Just like last time, the episode opens with a ton of clips that really don't have anything to do with anything that happens on tonight's episode. Like there's someone screaming inside a church, and there's Skeet playing catch with Tommy as he explains that he doesn't have any parents -- okay, that one applies to this episode. But it seems like they were trying to cram an awful lot of background into a clips that are going to be kind of meaningless to people who had never watched the show before.
So we open in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the only time television shows have anything to do with Pennsylvania is when the Amish are involved, like, NICE STEREOTYPING, Miracles, and sure enough there's a horse-drawn buggy clip-clopping down the highway. And it reminds me of when I was in Grade 7 and we watched Witness in class for Lord knows what reason. I assume we were studying the Amish and I guess Mr. Chomyk was having one of those "in lieu of actual teaching, here's a video" days, but since the movie has Han Solo in it, I wasn't bothered, and then I didn't have to actually pay attention and I could exchange notes with the girl who sat in front of me in one of those Grade 7-esque demonstrate-your-infatuation-with-sarcasm-and-insults romances. And Kelly McGillis is naked in that movie, so of course Mr. Chomyk fast-forwarded over that part, but he didn't stop the tape, so we wound up seeing Kelly McGillis naked really really briefly. But if you were a twelve-year-old boy of a certain technological era you know what it was like to spend hours watching scrambled porn in the hopes of seeing the briefest glimpse of female nudity, so we got an eyeful that day in 7C.
Anyway, that carriage is moving down the highway at a respectable clip. And we cut to what I'm assuming is the source of the sense of urgency: a young woman moaning in bed.
Oh, shame on you, you perverts. She's Amish. And she appears to be in some distress, despite being tended to by another Amish woman who's pouring water and applying cold compresses and other sorts of things that indicate the girl has a fever. She's muttering something that's incomprehensible, but it's probably just Dutch, as her mother (I'm assuming) would be a little more freaked out if her daughter were speaking in tongues.
Outside, the buggy pulls up, and the mother runs to a window to ask if "Josiah" is back, and there's an older woman named Miriam there who tells her not to worry, since her daughter is strong. And Josiah comes running in with a bag with a big block of ice, explaining that the neighbours were out of ice, so he had to go to Everly's market. Right. Like he's not late because he dropped a few quarters in the Double Dragon machine at the 7-11. Or am I thinking of myself in Grade 7 again?
So Miriam starts chipping away at the ice block, because it's margarita time, I guess. And the girl is still writhing away on the bed and speaking gibberish and then we cut a couple of times to some sort of red fabric flapping, and then the girl's eyes snap open. "Mother..." she says, and her mom and Miriam are rushing into the room, only the mother looks at her daughter and gasps and drops the bowl of ice chips. Miriam gasps as well, and we see the daughter laid out on the bed like Jesus on the cross: arms spread out, legs together, one foot on top of the other. That in itself probably isn't enough to excuse a loose grip on a perfectly good bowl of ice chips, but when you add in that she appears to be bleeding from her wrists, I guess you can understand her mother's distress. As well, she's saying, over and over, "You don't know me. You don't know me. You don't know me." Opening credits.
There's a young kid smacking a baseball into his glove as he sits beside a woman lying in a hospital bed. She starts to convulse. "Mommy!" he says, and the slow motion starts up, and she reaches for him and says, "Skeet!" but he's taken away by a nun as a doctor and nurse rush in to tend to his mom. As the door to her room swings shut, we hear her monitor flatline.
Skeet wakes up, says, "Mom!" His phone is ringing. He gropes for it. It's Keel, although he doesn't bother to say hello. He just says he got a call from an orderly in a hospital in Pennsylvania, and Skeet's a little unnerved at the mention of the hospital, considering the dream he was just having. Keel asks if Skeet wants to take a trip. A groggy Skeet says okay and asks when Keel wants to meet. "Now. I'm downstairs," he says. Skeet needs to get some caller ID action going on his phone, you know.
