Previously…
– Paula intentionally crossed the boundaries of her house arrest area in order to set off her ankle monitor and summon the police, due to the armed, masked man in her home. The man got away, and Paula was taken into custody.
– At Paula’s hearing for violating the terms of her house arrest, Rosie took the stand and tearfully explained that she believed the masked man was connected to a drug dealer she once dated — whose connections resulted in Rosie’s father’s murder.
– Tori continued to ignore all Zane’s efforts to contact her after learning that he started dating her to apply pressure to Sarah and get her to pay the blackmail money.

In a small courtroom, Rosie Jimenez sits on the witness stand, facing a crowd whose attention is fully fixed upon her. She sniffles, needing to staunch her tears so that she can get her words out. She hates crying as it is, but even more so in a room full of people; unfortunately, there is no chance of her recounting this story without tears.

“It was my fault,” she says. “It was my fault for being with Diego, for agreeing to hold the package, for trying to lie to those people. I’m the reason my father was shot and killed. It’s all my fault.”

“And you believe the man who came to Paula Fisher’s home with a gun, asking for you, had something to do with Diego Barrera or the people who killed your father?” Conrad Halston asks. The attorney stands several feet in front of her, and she can tell that he is shaken by the gravity of the story that he did not expect to come out today.

“I’m sure of it,” Rosie says, looking from the judge to the district attorney, Audrey Tam. “Please don’t punish Mrs. Fisher for my mistakes. Please.”

The police commander, Brent Taylor, is tight-lipped in the gallery; just behind him is her boyfriend — or who knows what he is now? — Travis Fisher, the man she has lied to and endangered because of her fear, her selfishness.

“Please,” she repeats. “All Mrs. Fisher was trying to do was save herself and her grandson. And me, even if I didn’t deserve it.”

The judge regards her with a serious expression and then looks to Conrad. “Counsel: any further questions?”

“Yes,” Conrad says, projecting a voice full of confidence even though Rosie knows that he must be utterly thrown. “What makes you so certain that this masked man was connected with Diego Barrera?”

Rosie’s brain is a jumble of mush as she tries to explain, “He was trying to get me to tell Travis something. He wanted to see me. He made it sound like this was all because of me. I can’t imagine anything else…”

“Did he say something specific?” Conrad presses.

“He told Travis and me that we both needed to stop asking questions,” she says. “The only way that Travis could be involved — well, we ran into someone recently, someone who used to work with Diego, and I know Travis talked to him, and it’s possible there was some, I don’t know, miscommunication.”

“Miscommunication?”

“Like this person thought that Travis was trying to figure out our past connection. Maybe that made him think I was up to something.”

“Because you’re a police officer,” Conrad finishes for her.

“I guess. Like he thought I was trying to find Diego.”

“And why didn’t you come out with this sooner?”

“Because Diego threatened me,” she says. “After my father was killed, I only saw Diego once. He threatened my mother, my brother, and me. He said that he’d come after all of us if I implicated him — and he said I’d get in trouble, too, because I was holding product for him.”

She bows her head sadly. The courtroom is silent.

“I knew I couldn’t bring my father back. That’s why I became a police officer, though. I thought I might someday be able to find the people who did that to him — or at least prevent it from happening to other people in the future.”

Conrad nods compassionately before he says, “No further questions.”

He starts back toward the defense table, where Paula Fisher waits, looking both scared and confused. Paula whispers something to Conrad as soon as he returns.

“Your Honor,” Conrad says, before even sitting down. “As I’m sure you can understand, Officer Jimenez’s testimony was quite surprising. The defense requests a brief recess to confer.”

The judge swiftly raps his gavel. “Recess granted. I think that would benefit everyone right now. This court will re-adjourn in 30 minutes.”

The courtroom buzzes with the shuffling and chatter of everyone assembled. Rosie steps down from the stand and, after briefly meeting Brent’s eyes again, makes a beeline for the exit at the back of the courtroom. She doesn’t know how to process any of this right now. She blows right past the benches where the Fisher family is all seated, not wanting or able to engage with any of them.

But she only makes it two steps out of the courtroom before she hears the voice behind her.

“Rosie,” he says, and this time, it is Travis who is coming after her.

As much as she dreads it, she does stop.

“Rosie,” he repeats, as if worried that she might slip away. “Hold on. We should talk.”

—–

Tori Gray can hear that the rain has picked up even before she reaches the glass doors of the academic building where she has just attended a lecture. She looks outside and sees students moving briskly over the walkways of King’s Bay University — some holding umbrellas, others with hoods pulled over their heads, and some simply shielding themselves with their hands. Tori takes a deep breath, steeling herself to head out into the downpour, and exits the building.

