in him. She is a bit shaken up by the call.
3. Chloe grew up in Breaux Bridge (population less than 10,000), Louisiana and now resides in Baton Rouge. She remembers loving summer growing up in a small town with their house on 10 acres of land. She woke up one morning when she was 12 years old and saw her parents huddled together talking. They quickly shut off the TV when they saw her and her dad hugged her extra tight. She had seen the headline that a girl had gone missing, but she thought it meant she got lost in the woods or something. Five more girls disappeared and curfews were put in place for the whole town. Girls were not allowed out after dark.
4. Chloe was scared to leave the house. Her brother, Cooper, told her to think and not act stupid and she would be fine, especially since she was younger than the missing girls. Her mother thought those girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time, not necessarily doing anything stupid or unsafe. She picks up one of the prescriptions she had called in for Daniel and picks it up from the CVS on her way home. She’s a little on edge as she drives down the dark road that leads to her cul-de-sac. She is glad to be home in the safety that it provides. After taking one of the prescription Xanax she picked up for “Daniel,” she puts the rest in the glovebox. She notices her porch light isn’t on even though she always leaves it on. She approaches the house cautiously. There is a commotion they reveals a surprise engagement party her fiancé, Daniel, had planned for her. She talks a bit with Shannon who is having trouble dealing with her teenage step-daughter. She remembers meeting Daniel as she carried her things out of Baton Rogue General to start her own practice. He was going in as she was leaving and carried her box of stuff out to her car. He notices the true crime books she had as research and he puts his card into “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a book he says he loves, before they part ways. Chloe knew she would see him again.
5. Feeling the affects of the wine and socialization, Chloe steps outside to get some air. She spins around quickly when she hears someone has joined her. She is surprised to see her brother, Cooper, whom she hadn’t seen at the party. She is happy to see him and she asks about Laural. He tells her she isn’t in the picture anymore and reminds her that people like them hardly have lasting relationships. He voices his opinion that his little sister is getting engaged rather quickly. Her fiancé didn’t even consider how the dark house and surprise visitors would scare her. Chloe takes offense and calls him heartless. She says she likes that Daniel makes her not live being afraid of her own shadow. Cooper is worried about the relationship and isn’t sure about Daniel. Daniel comes out to check in Chloe and she says she will be back in few minutes. Daniel thanks Cooper for all of his help with the party before he goes back inside. Chloe apologizes to Cooper and he apologizes too. This is pretty typical behavior of their relationship. She asks if he got any calls that day and he admits he hasn’t been to see their mother in a while even though it is his turn and they called him. Chloe doesn’t my bring up the interviewer. Cooper has had enough socialization and decides to leave, so they say their goodbyes.
JUNE 2019
6. The next morning, Chloe wakes up late with a hang over. She finds some water in her bedside table and takes something for her headache. Daniel brings her pancakes and bacon. She sees he is dressed for the day and asks where he is going. He reminds her that he told her he has to go to a conference. Chloe doesn’t remember him telling her at all, but pretends she just forgot. He asks her about her conversation with Cooper. She admits her brother is worried about Daniel marrying her for the wrong reasons. Daniel is upset by it and she tries to reassure him Cooper doesn’t like anyone at first because of their past. He tells her to enjoy her weekend and to maybe get some wedding planning done. After he leaves, she remembers them checking out a farmhouse venue. Chloe gets distracted by the owner’s granddaughter on the porch. The girl slips away after noticing Chloe staring at her. They both liked it, but because they had just gotten engaged and started looking, the only date they had available was July 26. The woman tells them she has more dates available the next year, but Daniel doesn’t want to wait. Chloe is a bit anxious about the July date because that is the month that marked the first of the disappearances of the girls 20 years ago.
7. When Chloe finally gets up, she starts to clean up the remains from the party. She goes through her email and makes a few decisions about wedding details. She is shocked how the wedding has grown from their private ceremony and intimate gathering to a full blown ordeal. She turns on the TV and sees a newsflash about a 15 year-old girl named Aubrey Gravino that has gone missing while walking home from her Baton Rogue school. They show her picture and Chloe thinks she looks familiar. She chalks it up to having so many teenage girls in her office. She and her brother had opposite reactions to their childhoods, but both ended up seeing doctors who tried to “fix” them. Search parties are looking for the girl, but Chloe imagines her dead. Aubrey’s parents look into the camera and plead for her safe return.