Skeet and Keel are walking into Lancaster General Hospital, and I guess Skeet waited through the entire drive until just now to start telling Keel what he knows about stigmata, and says that people with stigmata bleed through the wrists, not the hands, since actual crucifixions weren't done through the hands; they were done through the wrists. I resolve again not to see The Passion of the Christ. (Besides, I've already read the book. Total snoozefest.) Skeet says if the girl is bleeding from the wrists, though, it's a lot more likely to be a suicide attempt than stigmata. Keel says that according to the information he's been given, there are no wounds on her wrists. Skeet says that doesn't make sense. "Real stigmata has real wounds," he says. Oh, okay, that makes sense. "You're the expert," says Keel, and then they barge into this poor girl's room. And...hey, where is Evelyn? Does Keel not even bother inviting her on these excursions anymore? Isn't she part of the team? You know, being sexy could come in handy on one of these trips, and if Evelyn isn't along, what are they going to do?
So the girl's name is Hannah, and Keel introduces them to her and says they want to talk to her about what happened. Hannah, it seems, does not want strange men wandering into her hospital room where she is tied to a bed. Keel asks if she knows why she's being restrained; Hannah says she was told she was violent, but when Skeet asks, Hannah says she didn't cut her own wrists. "Do you know why they were bleeding?" asks Skeet. "Because I dreamt it," she says.
Then her mother comes in. She casts a wary glance at Batman and Robin over there, but her daughter's so relieved to see her mom that the job of asking them to explain themselves falls to the doctor following her, and he asks who they are and what they're doing here. Skeet says they investigate things like stigmata. He doesn't even bother tackling the "who are you?" part of the doctor's question, though. The doctor asks the mother if she knows them, and when she says no, the doctor tries to give them the bum's rush on out of there. Naturally, Skeet and Keel ignore him; Keel says Hannah didn't try to kill herself, so now the mom's on his side, since she tried to tell the hospital that but they didn't believe her: "I knew bringing her here was a mistake." Keel asks the doctor how it's possible the girl was bleeding from her wrists when there are no wounds. "Of course there are wounds," says the doctor. Keel wants to see them. The doctor protests, but the mother says, "Please, doctor. I'd like to see them too." So the doctor gets a puss on, but removes the bandage on Hannah's left wrist and wipes away the dried blood. Sure enough, no wound. "That's impossible!" says the doctor, and just when you're wondering what the hell kind of doctor didn't even check the girl's wounds himself, he says that she had wounds when she was brought in. Skeet and Keel exchange glances. How is it that I haven't made "Skeet and Keel exchange glances" into a macro by now?
Back in Amish country, Hannah's mother is busy eschewing modern technology by lighting an oil lamp, and Josiah carries Hannah in, followed by Skeet and Keel. Greeting them is another gentleman who speaks Dutch to Elizabeth (Hannah's mother) and wants to know, in effect, what the hell Batman and Robin are doing here, despite Elizabeth's assurance that they're here to help Hannah. Gruff Guy says it's a job for the bishop, not for "English men," and they totally get busted by Keel, who of course speaks Dutch, and tells Gruff Guy they think they can help Hannah. Gruff Guy is all "whatevereth," and stomps off. Josiah comes back in and tells them not to worry about "Caleb," since he's an elder and will therefore always be suspicious of strangers. Unlike Josiah here, who's a twenty-first-century Amish dude with a stylin' haircut. The little girl, Emma, wants to know if Hannah is crazy. "I don't think so," says Keel, so Emma asks why she's acting so weird. Josiah confirms that Hannah has been acting like "a different person," doing such things as sleepwalking. She was even found by the police dancing by the roadside in the middle of the night. Well, there's your problem. She thinks she's in a Springsteen song. "What does her father say about this?" asks Skeet, which is a really bizarre question to ask, unless maybe he's inquiring about Elizabeth's availability. Emma says that her dad is dead, and Josiah explains that he drowned rescuing Hannah from the lake when she was seven years old; she fell through the ice on the lake. Elizabeth got her to dry ground, but she thought Hannah was dead. "Five minutes passed before she breathed." Skeet and Keel exchange glances.
Elizabeth and Josiah come back downstairs, and Keel asks, in Dutch (suck-up!), for permission to talk to Hannah. Elizabeth glances at Josiah, who says nothing, and then says it's late. Skeet's all "of course," but then they hear laughter coming from upstairs.
