Previously: Belko Royce went on a depressing killing spree, Mitch Larsen finally found a way to make her home an even drearier place, Linden was passive-aggressive with Holder some more, Richmond's in a wheelchair so he'll have even more things to whine creepily about, and we learned that the photo conspiracy involves Holder's old mentor Sherriff Gil Sloane, and thence Richmond's political rival the Mayor.
Stan Larsen spends the day feeling emasculated once Rosie's Killer drops off her blood-covered backpack on their front porch like some kind of existential flaming dog turd. Holder -- informing him about Belko's suicide on top of everything else -- promises some patrol cars, but they never appear -- because Oakes blocks them or because the Larsens creep the cops out like they creepy everybody out, it's never made clear. Only when the boys start making their own weapons does Stan throw one of his fits, and when that doesn't work, he goes to a sturdy sneaky murderer named Janek. Since Stan seems to think that everybody murdered his daughter, I'm not sure hiring a killer to find and kill the murderer of his daughter is a great idea. But hey, without Belko around to trick into killing everybody, I guess you have to have a new plan.
Holder (with Gil Sloane in tow) takes the backpack to Lieutenant Oakes's special contact for analysis, but Oakes lies to his face and says there was nothing of further interest. The way he knows that is, he never gave up the backpack in the first place. Where Holder makes his mistake is in taking this information back to Sloane, who explains -- hands up anybody who was surprised how fast this situation went directly into the shitter -- that there is a vast conspiracy in play and that Holder was selected as the patsy because he is so trashy and gross and meth-addict looking that he can play Cassandra all day and nobody will care. Harsh but so true.
Oh, and the doctored photos were recquisitioned under Sarah's badge number, so she should probably stop ignoring Holder's calls now that they are 100% back on the same side. She does some serious investigating this episode, eventually figuring out what happened the night Rosie died, when Richmond took Gwen to that Tacoma B&B: He freaked out about his dead wife, it being their anniversary, and he tried to commit suicide on the bridge where he'd first proposed. And while you're right that that's a shitty move for a boyfriend to do on your first overnight romantic getaway, the larger reason for this massive coverup is that a suicide attempt would damage the campaign. (Or possibly that one more conversation with Darren Richmond about his dead wife would cause everyone to go into a coma and they wouldn't be able to get out there and vote.)
Cut to now, when he's lying in bed with paralyzed legs and a colostomy, and you can understand why he's only moderately able to enjoy the fact that Sarah's buddy, Prosecutor Christina Niilson, has officially dropped the charges against him. Which, in turn, causes the early retirement of Lieutenant Oakes, who was probably doing all of this to protect Linden and Holder anyway, and his replacement by corrupt and unfriendly Lieutenant Carlson, played by Mark Moses! My very favorite! I guess if we had to lose Belko Royce, that's the perfect apology. Not to mention the perfect way to make sure Linden's performance -- both as a cop and as a crazy person -- will actually be supervised in some way by a hostile authority figure. I see this going well.
Overall, the hour was equal parts Sarah's and Jamie's show, as he spends the whole day in hiding from being the one to tell Richmond the extent of his damage, obsessively trying to get Darren's sister into town, grieving over his hero's many losses and also thinking about jumping ship... And eventually coming to blows with Ben Abani, who gets an earful from the Mayor once he's beaten hell out of Jamie, considering how close their evil plan is coming to fruition.
(Also worth noting: The public's mature, reasoned response to learning that the case of Rosie Larsen's murder might take more than twelve days to solve. Not a sexist "incompetence" or a racist "arrogance" accusation to be found. It would seem the internet, in the world of The Killing, is a much calmer and more rational place than what we might know in our own.)
Lieutenant Carlson, forced to put Linden back on the reopened Larsen case, makes sure to saddle her once again with Holder -- who now has more information than he can handle, of course -- but Sarah doesn't know any of that, which is why when, at the end of the day, she decides to supplement her ongoing stellar parenting plan of being homeless with occasional motel stays, and Holder shows up, she still assumes he's on the side of the bad guys and won't let him in or acknowledge him in any way. Tremendously ironic, especially if it is going to result in Holder immediately finding and doing a shitload of meth, which seems like the obvious thing that should happen .
LARSEN
Stan wakes up on the couch, in the early hours of DAY FIFTEEN, to hear the sound of a music box going somewhere in the house. Because I guess it's true: The Larsen house could always be a little creepier.