But she doesn’t even have time to cover her head before she sees him. He is waiting there, beneath the awning at the front of the building, his arms folded and his gaze intense.

It has been quite a while since she has seen Zane Tanaka in the flesh. His name has popped up on her phone, but she has ignored his calls and texts. Of course, she has played his voicemails later, in the dead of night, wanting to know what he said — needing to know what he said, as if there might be something in those messages that might magically make everything that has happened all right. But there never is, and there never will be.

She levels an unfriendly stare at him but finds that her feet can’t move.

“Tori,” he says, coming toward her. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“What? Why?”

“I remembered your class schedule, and I figured if you weren’t going to pick up your phone or answer me, I had to see you.”

“Yeah. Not picking up my phone and not answering you is the message. I don’t want to see you.”

“What we had was good,” Zane says. “Is good. We don’t need to lose it.”

“We have nothing!” she says, more harshly than she anticipated. “We never did. The whole thing was a lie. You were blackmailing my mom, and you were using me to twist her arm so she’d pay you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“How is it not that simple? Were you not blackmailing my mom?”

“I was, but–”

“Did you not start dating me so that you’d have a way to make her give in to the blackmail?”

“Yeah, but–”

“Then it’s that simple!”

“It is not,” Zane says. “I didn’t plan any of this. I didn’t plan to be talking about moving in with you. I didn’t plan to miss you. But I’ve grown to really, really like you, Tori.” His lips linger open for a second longer, making her wonder if he is about to say something more, but the thought drifts off into the rainy air.

“So what? I’m supposed to be grateful that you actually liked me, instead of considering every second with me some miserable chore? If you really liked me, you wouldn’t have taken my mom’s money.”

“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Oh. Well, in that case…”

“Tori, stop being so sarcastic.”

“Why? What else am I supposed to be with you?”

“Hey, I guess I deserve that,” Zane says. “But I care about you. I genuinely, really do care about you. I’ve enjoyed our time together — more than enjoyed. I want to be with you. This has nothing to do with the money.”

“Zane,” she says, pausing momentarily as another student passes; the last thing she wants is for people to catch wind of how messed-up her entire life is.

“Zane,” she then repeats, “what do you expect me to do? How am I supposed to trust you again? Answer me that: how in the hell am I ever supposed to trust you again?”

—–

The first thing Rosie notices when she looks at Travis — really looks at him — is that his blue eyes are as soft and welcoming as she is accustomed to seeing them.

“I’m so sorry about your dad,” he says. Somehow, the fact that he is expressing sympathy twists the knife in her gut even further. “I just wish you had told me.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” she says. Her voice is much more timid than it normally would be. “I was scared. I am scared. I just admitted to the court that I was involved with a drug dealer, that someone connected to him killed my father, and that I lied to the police about how much I knew. I’ve been holding onto that for years.”

“And that must be so hard.”

“It is. That’s why I couldn’t tell. It’s not that I didn’t want to let you in. It’s that I didn’t want to put you in the same kind of danger that I’d be putting my family or myself in.”

“Well, if I had known,” Travis counters, “I could’ve been more careful about what I said to Jesse. This is about Jesse, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she admits, her eyes falling to the floor. “Jesse is the person I ran into who was friends with Diego.”

“That’s why you acted so weird when I saw you guys talking.”

She nods.

“Because I talk to Jesse at work sometimes, and I knew that you guys knew each other, and obviously I didn’t say anything about — any of this, because I didn’t even know about it. But I must’ve said something that he misinterpreted.”

“I realize all that now,” Rosie says. “But all I was thinking was, leave Travis out of this. Don’t drag him into your mess. Live your life, do your job… You’ve already lost not only your father, but your entire family…”

Travis’s mouth goes wide with realization. “That’s why you and your mom don’t talk.”

“Bingo.”

“I wish you weren’t dealing with this alone,” he says.

“Yeah, me too.” Her shoulders shrug up toward her ears. “But I am. I made my bed: I got involved with Diego, I got in over my head, my dad paid with his life, and I can never change any of it.”

“Maybe not… but you can keep other people safe going forward.”

“That’s why I became a cop! And now I blew it all. I got your grandma in trouble, and I wrecked it with you, and Commander Taylor knows everything that happened, so I’ll probably lose my job–”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says.

“It’s fine.” The sinking feeling in her stomach won’t go away. “Travis, I need to go. I have to get out of here, figure out my next move…”

“Next move?”

“Yeah. I have to go. I really hope they listen to what I said, and I really hope it makes a difference. I hope your grandma doesn’t have to pay for this.”

“Me too,” Travis says.

“I’ll see you,” Rosie says, and then she takes off, not daring to glance back at the man she is leaving behind or the mess that she has made.