Everyone rushes up to Hannah's room, where she's laughing her fool head off. Naturally, the first one to her side is Skeet, and he asks Hannah if she can hear him. She stops laughing and asks who he is and what he's doing in her room. She doesn't sound scared, just curious. He says his name is Paul and reminds her that they met in the hospital. "Are you a doctor? I'm sick of doctors. Always traipsing through here..." Skeet just stares at her. "Crap, these bandages itch," she says, and starts scratching at her wrists. But she has no bandages. Also, "Crap, these bandages itch" doesn't really sound like something a young Amish woman would say. Hannah notices Skeet making the Skeet Face at her, and says, "Would you stop staring at me? You're giving me the creeps." She asks him his name again, and when he tells her, she says, "You're cute, Paul. You got anything to drink?" This really distresses Elizabeth. Not the fever, the stigmata, the bleeding, the maniacal laughter so much. It's the desire for the demon liquor that does it. Elizabeth would be in a head-shaking, tongue-clucking frenzy right before deadline at pretty much any given TWoP recapper's house. "Not on me," says Skeet, which was pretty funny. "She hides the booze now, you know. The mother from hell Nazi." I mean, "the Nazi mother from hell" would make more sense, or even "the mother from hell. Nazi," but she said, "the mother from hell Nazi." Anyway, Caleb gives Elizabeth a look that makes it appear that he's thinking, I swear, "You're a Nazi?" Hannah continues, saying she doesn't think her mother even keeps booze in the house anymore, since they're afraid she'll go on one of her binges. "I hate you! You hear that?" she yells, but she's yelling it off to the side, not at Elizabeth. She goes back to casting smoky glances at Skeet, and asks him if he's ever felt alone, like the people he loves don't even know he exists. "Sometimes," says Skeet, so here we go again with Skeet being reminded of his own painful past instead of worrying about the chick with the stigmata.
She wanders to the window and starts blathering about how she's looked out that window ever since she was a kid, but I was having too much trouble paying attention, because we're looking at her back, and it looks like she's doing that thing where you cross your arms and rub the opposite arm, so from behind it looks like you're making out with someone. That NEVER gets old. Skeet crosses the room to her. "Describe it for me," he says. She starts talking about "the big church" and the "endless stream of cars." Skeet looks at Elizabeth. Yes, we get that something's Not Right, and we didn't need a shot of the city that doesn't exist outside her window to emphasize that, okay. Hannah says that it's weird, that "living up in the sky makes everything seem so small." To me, that sounds pretty much EXACTLY RIGHT, but then again, I'm not batshit crazy. Not yet. Skeet asks Hannah what her name is. "My name is Lucinda, but people call me Cinda. Cinda Morgan Bryant." Elizabeth looks stricken, and Caleb seizes the opportunity to cop a feel, er, "comfort her." Hannah says she needs to go to sleep, and Skeet wants to know when he can talk to her again. "Here," she says, and takes his hand and grabs the -- what the? Is that a Magic Marker? Okay, they're AMISH, continuity department. Give me a break. She writes a phone number down on Skeet's hand. It's got a 212 area code (and of course, that phony-baloney 555 television-phone-number prefix). She tells him to call her, unless he's some "pervy old guy," since she's not into that. Hey! Pervy old guys need love too! And I'm not just saying that because I turn thirty a year and a half from now!
Later, Keel's sitting on the front porch. Skeet strolls up and says that the phone number she gave him was disconnected. Keel gripes that that would have been too easy. Skeet thinks taking Hannah out of the hospital might have been the wrong thing to do, since she's got all the signs of and contributing factors to a multiple personality disorder, including the childhood trauma of her father's death and an "oppressive life." That might have drawn some complaints from Amish people if this episode had ever aired. And, I guess, if they'd been allowed to watch it. Keel's not buying the multiple-personality theory, because how does a separate personality have its own telephone number? Dude, if they had the SAME telephone number, they wouldn't exactly be separate, would they? I mean, again, if Hannah actually had a telephone number. If you ask me, the fact that the telephone number isn't actually connected is even more evidence that it's a multiple personality disorder thing, but since this is Miracles, we know it's not. So Skeet holds his hand out to Keel and asks if that looks like a six to him. Keel looks at the number. "Zero," he says. Oh, so Skeet just dialed a wrong number? So this whole little scene was pointless? Goddammit.