Denny: "I was just playing with the music box to calm me down after I heard somebody fucking around outside."
Stan: "I'm sure it was nothing, you little weirdo. Now off to bed, and I'll check for monsters."
Belko: "Perhaps it was simply my ghost. The ghost of Belko Royce."
Stan goes outside with a cricket bat or something, and trips over... Rosie's backpack! Left on the stoop! Covered in blood! The Larsen house could always be creepier!
GWEN'S
While Holder bags and tags the backpack and its contents -- which include a Super-8 that nobody knows where it came from, besides the 1980s -- Linden hits up Gwen for some more chatting. Surprise, Gwen is in no mood for her mess.
Gwen: "So now you're fucking telling me that your evidence doesn't add up? I spent the entire last episode covered in blood and now you're saying there was never even a case?" Linden: "Yeah, and I'm sorry about that? But if you could just take me through that night like one more time."
LARSEN
Stan: "So what this tells me is that the killer is still out there. And even more grody than we presumed."
Holder: "For me to agree with you would be to admit my culpability in the arrest, the shooting, Belko's whole deal..."
Stan: "My kids aren't safe. You need a patrol car on us, all the time. I'm not even taking them to school."
Holder: "I have an outsized concept of my own departmental importance, so I will promise you that."
Stan: "Hold up, what were you saying about Belko? What did that little sweetheart do now? You guys roughed him up pretty good before -- did you get him a doctor? How is the structural integrity of his face and head doing?"
Holder: "Oh, damn it."
GWEN
As we know, they were staying in a Tacoma B&B that night, romantically, and he got up and left sometime after midnight, then came back in the early hours dripping on the carpet. He shucked his wet clothes, refused to talk about it -- never looked back; Orpheus Rising -- and they fucked.
Gwen: "Now he is, of course, paralyzed from the waist down. But that morning, he was... Different, more present. More preoccupied. I didn't feel like I was competing with Lily, or whoever usually was on his mind. He smelled like he does after kayaking, in the morning. Briny, not sweaty. I could taste the salt on his neck."
Linden: "What about the clothes from that night?"
Gwen: "The only person on earth who would remember something like that is you, so yeah. No idea."
Linden: "Do you have keys to his apartment? I need to do some more of my immaculate detective work."
Linden: "What about the clothes from that night?"
Gwen: "The only person on earth who would remember something like that is you, so yeah. No idea."
Linden: "Do you have keys to his apartment? I need to do some more of my immaculate detective work."
HOLDER/SLOANE
Holder: "Oakes, I'm just saying Stan Larsen will probably freak out some more. Send a patrol car over there."
Oakes: "Okay. Take the backpack to this one guy Stu."
Holder: "Linden always uses Gary..."
Oakes: "This is not her case anymore! Use Stu! He is the one that looks like an undead ghoul."
Sloane: "Who were you talking to on the phone?"
Holder: "Oakes, our boss. He seems really focused on who I give this evidence to."
Sloane: "I'm sure it's just more departmental corruption meant to cover both our asses in this conspiracy. Let's go have coffee."
HOSPITAL
Darren finally wakes up, yanking and gagging on his tube, and Jamie calls an audible: Uninterested in telling Richmond the sixteen horrible things that have happened, he follows the doctor out into the hallway to bug him instead.
Jamie: "When are you going to tell him?"
Doctor: "Tell him what?"
Jamie: "About how he can't walk and stuff."
Doctor: "I'll tell him later, but the thing about paraplegia is that people tend to figure it out on their own. Go be with him."
Jamie: "I'd rather continue calling his sister over and over. That way I feel like I'm doing something, but also don't have to deal with a bunch of bummer stuff."
EVIDENCE
Stu: "I am creepy as heck! Hand me that bloody backpack!"
RICHMOND'S APT
Linden pokes around in his stuff, leaving hairs and sputum everywhere. In a pile of framed photographs on the floor -- which is not where they go -- she finds a picture of: Darren and Lily Richmond, standing on a Tacoma bridge, on October fifth ten years ago. Linden, at this point -- not that she'll tell us the whole story -- figures out that the Tacoma B&B is something to do with their marriage, and that this whole thing coincidentally has to do with the fact that October fifth is Darren's anniversary with his dead wife. So taking Gwen out there that night was either a somewhat healthy or an incredibly awful thing to do, but either way distances him ever further from the Larsen case itself.