8. Chloe remembers the first girl that went missing, Lena Rhodes. She was pretty and attractive. Boys liked her and girls envied her. She liked the attention and had a foul mouth. One moment of Lena’s life that stuck out to Chloe was the moment that sent her dad to prison. Chloe noticed it is always the mothers that make the television statements. They have to remain hopeful for the future. The fathers live in the past, break down, and wonder how they could fail to protect their family member. When the police came to take her dad, he was sitting in his recliner with his pipe and eating sunflower seeds. Before they take him out, he tells his kids to “bee good.” He was handcuffed and thrown against the police car hard enough to break his glasses. The only way Chloe would see her dad was through television reports. There were three months between the first girl’s disappearance and her father’s arrest. During that time, he would try to protect her by punishing her if she came home late or left her window open at night. When he was arrested (maybe even before the ) she realized he was the one she needed protected from.
9. After seeing the news report, Chloe has to move. She gets in the car and starts talking through her anxiety like she would with a client. She knows she could stop the anxiety by going to her office and taking a pill to calm her down. Instead she goes to the cemetery where Aubrey was last seen alive while walking home from school. She ducks under the police tape and tries to blend in with the search party. She had wanted to join the search parties for the missing girls when she was a kid, but her mother wouldn’t let her. She hated the idea of not knowing how many bodies were buried under where she was at any time and especially at her childhood home. One of the other searchers calls people over to an area with a possible clue. Chloe runs there and picks up the item in question: an earring. She likes the style, but thinks it is a bit of a mature choice for a 15 year old. A police officer arrives and scolds her for touching it before he takes it from her in a gloved hand. He tells everyone not to get their hopes up because it could belong to anyone that went through the cemetery. One of the ladies pulls out a picture of Aubrey wearing the same earrings and a matching necklace.
10. The last time Chloe went to the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, she wondered around by herself until Cooper saw her and left his friends (hr was a popular jock type kid) behind to hang out with her. Lena comes up to them and shows off her new belly-button piecing with a firefly dangling from the ring. She has Chloe look at how it glows in the dark and says how she likes to squish them to write her name on the sidewalk. Lena catches their dad, Dick, looking at her and waves at him. She offers them some of her bottle of Sprite. Cooper takes a sip and Chloe took a big gulp before Cooper could stop her. He spent the rest of the day looking after his drunk little sister. Lena just laughs it off and tells him to give her a ride sometime since Cooper had just gotten his license. When their parents come to say goodby to them so they can leave the fair, Cooper warns her to stay quiet and not give away that she is drunk. She feels a sense of pride when she looks at Cooper. She feels overwhelmed with love when she looks at her mom. But something feels off about her dad. When she gets home that night, she catches a firefly in a glass and puts plastic wrap over it with some air holes. She watches the bug glowing. Chloe found Lena’s belly-button ring a few months later in the back of her dad’s closet.
11. The trial for her father, Richard, was televised, but her mother would not let her or Cooper watch it at first. People have been harassing them. When the defense attorney comes over, their mother, Mona, sends them to their rooms. Chloe and Cooper sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the conversation. He tells Mona there was another girl before Lena named Tara King that was a runaway that disappeared. The jury is assuming Dick killed her too. They need to take a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty unless she has any other information she hasn’t told him yet. She says she doesn’t and starts to become even more of a recluse. Chloe and Cooper watch the rest of the trial. Chloe thinks her dad is a coward for blaming the murders in a darkness inside of him. Part of the deal is that he has to show the police where the bodies were. He leads them to them, but mo bodies are found, only remnants. The news articles spin their own stories and put the blame on the entire family. They find out about Mona’s affair with Lena’s father. They think he was jealous of Cooper. They say Chloe was becoming promiscuous. After leaving the cemetery, Chloe goes to her office and take a low dosage of Ativan. She has a voicemail from Aaron (the reporter from the New York Times) saying they are going to run the article no matter what. He is also going to reach out to her father. She looks up his previous articles and they are all about murder. While searching, she comes across a news update that Aubrey’s body was found.
12. When Chloe leaves the office, she goes home in a daze and stays in the couch for the rest of the weekend. She doesn’t have the motivation to get going until her fiancé sends her a text Monday morning saying he’ll be unreachable most of the day and that he loves her. She thinks about how Daniel tends to pull her out of her depression. She has spent her adult life avoiding relationships and carefully choosing men who could not take away her control to have sex with. She had waited 3 weeks to call him and they went out for drinks. Once they started really dating, she told him about her father. He explains his sister disappeared when she was 13 and he was 17 (so about the same time as the other missing girls that her dad admitted to killing). She briefly wonders if her dad had anything to do with the disappearance of a girl in another city an hour away, but pushes the thought away. He told her he loved her after a month of them dating. They were engaged after a few months. Chloe gets to the office and her assistant, Melissa, is in tears. She asks if Chloe heard the news and Chloe thinks she is talking about Aubrey. Melissa turns on the TV to a report about Chloe’s new client, Lacey, having gone missing.