Skeet dials the correct number on his cell phone, and you know he's hit pay dirt when he says he's looking for Lucinda Morgan Bryant and the woman on the other end of the line demands to know who he is. "I'm very sorry to disturb you," he says. "Is there a Lucinda at this number?" "This is her mother. Who is this?" she says again. Then we just hear Skeet's end of the conversation like Keel does, listening in, and Skeet says "oh" and hangs up. "There is a Lucinda," he tells Keel. "She died. Ten years ago." Dun dun dun!
The morning, Evelyn is filling Skeet and Keel in on the details of the sad story. So she's the Oracle now? Father's a lawyer, mother's an art dealer. They lost their only daughter, who was 18, to suicide ten years ago, on Dec. 12. Evelyn's apparently working from home now, and she's talking on a telephone headset while her now ubiquitous son Matty plays in the background. I love how they suddenly dropped a baby on Evelyn halfway through the first season. Like they focus-grouped the show, and people said, "Yeah, we love the stigmata and the demons and the supernatural overtones, but what this show needs is a cute kid. Then we'd watch!" Evelyn says because the parents were New York socialites, the suicide made the news. She asks Paul if he thinks Hannah's faking it. Skeet thinks it's a possibility, and wants to know how Evelyn got this information. She says she found it online. You mean Skeet and Keel could have Googled it themselves, but they made Evelyn work even though she didn't get to come on the trip? That's kind of mean. The point of Skeet's question is to determine that for Hannah to have found this out, she'd need a computer. Or a library card, points out Evelyn, and the Bryants' phone number is listed. She emails or faxes or whatevers over a picture of the real Lucinda, a blonde with short, shaggy hair. Skeet and Keel check her out. I mean, not like that. Skeet wonders why she killed herself. "Why don't you ask her?" suggests Keel, which is a pretty good idea.
What really doesn't seem to be as good an idea is Skeet skulking around the house. Not likely to go over to well with the Amish folk; nor is his sneaking into Hannah's bedroom. She's out of bed and regarding him warily. "Lucinda?" he asks. Nope; she has no idea who Lucinda is. So he says she's been sleeping a lot lately, and asks if she's been having any dreams. We cut to another shot of that red fabric flapping. She doesn't say anything, but clearly Skeet has touched a nerve, so he asks what it is. She says she dreams that she's falling, and that it's cold and dark. He tells her that she's also been talking in her sleep. Ah, so he knows the secrets that she keeps, right? He tells her she's been saying she's someone else. "Lucinda?" she guesses. She looks fearful. Skeet asks if she's sure she doesn't know who that is. I don't know, says Hannah, but the name makes her sad.
Elsewhere, Elizabeth is showing Keel pictures Hannah drew as a child. She says normally kids aren't allowed to draw themselves, as they have a prohibition against graven images, but Hannah loved drawing so much that Elizabeth couldn't bear to stop her. They're of the usual child's-drawings-as-windows-into-madness variety, with crude pictures of a girl in bed with a thought bubble to indicate she's dreaming, that sort of thing. "I've led a simple life but I'm not a simple woman," says Elizabeth, which is her way of urging Keel to tell her what's going on. Too bad all Keel can tell her is that he's not sure. He asks her if there was ever a point that Hannah was "different." Elizabeth says it was after Hannah's father died, but then everything was different. Hannah would lock herself in her room for hours, drawing. Keel asks when her father died. Ten years ago, says Elizabeth, on Dec. 12. Keel can speak untold languages, but he can't remember the date Evelyn just gave him for Lucinda's death, so he checks his notes, which basically consist of "Lucinda Morgan Bryant -- died Dec. 12th," like, nice notes, Keel. He looks at one of Hannah's drawings, one that's of her holding hands with a blonde girl. He asks Elizabeth who the blonde is. That's Hannah's imaginary friend Linda, says Elizabeth. Keel ponders, as he is wont to do.