LARSEN
Stan: "Argh! Another of my tantrums! I can't believe I talked Belko into killing himself just by silently withholding my love and approval, the only things that kept him alive in the saddest existence a human can imagine!"
Terry & Stan: "Belko killed himself! We are like unto the house of Atreus!"
Stan: "You know who I blame is the cops. Maybe I should do something stupid relating to that."
Terry: "Uh, you are still out on bail. You are facing time, already. Your wife has vanished -- literally, not like usual into a realm of shadowy remote sadness -- and your kids are wigging the hell out. Pull it together."
Stan: "Should I tell them anything about Belko?"
Terry: "No way? There is not a kid-friendly version of that. But you should probably mention how their mother has run off and deserted them."
Stan: "Listen, Mitch and Belko were my main competition for Martyr of All Time. As long as absolutely everything is about me, I'm cool. I can weather any storm."
HOSPITAL
Jamie sends off functionaries to tell the press nothing of import, and then notices the lady changing Richmond's colostomy bag. Understandably, this brings the whole situation into an even more raw and awful focus, and then Darren wakes up just as Jamie's asking how long he'll have to have it (Answer: Forever), so then Jamie finally has to deal with Darren.
Richmond: "What are our numbers like? Just kidding, I nearly died."
Jamie: "You're in a hospital, you nearly died, but you didn't. The rest of this shit I cannot spin, so go to sleep."
Richmond: "What is the situation with my legs? They are not reporting back."
Jamie: "I can't spin that either, so let me call your attention to this little button. It is a morphine drip. Neat, huh?"
He sprints off to find somebody else to deal with this situation, which is killing him totally, and the doctor is gone until the afternoon. Instead of going back to Darren's bedside, he regretfully -- but quickly -- gets on the elevator. I don't think I've ever sympathized with him quite this much, but I guess it makes sense: He has now joined the ranks of the grieving, which is how you can tell main characters from the side ones, on this show. He's Orpheus too, trying to keep his back to it no matter how loud it gets.
TACOMA
Since she has no job or place to live, Sarah Linden has plenty of time for day trips, like to Tacoma B&Bs, and for touring the countryside. Even more, now that she thinks Holder is going to murder her. The woman who runs the place confirms that this was the destination for most of Darren and Lily's romantic milestones, and that they were a tremendous couple, very much in love. Sarah shrugs -- what does that even mean to her? -- and wanders out to the bridge from the photo. She stares down at the crabbers, who look like gay porn cartoons, and they stare up at her.
Hot Crabbers: "From the look on her mug, I'd assume that lady is about to jump off the bridge."
Linden: "I sure hope you're coincidentally the one person I need to talk to."
Hot Crabber: "The great thing about my philosophy on crabbing -- which I can describe thusly [at length] -- is that I have no set schedule, and therefore it's infinitesimally more likely that I would have some information to give you, off-screen, in a second."
LARSEN
While Stan continues yelling at the cops to send a patrol car so the killer won't kill more of his kids, Aunt Terry goes looking through her box of junk for a panini press to make lunch with. The kids aren't really putting together that she's in essence moving in, not even when she brings out a priceless Waterford crystal goblet that was given to her as a gift and is apparently her Precious. (Stay tuned for when that shit shatters, which should be about five seconds from now, obviously.) Meanwhile, little Denny has completely given up on his father protecting them, and requests that they outsource this job to a canine of some sort.
OAKES
Oakes: "Oh yeah, there wasn't any good evidence on that backpack so don't pursue it further."
Holder: "First of all, I gave him that thing about a minute ago. Secondly, evidence vital to a murder case totally turned up on the porch of the victim, and you don't think that's worth investigating?"
Oakes: "Seriously, just don't push me on this. I am a good guy, you can trust me. This is a different coverup than your one."
Holder: "No! I have come late to the concept of justice!"
Oakes: "Get out."
Holder goes downstairs where -- this did surprise me -- he's got the backpack: He never turned it in, but gave Stu his own backpack instead. Which means not only is Oakes lying about the process, but also the very fact that Stu ever reported back to him. Stu, looking at Stu I think he's probably the Evidence Goat and you give things to Stu when you want him to eat them. Little girl's magenta panties, wool hats, backpacks with a million sparkly things hanging off them. But Goat Stu shall go hungry today, by God.