13. Chloe has Melissa cancel her appointments for the day. She knows she cannot be present for her clients. She thinks about how one disappearance can be anything, but two missing girls points to murder. There was a lot of speculation on Lena running away or there being an accident. But when Robin (a girl completely opposite of Lena) went missing, people started talking murder. She turns up the volume on the TV and hears the reporter say Lacey’s mom picked her up from school on Friday and took her to an appointment. She was supposed to walk to her friends house from there and spend the weekend. Her mom didn’t have any concerns about her daughter turning off her phone as that was normal behavior. Chloe is sick as she realizes the appointment mentioned was at her office. She hears a voice at the door and two detectives are there to talk to her about Lacey.
14. As a child, Chloe’s mom took her to the sherriff’s office. She had found a box while looking around in her parents closet for some makeup and things to put in her hair. She found her mom’s old jewelry box and holds it in her hands afraid of getting her dad in trouble. Her mom and the sheriff tell her to show them what she found. The two Baton Rouge officers ask her about Lacey. She tells them when her appointment was and she must have left the building because there isn’t really anywhere else to go from the lobby. They ask what they discussed during Lacey’s session, but Chloe isn’t allowed to tell them. She gives them the promise she will let them know if she thinks of anything that could potentially help them save her. She recognizes one of the officers as the one that took Aubrey’s earring from her in the cemetery. He asks if they have met before, but Chloe lies and says they haven’t. She sends them on their way lying again by telling them she has to see clients soon.
15. Chloe knows she needs to talk to someone about what she is feeling and decides to go see her mom. Mona has been in a home since she was disabled after trying to kill herself shortly after her husband’s trial. The children went to live with an aunt in the outskirts of town and Mona went into a home to be cared for. They always meant to take her out and take care of her themselves, but neither of them could live with seeing their mother like that every day. Chloe apologizes for not visiting recently and promises to bring Daniel by to meet her. She taps her finger against her wheelchair. Chloe thinks her mom understands what she is saying. She tells her about the new missing young girls. She feels silly about worrying about it when she knows her father is still in prison, but something about it seems familiar. She is trying to prevent having another breakdown like she did in college where the memories came flooding back and she had trouble distinguishing between then and now. The nurse comes back in the room and makes a comment about being happy Mona is getting visitors. Chloe mentions her brother, but the nurse says it was a “family friend” that came in. Chloe Rushes out and asks the nurse at the front desk to see the guestbook because her mother had an unauthorized visitor. Sure enough, she sees Aaron Jansen, the New York Times reporter had signed in a few days prior.
16. Chloe calls up Aaron and starts berating him for invading her privacy by visiting her mother. He said he tried to warn her he would be reaching out to her family. He then tells her he wasn’t there long. Once he realized he wasn’t going to get anything out of Mona, he left. He asks her to meet with him and she immediately refuses saying she has clients to see. He threatens to spend all day in her waiting room. She agrees to meet him for coffee and a cafe of her choosing. She gets there early, gets a drink, and sits in the corner so she can be prepared for his arrival. He waltzes in late without a care and gets his drink. She calls over to him and offers to have her latte heated up for her. When they get to talking, Aaron admits he thinks Chloe can help him figure out what is going on with the new set of missing girls. He believes someone is trying to be a copy cat and that more deaths will come.
17. The box Chloe showed the police when she was younger had jewelry from each of the victims inside. She pointed out Lena’s belly button ring. Her mom pointed out Robin’s pearl necklace. She tells them about the time she saw from her window her father carrying a shovel across the yard. A few days after Lacey’s disappearance, Chloe is spaced out while Daniel is talking to her. He asks her questions about Lacey leaving her office. He makes a comment about seeing her mentioned in the news and Chloe is surprised it was covered where he was in New Orleans. Daniel changes topics to the wedding planning. Chloe realizes Cooper was right. Daniel doesn’t really know her and Chloe thinks he would probably leave if he did. He asks her if anything is wrong and she says there isn’t.