—–

Inside the courtroom, everyone else mills around, still reeling from the depth of Rosie’s revelations during her testimony. Claire Fisher turns to Brent Taylor.

“Did you know about all that?” she asks.

Brent shakes his head. “Not until Rosie pulled me aside right before the hearing began. She wanted to give me a heads-up.”

“I wish she had done the same for Travis,” Claire says. “Especially before it nearly got him and Paula killed.”

Brent holds his lips held together in a tight, straight line, thinking for a long moment before he responds. “Yeah. To think this could’ve been avoided…”

“In a way, I do understand where she’s coming from.”

“What do you mean?”

“I sort of did the same thing to Tim, about my father and the Morianis. I thought I could leave that whole life behind and start fresh. I thought telling Tim would… well, I worried it would make him not want to be with me, but I also wanted to spare him.”

“We can’t avoid our pasts forever,” Brent agrees. “No matter how hard we try.”

“Right. I learned that the hard way when my dad had Tim shot. And now it nearly happened to my son, too.”

“Listen. Travis is all right. Thank god. And it’s up to him what happens next with him and Jimenez.”

“Yeah,” Claire says, her voice taut with tension. “What does this mean for her professionally?”

Brent runs a hand over his eyes. “Not sure yet. There’s a lot to unpack. But she’s a good cop.”

“I just hope her professional judgment is a little better than her personal judgment,” Claire comments.

Meanwhile, Molly Taylor and Sarah Fisher Gray make their way up to the defense table, where their mother is sitting with her attorney.

“How are you holding up?” Sarah asks Paula.

“I don’t even know how to answer that,” Paula responds. “Everything Rosie said was so…”

“Surprising,” Conrad says flatly. “I wish she’d given me some advance notice.”

“Do you think it will help Mom’s case?” Molly asks.

“I’d like to think so,” the lawyer says. “On one hand, it gives us a credible source that there was a legitimately dangerous person in the house.”

“On the other, it’s a complete distraction,” Sarah says, glancing cautiously over at the D.A. “I could see them arguing that Rosie’s story has nothing to do with what happened at the house.”

Conrad bobs his head stiffly in agreement. “We’ll see. I was just about to run through some ideas with Paula about how to tackle this.”

“Please,” Paula says, the words cracking with fear. “I can’t go to prison.”

“Mom, you aren’t going to prison,” Molly says.

Paula looks to both Conrad and Sarah, whose expressions are a bit more guarded. She understands why — both of them, with their experiences working with law enforcement, understand how unpredictable all of this can be.

“I’m going to do everything I can,” Conrad says.

“And we’re all here for you,” Sarah adds. “You did nothing wrong. You’ve been a model prisoner. They should understand that.”

“They have to,” Paula says, though her stomach sinks yet again. “I don’t know how I’ll get by if they don’t.”

—–

“I don’t know,” Zane admits after a long pause. “I can’t just snap my fingers and make you trust me again.”

“No,” Tori replies, folding her own arms to place a barrier between them.

“No, but I can try. I can prove myself to you. It might take some time, but I’d do it.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that and instead stares out at the raindrops, plopping down all over the concrete walkway that leads away from the building. She considers taking that path and following it as far as it will take her, so that she can be away from him, so that she will not be drawn back in by him.

“Where are you staying?” he asks. “I’ve been by the house, but-p”

“You’ve gone to my grandma’s house?”

“Yes! I’ve been looking at you. I’ve wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, I’m not staying there. I’m staying at–” She stops short, not wanting to reveal where he can find her. Using the word cousin would be too much information. “I’m staying at a friend’s for a little while. I can’t live with my mom right now.”

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“Yeah, you should be! You’re the one who put her in this situation. I’m mad at the way she handled it, but she wouldn’t have had to do it at all if you hadn’t done this to her.”

“I know. I know.”

“Zane,” she continues, picking up steam, “not only did you screw with me, and not only did you blackmail my mom, but you interfered with a major legal case when you took that security footage.”

“I guess,” he says. “It seemed like such an easy move at the time. I wiped the footage from the master tape, I put it on a drive of my own, and when I realized what was going on, I thought… that it was my ticket. No one was really getting hurt.”

“Except me!”

“That wasn’t part of my plan,” he explains. “I looked everything up. I saw that your mom had been married to that old, rich guy. I wasn’t going to release the tape.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I wasn’t sitting there with my finger on a red button, ready to send it to the police. It’s not like I wanted your grandma to go to jail. It just– look, your mom and your aunt were lying. They were covering up a crime.”

“That isn’t the point!” Tori says.