GYM
While Linden's approaching Senior Deputy Prosecutor Christina Nilsson for a meeting about all this, Jamie's working his shit out on an elliptical. He's to the point of ignoring the doctor's calls, sadly, and seems only mildly perturbed that his opposite number on the campaign, Ben Abani, keeps giving him the big eye. Afterward, in the locker room, Ben tweaks him about how the Mayor is going to win under the guise of gamesmanship, handshake, the whole thing -- but Jamie cannot be expected at this point to do anything besides haul off and punch him, so that's what he does. Tiny little Jamie, great big Ben Abani. Ben loses his cool and beats fuck out of Jamie, still screaming about how Richmond's a "child-killer" as the gym guys drag him away.
Holder goes downstairs where -- this did surprise me -- he's got the backpack: He never turned it in, but gave Stu his own backpack instead. Which means not only is Oakes lying about the process, but also the very fact that Stu ever reported back to him. Stu, looking at Stu I think he's probably the Evidence Goat and you give things to Stu when you want him to eat them. Little girl's magenta panties, wool hats, backpacks with a million sparkly things hanging off them. But Goat Stu shall go hungry today, by God.
GYM
While Linden's approaching Senior Deputy Prosecutor Christina Nilsson for a meeting about all this, Jamie's working his shit out on an elliptical. He's to the point of ignoring the doctor's calls, sadly, and seems only mildly perturbed that his opposite number on the campaign, Ben Abani, keeps giving him the big eye. Afterward, in the locker room, Ben tweaks him about how the Mayor is going to win under the guise of gamesmanship, handshake, the whole thing -- but Jamie cannot be expected at this point to do anything besides haul off and punch him, so that's what he does. Tiny little Jamie, great big Ben Abani. Ben loses his cool and beats fuck out of Jamie, still screaming about how Richmond's a "child-killer" as the gym guys drag him away.
HOSPITAL
Linden drops Nilsson's name on her charge into Richmond's hospital room, and you know that no matter how much he protests, she's not leaving. She tries to make a sympathetic face happen on her face, and is just successful enough that he calms down long enough to hear her explain the entire storyline.
Seems the night of Rosie's death, he got up out of that bed with Gwen and walked to the bridge, still wearing his wedding ring after five years of being a widower, and was crushed by the weight of all this, on his anniversary and all. So he jumped off the bridge, and the Hot Crabber saved him, and once he was born again, he'd let the grief go. Not the guilt, just the grief. The guilt was still very much in play -- and relates directly to his career self-sabotage. Seems he connects her death with the fact that he overstayed his time soaking up the applause, and thinks that's why she died. Poor old Orpheus.
Linden, verbatim: "I'm sorry for what happened to you. I wish that I had known the truth."
But the thing that heals it between them is also what is still between them: A suicide attempt would wreck his campaign, which is why the storyline in Season One was so Byzantine, because nobody can know about this. And now he's in a wheelchair and all. So even though she's giving him just about the Linden Limit of compassion and grace right now, he's not having it: She has information that could still hurt him, which means she's still the enemy.
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Linden, and to her credit it's very cute, just kind of shrugs with a half smile, because of course she was supposed to say that. And, to both their credit, Christina just shakes her head with a sort of rueful affection about how Linden ... constantly is.
MAYOR
Mayor: "Oh, does your face hurt from where you endangered our whole conspiracy for a pointless fight with that wormy kid?"
Abani: "Yeah, you go ahead and fire me. I dare you."
Mayor: "Because we are so close, man!"
Hmm.
LARSEN
While Jamie continues to avoid calls updating him on Darren's status, Stan overhears the boys discussing their need for homemade weapons, in light of his continued failures as a man, husband and father. Finally, he decides that the most powerful choice he can choose is to go back to the police station and whine at whoever is around... Which ends up being Holder, despite Holder's attempts to avoid him.
Holder: "Look, I know we're short-handed and you need a patrol car, but in the interim you can just call if..."
Stan: "Uh, my dead daughter's bloody backpack is hand-delivered to my house, and you're saying Call us if something suspicious happens?"
On this show, you take your laughs where you can get them. That was a pretty awesome line, however he said it.