18. Chloe thinks back on her conversation with Aaron. He told her if it was a copy cat, it could be someone she knows. They would be obsessed with the original serial killer and would know who Chloe was. Daniel turns to her in bed and asks what she is thinking about. They start having sex, but Chloe freaks out when he puts his hands on her neck and leaves them there. She apologizes and makes the excuse that there is a lot going on. He asks her to talk to him about it, but she just tries to reassure him she is alright. Detective Thomas calls to tell Chloe they found Lacey’s body in the alley behind her office. He asks her to come in and let them know if anything is different from when she last saw her. Chloe reluctantly agrees. She gets up and feels a bit awkward around Daniel.
19. At the coroner’s office, Chloe looks at the body with Detective Thomas. The coroner points out the strangulation marks around Lacey’s neck were very similar to Aubrey’s. Chloe can’t remember if the clothes are the same or if anything seems different. He asks if she ever went in the alley. She tells them no one really did except to empty trash. It was too small for anything else. Everyone parked out front. She asks if they checked the alley when Lacey went missing. The detective is annoyed, but said they did and found nothing at the time. The trash management company workers saw the body fall when their truck lifted the dumpster. The coroner says the body must have been moved there because she died while on her back. She had diazepam in her system at the time of her death. Chloe says she wrote a prescription for Lacey to start low dose anxiety medication that afternoon, but she wouldn’t have had it then. Chloe notices the bracelet Lacey had been wearing in their session was missing.
20. Chloe gasps for breath as she makes her way out to her car. She grabs the Xanax out today the glovebox and is about to take one when Daniel calls to see how it went. She tells him she couldn’t help them and he tells her to come home. She isn’t ready to tell the police about the copy cat theory and put herself in the middle of everything going on. She agrees to come home soon, but says she has to run an errand first. She calls up Aaron and tells him she’s ready to talk.
21. Sheriff Dooley offered to keep them at the station until they brought Richard in and they could even go to the house and get Cooper. Mona decides they will go home and act like nothing happened. Chloe starts to freak out when they get to the driveway and Mona has her take deep breaths to calm down. When they get inside, Richard notices that Chloe isn’t well and calls her over to his chair to feel her forehead. She says she needs to lie down and he puts his beer bottle to her to help her cool down. Mona starts walking her to the stairs, but Richard asks her if she needs to tell him something. Chloe meets with Aaron again. She ends up telling him about Lena. She would come over to escape her house and maybe had a crush on Cooper. She wanted to break into his room to see if he had any weed, so she used Chloe’s library card to open his locked door. Cooper was behind them the whole time and caught them before they could go in. She admits his idea of a copy cat doesn’t seem so crazy now. She tells him about the missing bracelet and how that was her father’s thing. The only ones they knew about it were the sheriff, their family, and the parents of the victims. She tells him Lena’s father, Bert Rhodes, having an exaggerated rage about him. She isn’t ready to tell him she thinks the murderer is trying to leave her clues. He tells her to take care of herself.
22. Chloe remembers Lena being the star in the end of year play, Grease. They went to go watch Cooper be an extra in the background and ended up sitting next to Lena’s parents. It wasn’t until later Chloe realized it was awkward because Mina and Bert had an affair. Mona later admitted to several affairs. Chloe thought their parent’s relationship was normal, but later realized how lonely her mother must have been always going to bed with a a book while her husband was in front of the TV. She thinks about how crazy Bert got after finding out Richard had killed Lena. He would stand out in front of their house yelling at them knowing Richard was already in jail. She goes home and can’t resist looking up Bert Rhodes in the internet. She finds he is working at a security company installing systems. Daniel comes over and she says she wants to go out and do something. He says he got a call from a hospital and he has to leave. While he hugs her, he takes the opportunity to look at her laptop screen. He apologizes for not realizing how scared she has been and tells her to go ahead and have a security system installed. She doesn’t correct him.
23. After Daniel has been gone a while, Chloe sends a text to Aaron about Bert living in Baton Rogue. He does some investigating and then calls her to tell her he has been in and out of jail the past 20 years. He wife left him after he strangled her. Aaron thinks she should take this information to the police, but she isn’t ready to have her life investigated knowing there is no going back from that. She hears someone pulling up the driveway and hangs up with Aaron thinking it is Daniel. She is surprised to find Bert standing at her door.