Keel and Skeet confer outside. Hopefully they're trying to figure out how to jazz up this dreadfully dull episode. Keel tells Skeet that Lucinda cut her wrists on the same day that Hannah's dad drowned trying to save her. So, Skeet theorizes, Lucinda's ghost is inhabiting Hannah? "No," says Keel. Because that would be preposterous, right? Instead, Keel says he thinks it's a case of reincarnation. Only I thought reincarnation is when a soul is born in a new body... never mind. Not much point worrying about this. And as Keel always does, he brings up some sketchily documented case from halfway around the world in which something similar allegedly happened. You don't care, do you? It was just some kid in India who was in an accident, and when he was revived he had taken on the personality of someone who had died right at the same time the kid had his accident. I love how Keel always brings up similar, supposedly real-life events to compare to what's happening in a given episode. Like this is the show's "ripped from the headlines" aspect, only if the headlines are taken from the Weekly World News. I can't wait until Keel and Skeet tangle with Bat Boy! Skeet wants to exhaust other avenues, such as schizophrenia, a brain tumour ("It's not a toomah!") and just plain fakery before they jump right to the reincarnation theory, since souls don't just randomly take over other bodies. Keel says it isn't random; souls are generally reincarnated for a reason, usually to work out unresolved conflicts. Skeet says it doesn't make sense. I love it when characters on shows like these continue to be unable to accept fantastic things. You know, like Scully was still giving Mulder the "you have got to be kidding " routine five years into the show. Keel skewers this nicely by asking Skeet what does make sense, that when we die we go to heaven if we're good and hell if we're bad? Skeet has no answer for this. My Catholic elementary school teachers had answers for this sort of stuff, though. Admittedly, 99 per cent of the time the answer was "Go sit out in the hall, Danny."
Anyway, Keel goes on to say that he's worried Hannah will continue to slip away; the reincarnated soul inhabited the Indian child's body for the fifteen years, and the original soul never did come back. Skeet's all stomping around and saying he won't let that happen. I'm not sure why he's so upset, since it seems to me he has a much better chance to score with Lucinda than Hannah. Keel's fingering linen drying on a clothesline as he asks Skeet what he plans to do. Skeet says he'll go to New York to talk to Lucinda's parents. Keel distractedly says that if Skeet thinks that might help, he shouldn't waste any time. He takes a sheet that still has a faded bloodstain on it and rips it, while Emma watches from an upstairs window. So the very blatant Jesus Christ pose Hannah was in at the beginning of the episode was just a big fake-out? Soundgarden's going to be very upset.
That night, Hannah does that sit-straight-up-in-bed-bending-at-the-waist thing that people only do in the movies. Then she goes for a little midnight jog along the road while chanting "Madison 316, across the spire and through the green." A truck passes her, then stops and honks. She waves and runs to catch up.
In New York, Skeet knocks on the door of Lucinda's parents, who apparently are expecting him. He apologizes for intruding and then establishes that they don't know any Amish girls named Hannah, and then tells them she's having spells where she thinks she's Lucinda. "What do you mean she thinks she's our daughter?" says Mr. Bryant. Skeet explains about Hannah saying things Hannah would never know, and repeats her little complaint about the "mother from hell Nazi" who hides the booze. Lucinda's mother closes her eyes. And then the mother from hell Nazi speaks, asking Skeet what he wants from them. "Just your help. We're trying to rule out any possibility of contact between your two families." Mr. Bryant says they don't know each other and that they can't help. Skeet thanks them for their time, and gets up to go. His cell phone rings. It's Evelyn, saying she got the results of the bloodstained sheet they sent her. That quickly? So they sent to sheet to Boston from Pennsylvania, and it got there and was tested and back to Evelyn in the same time it took Skeet to get to New York? Did he go by way of California? Evelyn tells him the blood on the sheet isn't Hannah's; it's the rare AB negative. Paul says nothing for a long time, then finally hangs up the phone. And he asks the Bryants a question, and if you're so stupid you need me to tell you what that question is (or the answer), then thank you for reading my recap, Ms. Hilton. Skeet goes on to ask why Lucinda killed herself. They're not certain why; what they do know is that she was on drugs, and they both carry a lot of guilt for not doing more to intervene. Mr. Bryant says that when you're told over and over again that you're not needed, you start to believe it. "It's not a mistake we'd make again," says Mrs. Bryant. "If we've learned anything in the last ten years, it's that you don't get a second chance." Hold that thought, ma'am. Oh, there's the doorbell! Mrs. Bryant answers it. It's Hannah. "Can I help you?" says Mrs. Bryant. Hannah says, "Look, I'm sorry, I know I should have called. Don't get all depressive, okay?" Then she says, "You were right. They stole my bag. Loser model freaks," as she breezes into the apartment past a speechless Mrs. Bryant. Don't expect Skeet to make the introductions, as he's too busy making the Skeet Face. And Hannah, that is, Lucinda, asks Mrs. Bryant if she's done something with her hair, and Mrs. Bryant recoils from her touch, and Hannah's confused because she looks "old." Then she acknowledges her dad's existence with a "Hey, D," which cracked me up, oddly enough. Dad doesn't even say anything. He just goes to his wife's side as she gets all teary-eyed and says, "It's her. It's her!"