SLOANE
With that exchange ringing in his ears, Holder meets up with Sloane to discuss the backpack. Thinking this is like Season One and he can come clean to his partner and superiors with nothing but a graceful thanks, he walks right into the worst shitstorm since Belko started taking hostages. It's so sad and so ugly.
Holder: "Um, Oakes totally lied about the backpack and I know that because I stole it. Which makes me think Richmond -- and hold the phone, because this is massive -- maybe didn't kill Rosie. If only Linden were here and we could compare notes, but you've already alienated me from both her and our lieutenant."
Sloane: "Richmond is the doer! Stop asking questions! Move on!"
Holder: "Um, I think we should talk to IA about Oakes and..."
Sloane: "-- STFU. Shut up right now and stop talking before you..."
Holder: "But what?"
"You've tipped it. The whole elaborate put-on, you've officially endangered yourself in this context. I will now be coming clean about what's really going on, which is that you were put into Homicide by me to run plays for the conspiracy, with the knowledge that if you ever went nuclear -- mentioned IA or pulled Oakes out into the open for protecting you -- it wouldn't matter anyway, because you are carny trash with a meth habit that not one single person could ever value or love. Except maybe Linden, who went from kinda hating you to totally hating you when you dropped those fake pictures. Which, my friend, you knew were fake, but you wanted your badge and you thought it was just a corner-cut, not a frame job. Get me? Because you need to know this other part of it, which is that those photos were requisitioned with Sarah Linden's badge number. You are both tied up in this together, forever. So if you decide to pin that on me, well, you're screwing Linden over. Now get the fuck out of my car. I never loved you and if I see you again I'll kill you, or something."
Holder: "Look, I know we're short-handed and you need a patrol car, but in the interim you can just call if..."
Stan: "Uh, my dead daughter's bloody backpack is hand-delivered to my house, and you're saying Call us if something suspicious happens?"
On this show, you take your laughs where you can get them. That was a pretty awesome line, however he said it.
SLOANE
With that exchange ringing in his ears, Holder meets up with Sloane to discuss the backpack. Thinking this is like Season One and he can come clean to his partner and superiors with nothing but a graceful thanks, he walks right into the worst shitstorm since Belko started taking hostages. It's so sad and so ugly.
Holder: "Um, Oakes totally lied about the backpack and I know that because I stole it. Which makes me think Richmond -- and hold the phone, because this is massive -- maybe didn't kill Rosie. If only Linden were here and we could compare notes, but you've already alienated me from both her and our lieutenant."
Sloane: "Richmond is the doer! Stop asking questions! Move on!"
Holder: "Um, I think we should talk to IA about Oakes and..."
Sloane: "-- STFU. Shut up right now and stop talking before you..."
Holder: "But what?"
"You've tipped it. The whole elaborate put-on, you've officially endangered yourself in this context. I will now be coming clean about what's really going on, which is that you were put into Homicide by me to run plays for the conspiracy, with the knowledge that if you ever went nuclear -- mentioned IA or pulled Oakes out into the open for protecting you -- it wouldn't matter anyway, because you are carny trash with a meth habit that not one single person could ever value or love. Except maybe Linden, who went from kinda hating you to totally hating you when you dropped those fake pictures. Which, my friend, you knew were fake, but you wanted your badge and you thought it was just a corner-cut, not a frame job. Get me? Because you need to know this other part of it, which is that those photos were requisitioned with Sarah Linden's badge number. You are both tied up in this together, forever. So if you decide to pin that on me, well, you're screwing Linden over. Now get the fuck out of my car. I never loved you and if I see you again I'll kill you, or something."
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Well! That went sour rather quickly. It was obvious that Sloane was no good and was using a mixture of daddy tricks -- "This is how things are done," "You're doing a great job," "Women don't really understand" -- to push Holder around, but I thought we'd spend more time on that and see how dirty Holder would get. I mean, it's better to have him on the outs with the conspiracy, in terms of liking Holder and getting him back with Linden, but it was still an interesting color to play. Instead, it took him two days to go from co-conspirator to Even Less Useful Than Sarah.
STATION
Ignoring another call from Holder -- Hands up who thinks he's about to go do a bunch of meth? -- and with Nilsson on TV formally dropping the Richmond charges, Linden heads into Oakes's office... To find the slampiece known as Mark Moses lurking instead! YES!