24. Chloe freaks out for a minute, but calms down when Bert doesn’t seem to recognize her. He says Daniel called to have a security system installed. She tries to play it off like she is someone else and they her husband is upstairs in a conference call. She starts to worry that Bert is going to leave gaps in the system to be able to come back for her. She starts asking him questions and he admits he knows who she is. He moved to Baton Rogue for a fresh start after his divorce. He opened the paper one day to see And article a lieutenant Chloe from when she worked at the hospital. She thought the article was twisted against her and Bert thinks she capitalized in her father’s deeds to get where she is now. Chloe reminds him that Lena was her friend and she lost someone too. She has been messed up by what her father did. Bert asks if she’s ever wondered what it is like to take a life.
25. Chloe calls Detective Thomas and tells him she has something she wants to talk with him about. He tells her to come down to the police station. When she gets there, the receptionist looks reluctant to let her through. She calls Detective Thomas to confirm Chloe’s appointment. Once Chloe is in his office, she asks if Aubrey was found with any jewelry. He tells her she wasn’t. Chloe tells him that taking jewelry was her father’s thing. No one really knew that except a few people. She tells him Bert Rhodes in in Baton Rouge and ended up at her house. She tells him about how he was wondering what it would be like to take a life. Chloe thinks the murders are meant to torture her specifically. Detective Thomas doesn’t take it too seriously, but writes down Bert’s name and agrees to look into it. Chloe walks out feeling like the spotlight in this case will land on her.
26. Back home, Chloe takes a Xanax and then pour herself a glass of wine while she re-heats left over salmon. Cooper comes over with a bottle of wine and Chloe rushes to the alarm system to keep it from going off as he enters the house using his key. He opens his wine bottle and stays talking o Chloe to see how he is doing. When he sees the bottle of Xanax, he blames Daniel for bringing them into the house. She decides to let him think that and asks him to leave. He leaves his key in the counter and goes. Chloe resets the al before going to the living room to eat her dinner and drink her wine in front of the TV. She considers calling Daniel, but gets sad thinking about him out and being the life of the party. She considers calling Aaron, but ends up falling asleep. She wakes up in the middle of the night, finishes her wine glass off, and heads to bed. She has a dream about the night she saw her father dragging the shovel across the yard. But when she looks at the figure, it is her instead of her dad. She is startled awake by the sound of the alarm going off. She jumps out of bed and can hear someone downstairs moving around. She runs to the closet to find Daniel’s gun but instead finds a jewelry box. She opens it to find the necklace that matches Aubrey’s found earring.
27. Chloe is mesmerized by the jewelry. When her bedroom door starts to open, she shuts it and puts it back in the back of the closet. She is surprised when Daniel enters the room. She starts to rush to him and the remembers what she just found in the closet. He asks her how to turn off the alarm and she goes downstairs to enter the code. He tells her he tries to call to let her know he was coming home early and left a voicemail. When he hugs her, he smells different than usual. Chloe tries to calm herself down and agrees to go back to bed. Daniel takes a shower and when he gets out, Chloe pretends to be asleep. He gets into bed, but after a few moments, he gets up to shut the closet door.
28. Chloe wakes up in the morning to the smell of breakfast cooking. She goes to the closet to check if the necklace was really Aubrey’s, but the box is gone. She thinks back and knows she held it, but she also remembers taking the Xanax and drinking 2 glasses of wine. The last time she mixed drugs and alcohol (aside from the surprise engagement party?) was in college and everyone looked at her like she was mentally gone. She goes downstairs and Daniel apologizes for being gone so much. He says he has made plans for their day and wants her to be ready to go for outdoor activities in 20 minutes. Just then, Cooper calls and apologizes for the previous night. Chloe says she overreacted. He tells her he got a call about their mom. She hasn’t been eating and they think she is dying.
29. Chloe rushes out the door and Daniel follows. She looks for her car keys, but Daniel has them. He angrily insists on going with her and is upset she keeps shutting him out. Chloe knows she doesn’t have time to argue and let’s him drive. She jumps out of the car and rushes to her mother’s room without waiting for Daniel. She hugs Cooper when she gets there. Cooper is not happy to see Daniel when he joins them. The on-call Doctor says they will have to move her to Baton Rogue General for further care, but he thinks their mom is ready to go. Chloe feels movement from her mom’s finger and asks to be alone with her for a moment. She asks if Mona can hear her: one tap for yes. Chloe asks if their previous conversation caused it: two taps for no. Chloe is a bit relieved. She asks her mom if she knows more about the murders. Three taps, then two. Chloe is startled when she looks up at her mom’s face to see her staying at her.