Zane’s shoulders slump, admitting defeat on that point. “I guess. But none of this changes the fact that I really do care about you, and I think we had something good.” His eyes lock with hers. “Think about all the lazy mornings we had at my place. Think about the nights we stayed up late, watching a movie or going out for ice cream or just talking about our lives… Tell me that’s something you find every day with other people, and I’ll leave you alone.”

She grits her teeth. “It isn’t.”

“See? So give me a chance. Give me a chance to prove myself.”

“I’d be opening myself up to so much torture if I did that.”

“But it’s temporary!” Zane says. “An adjustment period. Couples do this, when something goes wrong, like someone lies, or someone cheats, or someone blackmails someone else’s mother. You know what?”

“What?” Tori asks with annoyance, so exhausted with this conversation that she simply wants to leave. Otherwise they will be going in circles for eternity.

“I’ll give the money back,” he says.

“You what?” She has thought of bringing it up, but she has been scared of giving him an ultimatum. Part of her figured he would say no, that he would try to justify keeping the money and getting her back — but part of her wondered how easily she would give in if he did agree to do it.

“I’ll give the money back,” he repeats. “If you’ll give me a chance. I give your mom the money back, and we start over. Fresh.”

She looks at him in disbelief. She truly has no idea how to answer him. If he would give the money back, it might mean… no, it doesn’t erase anything.

“Tori, come on,” he presses.

“Not now.”

Before he can touch her arm, she pulls away and bounds toward the walkway.

“Not now,” she says as she walks off. “I need to think about this, Zane.”

She steps out into the rain, bringing a hand above her head as if it will do any good to protect her.

“I’m gonna hold you to that!” he calls after her. “Because I mean it. I really mean it.”

Tori increases the pace of her steps, needing to get away from him, knowing that she will not be able to think straight until she is out of his presence.

—–

After Rosie departs, Travis lingers in the corridor outside the courtroom in a futile attempt to gather his thoughts. Soon various family members and other observers begin spilling out of the room. His mother approaches him.

“Did you catch Rosie?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says.

Claire waits a moment for him to elaborate, and when he doesn’t, she continues. “Did you know all of that? About her dad, the drug dealer…?”

“No,” he cuts her off. “Not a thing. All I knew was that she and her mom don’t talk, for some reason that she would never explain to me, and that she knew this busboy who works at Bill’s on the Pier, except she’d never tell me how they knew each other, and she was all shifty about it. And now I know.”

“Wow.” Claire takes this in before asking, “How do you feel?”

“I have no idea. On one hand, I feel bad for her. She had to watch her dad be murdered, and yeah, she was holding onto that stuff for her ex, but she didn’t ask for any of that.”

“No, but she also didn’t have to get involved with someone she knew was a drug dealer. She didn’t have to bring that into her family’s home.”

“Exactly,” he agrees. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to be.”

Claire takes him by the shoulders and squares his body so that he is facing her head-on.

“There’s no way you are supposed to feel,” she tells him. “Listen to your gut. That’s all you can do.”

Travis checks in with others: with his father, with his aunts, with his uncle. They all offer words of comfort and consolation, but it all sounds to Travis like white noise, just like the rain falling outside. Soon enough, the recess is over, and they all make their way back inside the courtroom. Travis takes his seat again, and they wait for the hearing to continue.

The judge raps his gavel as the proceedings resume, and he addresses the D.A.:

“You may call your next witness.”

“Your Honor,” Audrey Tam says, “in light of the testimony offered by Officer Jimenez, the state moves to dismiss the house arrest violation charges against Mrs. Fisher.”

Several gasps fly up from the Fisher family’s side of the room.

“Furthermore,” Tam continues, “the state feels satisfied that Mrs. Fisher has completed nearly the entirety of her sentence without any other violations or problems. She has been an exemplary prisoner, and we feel that she has paid her debt to society and for the crime that she committed. As such, if the court pleases, I ask that Mrs. Fisher’s sentence be voided today and that she be released from house arrest.”

“Oh my goodness,” Paula exclaims in a half-whisper at the defense table, as she instinctively grips Conrad’s forearm.

“I see no reason to disagree with the prosecution,” the judge says. “Mrs. Fisher, pending final paperwork, consider yourself a free woman.”

Cheers erupt from the several rows behind the defense table. Paula springs to her feet.

“Thank you so much,” she says, clasping her hands together as she looks to the D.A. and then the judge.

The Fishers make their way up to the table and gather around her, offering hugs and congratulations.

“It’s over,” Paula says in disbelief, as tears of joy and relief fall from her eyes. “I’m free.”

END OF EPISODE 920

Were you surprised by the prosecution’s change of heart?
Will Travis and Rosie be able to have any kind of future?
Can Zane succeed at wearing down Tori’s defenses?
Discuss it all in the comments below!

 

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