Lt. Erik Carlson: "I'm your new lieutenant. Oakes was forced into early retirement on the back of this sloppy police work that got Richmond shot and then off the hook."
Linden: "We both know it wasn't sloppy work. We both know those pictures were faked and that this is a conspiracy."
Carlson: "I may or may not know that. I do admire your tenacity, don't get me wrong. I just don't think you're a great cop."
Linden: "Well, I don't wanna go out like that, with a bad arrest and that's the last thing I did. It's clearly more important to me than feeding myself or not being homeless or getting married or providing anything like a normal life for my child. Also, it is about justice."
Carlson: "Fine. Look my hot little ferret face in the eye when I say that Nilsson made me promise you could solve this murder."
Linden: "Great. And I don't want a partner."
Carlson: "Nope. You and Holder are together forever. Even if he is still trying to kill you, like in your fevered imagination."
They smirk at each other forever and ever and ever. God, I wish Mark Moses would chase me through a house with a knife or rob me in an alley or something. Sexually harass me in a 1960s way that chips at my very sense of self. That is like all I want in the world is to be the Saggie Baggie Gyllenhaal to his James Spader -- the psychosexual Peggy Olsen to his mordantly oppressive Duck Phillips. I am crazy about that dude. He sends me to these Jenna Maroney places I swear I don't even have. Maybe this is why Chris Brown still has fans, this kind of thing. There is no pride in it, that's for sure.
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HOSPITAL
Jamie: "Well, I'm finally back. Your hair still looks perfect."
Richmond: "It's genetic. How come your face is broken into a hundred pieces?"
Jamie: "Darren, I..."
Richmond: "-- Doctor already told me. Damndest thing, right?"
Jamie, crying: "They dropped the charges against you about an hour ago, at least."
Richmond: "My lucky day!"
I like to think that, now that the whole bridge thing has unraveled itself, we can get back to mostly liking Darren, because it was always such cognitive dissonance to have to keep all his creepinesses in the air while also approving so much of his behavior. But one of the themes here, maybe the main one, is that grief is solitary by nature and that even if you wanted to come clean about what you're going through, it wouldn't actually help, which is why even the most sane people get so twisted up around it and end up hurting the world in strange places.
That no Orpheus ever didn't look back, because that's the point of the myth: That we do it, and we pay for it, and you can try to prepare yourself for grief but there is no preparation for it, which means you're always going to look back. And then you're in the dark, where things move slowly and everything hurts. And you can't run fast enough to escape it, and you can't run fast enough to erase it.
That death is the great equalizer precisely because it's the one thing you can't argue with -- and the more we try, the more damage we end up doing the living. But we'll never stop arguing, regardless.
LARSEN
Tommy goes out to the car to get Terry's smokes -- in direct contravention of the "don't go outside and get raped and murdered" rule -- and then, like an idiot, tries to smoke one right there in front of the house. He's immediately approached by a man...
Who Stan arrives just in time to attack physically, gratefully, before he explains that he's just a journalist trying to get a story. And really, now that they've officially dropped the charges on Richmond, all bets are off: The killer knows he's back on shout, Stan knows his family is still a target, and everybody's looking which means everything is moving faster again. He's given Tommy his card, so that when Stan goes to his meeting at the end of the episode, you're allowed to think -- just this once -- that Stan has made a choice of anything other than violence. Nice try, fakeout! He totally ends the episode by meeting with some gangsters and telling them to go find Rosie's killer and murder him. Because that plan's gone so well the other eight times he's tried it.
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MONTAGE
Gwen drinks and feels nuts while she watches the news; Jamie's still keeping vigil at Darren's side; Stan's meeting up with toughs. And what's Sarah doing?
Well, she's moving them back into a motel, since they need a place to actually keep their stuff besides the car, and finds that tattoo picture as the clue. Holder's there, at the motel, begging to come in and talk, but she's so scared she grabs her gun and, ear to the door, slides the chain lock closed. As with most television shows, he doesn't say anything remotely useful -- "I am a victim of a conspiracy that has targeted you! I am sorry I falsified evidence but it will incriminate you, about which I am also sorry!" "Please don't stop being my only friend or else I might do some meth!" "You were right about everything as usual and I need your help and protection!," none of that -- he just beats his fists and, eventually, his head against the door.
She doesn't take a breath until he's wandered away again. This time, he doesn't look back.
Jacob Clifton is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.
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