30. Doing her best not to be seen, Chloe rushes out to the lobby and entertainment room. She searches through stacks of media until she finds Scrabble and takes the ouch off letters and takes them back to Mona’s room. She lays them out and starts asking her mom questions, for yes or no, they use the “n” and “y” tiles. Mona taps for an affirmative answer. She says the new murders are related to the Beaux Bridge Murders. Chloe asks how to prove it, but Mona is only able to spell out “d-a” before Cooper comes in. Chloe snatches up the tiles. Her mind immediately goes to Daniel. She is lost in thought as they drive away and it is a while until she realizes they aren’t headed home. She protests going anywhere else, but Daniel insists. Chloe convinces herself he won’t hurt her even if he hurts other people. He has her get out of the car and close her eyes. She hears him drag something out of the trunk and turns around thinking it is a shovel. She freaks out and turns around to find him holding an oar. He shows her a stack of kayaks and says they are feee to use, but you have to bring your own paddle. They go out in the water in one kayak. They turn a corner in the swampy lake to come up to the Cypress Stables where they are planning their wedding. Suddenly, Chloe remembers where she saw Aubrey before. She was the granddaughter of the venue’s owner. She saw Aubrey the day they were there on the porch.
31. Chloe is able to keep her panic ti herself and tells Daniel she wants to go home because she has a headache. She goes into work early the next morning to check out the pictures of Aubrey and is able to confirm they are the same riding boots she saw on her when they were at the venue. She sees a family portrait and the grandmother is who they booked with. Chloe does her best to stay away from Daniel. When Her assistant Melissa come in, she asks about where Daniel was for the engagement party preparations. Melissa says Daniel showed up slightly before Chloe did. He went upstairs to shower and change after driving all day and came downstairs just before Chloe walked in the door. Chloe asks Melissa about her schedule and she checks the calendar. Chloe asks her to block off Thursday afternoon and Friday because she has to take a trip.
32. Chloe packs a bag of clothes acting like she is going on a weekend trip to New Orleans for her bachelorette party. Daniel approves and says he is going to text the girls to send him pictures. Chloe objects saying it will make her self conscious. They all agreed no outside contact. She leaves for work. Detective Thomas is there waiting for her and she shows him into her office. He asks where she is going and she gives him the same story she gave Melissa about going to New Orleans for some wedding planning. He doesn’t seem to believe her. He says they looked into Bert Rhodes (who now wants a restraining order against her), but they also looked into her. Chloe has a history of conspiracy theories and he asks her if she remembers the name Ethan Walker.
33. Back in college, Chloe had a roommate named Sarah who was in the habit of getting things that Chloe wanted. They were at a party and Chloe had her eye on a guy most of the night. Sarah noticed that and went to talk to him. Chloe wrestles with the decision to stay or leave and decides she will leave just when Sarah brings the guy over to meet her. She introduces Chloe to Ethan and leaves them to talk. Chloe is concerned because he is too muscular and popular to meet the requirements of her checklist. But when he asks to go somewhere quieter to talk (actually talk), she agrees. They go to the kitchen, sit in the counter, and sip their drinks for four hours.
34. Ethan and Chloe dated for eight months. One weekend, her roommate, Sarah, went out of town, but she didn’t return at the start of the next week. She wanted to call Sarah’s parents, but Ethan talked her out of it. Chloe checked her room and the mattress was blood stained. Suddenly Ethan broke up with her and then said he was going out of town to work through the breakup. Chloe went to his apartment and broke in to find him and Sarah having sex. Sarah had a miscarriage and bleed all over her bed. Her and Ethan had been having an affair for months. Ethan filed a restraining order against Chloe for breaking into his apartment. Detective Thomas was hoping Chloe would see how she has a history of making things worse by trying to be the hero. He feels she wasted their time by suggesting Bert Rhodes as a suspect. She thinks about Daniel and the jewelry box. Detective Thomas reminds her that prescription drugs such as diazepam (which they found in Aubrey’s hair) have side effects such as paranoia and they know she has a history of mixing them with alcohol. He tells her the only DNA they found on Aubrey’s earring was hers. She realizes she is now a suspect. He tells her to stay out of it and not to do anything suspicious. She thinks about the trip she is about to take that will further invade someone’s privacy.
35. The morning goes by in a bit of a blur and Chloe is glad she has recorded her sessions to listen to later. At noon, she gets ready to leave. Melissa asks if she is okay. Chloe admits she has been under a lot of stress. She says she needs the king weekend away and should come back refreshed. She drives to a motel and lets Aaron know she has arrived. He comes to her room and tells her the paper is giving him another week to find something before he has to drop it and return. Chloe tells him they are going to talk to a woman named Dianne whose daughter disappeared around the time of the first set of murders. She is wondering if the copy car started much earlier than they thought and is just now starting back up.
36. When they get to their destination, Aaron knocks on the door. When Dianne answers, she is heavily bruised. They say they want to talk to her about her missing daughter and that they think it could help them figure out the recent murders of the two girls. Dianne agrees to talk to them, but says they have to be gone by the time her husband comes home. She lets them inside and the house is completely trashed. She leads them to the living room and they sit on top of a pile of magazines and wrappers they cover the couch. Aaron asks for her name for the record and she says it is Dianne Briggs, Daniel’s mother.
37. Aaron starts off the conversation by asking about Dianne’s missing daughter, Sophie. Dianne explains she was a pleasant girl and she wanted her to be able to get away from their type of life. She thought her son had a touch of his father’s temper and meanness in him. He moved out as soon as he graduated from high school and hasn’t been back since. She told the police she had a feeling that Daniel had something to do with Sophie’s disappearance, but it was never looked into. Chloe asks to see Daniel’s rooms and Dianne sends them upstairs saying she hasn’t seen those rooms in years. Chloe runs her fingers over the walls of her fiancé’s childhood room. She goes to the bookshelf and sees In The Garden of Good and Evil. She pulls it off the shelf and opens it up. Newspaper clippings fall out and she sees one is an article about her dad being a murderer.
38. Chloe takes the article and puts it in her back pocket before they head back downstairs. She feels a connection with Dianne and goes talk to her before they leave. Chloe grabs her hands and thanks her for talking to them. Dianne recognizes the ring on Chloe’s hand. It was her engagement ring that was a family heirloom and she gave to Sophie when she turned 13. Sophie never took it off and was wearing it the day she went missing. Dianne demands to know who she is. Chloe runs out of the house and Aaron isn’t far behind. He drives away and demands ti know what is going on. Chloe apologizes and promises to tell Aaron everything when they get back to the motel. Inside the motel room, she tells him about finding Aubrey’s necklace in the closet and finding out Daniel was not attending conferences where he said he was. She pulls out an envelope of receipts she took from Daniel’s briefcase showing that he was near the Louisiana Stare Penitentiary. She realizes Daniel might know her father and was visiting with him. She thinks she should go talk to him. Aaron believes her and offers to go with her. Chloe is so relieved to have someone believe her. They have sex. Aaron goes to the bathroom and then comes out saying he has to leave for a while. He sees the Xanax in her purse and offers her some to fall asleep. She takes two and drifts of as Aaron is leaving.
39. Chloe wakes up the next night around 10pm. She wonders if she has enough evidence to convince the police Daniel is involved. She remembers she threw the engagement ring to the floor in Aaron’s car and never picked it up. She searches the blankets and finds Aaron’s press badge, which she keeps. She wonders if they have been brought together by fate. She has messages from Shannon and Daniel. She calls Shannon and finds out her step-daughter, Riley, is missing. She agrees to help search for her. She has a message from Daniel saying he is leaving and will be gone by the next morning. She throws the receipts back in the envelope and packs up her bag to rush out of the motel. She is hoping Daniel will still be at the house and she will be able to figure out where he is going so he will be caught.
40. When she gets home, everything is dark and she knows Daniel is already gone. Suddenly, she remembers the camera’s Bert installed and pulls out her phone to watch the footage. Daniel was there half an hour ago. She sees him doing menial chores. He stands there and pulls Aubrey’s necklace out of his pocket. He looks at it for a bit before he puts it back in his pocket, grabs his suitcase and laptop bag, and leaves. Chloe racks her brain thinking of where Daniel would take the girls. She has an idea and starts driving home.
41. Chloe faces her childhood home for the first time since she left for college. She realizes she told Daniel has been coming here for months. She considers calling Detective Thomas, but she figures he wouldn’t believe her. She takes the gun she found in her closet and goes up to the house. Chloe realizes the moon is too bright for her to be concealed and Daniel would easily spot her if he was there. She moves around to the back door, but it is locked. She remembers how Lena taught her how to open a locked door with a card and she uses Aaron’s press badge. After a few minutes, the lock clicks open.
42. As she enters the house, Chloe is surprised how nothing has really changed. She starts looking around and sees a figure on the floor. She rushes over to find Riley, but she doesn’t my have any strangulation marks in her neck yet. Chloe checks for her pulse and finds it is very faint. The girl is heavily drugged. There is a noise behind her and Chloe turns around to see Aaron. He said he also had the idea to check the house after she talked about it. She realizes she hasn’t talked to Aaron since she talked to Shannon. She picks up his press badge and sees it is a fake. She asks who he really is, but he doesn’t give her an answer. Chloe realizes he is lying and asks him why he killed the girls. Aaron said it isn’t his fault and that “he” made him do it. Chloe is reminded of her father blaming the dark or essence inside himself. She pulls the gun out of her purse and shoots Aaron in the stomach.
43. Chloe recounts her story to Detective Thomas, Officer Doyle, and a Breaux Bridge police officer. When Detective Thomas asks about Daniel, she admits she has no idea where he is. After she tells them about Aaron’s involvement, she realizes who he really is. He a high school dropout from Breaux Bridge. Chloe realizes he was the boy she yelled at when she caught him looking in their windows. She feels guilty for not realizing it sooner. Detective Thomas says he believes her and points out she saved Riley’s life.
44. At six the next morning, Chloe is finally leaving the police station. Detective Thomas asks if she really wants them to go after Daniel and she says she does. She feels very certain the necklace in the video is Aubrey’s. He takes her to her car and she drives home. As she passes the exit that would lead to the prison that houses her father, she thinks how he is involved. When Chloe gets home, she is taken aback by the al not sounding when she walks jn. She remembers that in the video, Daniel walked out and didn’t set it. She takes a bath to wash Tyler’s blood off of her and the gets dressed to go downstairs. She’s in the kitchen when she hears someone in the living room. She goes in to find Daniel. He never actually left but knew she wouldn’t come back until he was gone. She tells him how she visited his mother and thinks he killed his sister. He says he saved her.
45. Daniel tells the story about how his abusive alcoholic father would beat them. When he beat Sophie, Daniel was furious that his mother did not do anything about it. He didn’t understand why they didn’t my just leave him. He had Sophie stay at a friends house one night and then was gone the next. She had left a school book behind because she wouldn’t need it anymore. The friend’s parents noticed Sophie was missing before her own parents did. Daniel got the idea to fake her murder from The Davis murders. He tells her his sister lives in Mississippi. Chloe remembers some receipts from the town he names. She asks why he went to visit her father. He pulls out Aubrey’s necklace and rubs it with his thumb.
46. Cooper comes over to check on Chloe after everything that has happened. She already has two glasses of wine poured. She tells Cooper not to let her drink by herself. As he drinks the wine, she tells him how Daniel had figured out that Cooper had actually been the one to murder the girls. He had been using Tyler to do his bidding for a long time. He tried to frame Daniel for the recent murders, but Daniel caught on to what was going on. Cooper restates what Chloe heard her father say during the trial that there was a darkness inside him
47. Cooper says their dad found the jewelry under the loose floorboard where Chloe had discovered his pornographic magazines. Richard took them and hid them in his own closet until he could figure out what to do, but Chloe found them first. When Mona and Chloe got home from the police station, he told Mona it was Cooper and not him. When the lawyer came over asking if there was anything else Mona could tell him, she decided not to give up Cooper and it quickly drove her mad watching him get away with it. The first girl he killed was Tara (the girl from another town who had run away from home). He was surprised at how easy it was. Lena knew what he had done and kept rubbing it in his face, so she was the next to go. Cooper starts to slur his words and get tired. He tells Chloe she doesn’t have to tell anyone. She says she had to tell the police. He reaches out to attack her, but he is too week from the drugs she added to his wine (just like Tyler had done to her that night in the motel). He passes out and she gestures to the security camera for Detective Thomas to come in. She realizes she knows where the bodies are hidden. In a small cave she had crawled into when she was young. Cooper had tied a rope around her ankle to be able to pull her out. She realizes the dark figure with the shovel wasn’t her dad, but Cooper.
JULY 2019
48. On what was supposed to be her wedding day, Chloe goes to Sophie’s house in Mississippi to return the engagement ring to her. Sophie says Daniel talked about her all the time and when he said he was going to propose, it was her idea to use her ring to feel connected. Chloe thinks about how brave she was to be sent away at only 13 and wait for Daniel to show up after he graduated. Sophie asks about her dad. Chloe knows he is being released, but she hasn’t seen him yet. She isn’t sure how she will handle the situation. Part of her wonders how he could cover for Cooper and another part of her understands how he wanted to protect his child. After watching Cooper slump over powerless in her kitchen, she gained an understanding for the desire to feel control. She leaves Sophie’s house and as she walks away, she catches a firefly. She looks at it glow in her hand before she releases it.