When we come back from commercial, Mrs. Bryant is still saying "it's her!" over and over again, and she adds that this girl "smells like Cinda." Hannah/Lucinda's wandering around the apartment, wondering when they had time to paint. And hey! You moved the coffee table! Then she starts calling for her dog, who is apparently named "Spridle," and wants to know why he's not coming. "Spridle died!" says her dad, finally finding his voice just in time to tell her pet is worm food. "When, last night?" screeches Lucinda. Then she sees Paul. "I know you," she says. Yeah, maybe he has some liquor on him now, hey? "Something's wrong here," she says. "I don't feel well." She rushes for the bathroom, where she vomits water. And we cut to a couple of clips of water and a little frozen girl looking right into the camera and a hand reaching through the water, and we can cross a couple more clips off our opening-credits checklist. I thought that was a boy in the opening credits, but apparently it's a young Hannah. And she looks at a seemingly dead Lucinda laid out. Skeet just stares at her (the Bryants didn't come to the bathroom too?), probably because as Hannah/Lucinda coughs, he can see her breath, as though it's freezing indoors. Hannah goes to her room, where she stares out the window at the street scene with the big church she described (and we were shown) earlier. Skeet follows her. "I drowned," she says. "Hannah, you're back," says Skeet. "I don't know this place," says a rather calm Hannah. "You shouldn't," points out Skeet. She says that she feels like she's still drowning, and sadly says she's going to lie down. A similarly weary piano plinks in the background. Skeet's cell phone rings. Christ, Skeet, set that thing to vibrate already. It's Keel, who wants to know if Hannah is there. Skeet says she is, but he doesn't know for how much longer. "She's slipping away, isn't she?" says Keel. He says he'll bring Hannah's mother.
So Skeet sits on Hannah's bed and tells her to stay with them or whatever, but this episode is putting me to sleep, and since Hannah isn't getting paid to be here, I can't fault her for wanting to catch some shuteye. She starts whispering that she thinks it's all over and that in "the other place" she sees shadows at whatnot and hears her mother calling to her and blah blah blah. And she's remembering falling into the ice, and we get treated to a recreation of it, with Hannah's mother yanking her from the water, and applying impeccable artificial respiration (perhaps the village elders hold seminars in the community barn), and she's yelling (not that we can hear, as there's just the music and Hannah's director's commentary over the scene), and young Hannah comes to but unfortunately she's got some nasty white skin rash on her face -- oh, sorry, that's supposed to be frost -- and she opens her eyes and we see Lucinda also lying there, and she opens her eyes, and it was a tiny flicker of creepy in a great raging bonfire of yawn, and then there's a sad shot of Hannah's father under the water, pounding futilely on the ice. Hannah says she never saw her father after that. Well, at least not until after spring thaw, anyway. "I wanna tell her I'm sorry, but I can't see her face," says Hannah. We cut to a POV shot of Hannah approaching her mother at the sink, but it fades before Elizabeth turns around. "I can't remember her face anymore," she says. Damn. It's been one day! Shot of the red fabric flapping. "Who will remember me now?" she says. And then someone must be chopping up onions because all of a sudden Skeet is just bawling and he tells Hannah not to go and he's crying because he's thinking of watching his dying mother being taken away from her, and I know this is supposed to be all emotional but I can't work up anything other than "meh." And Hannah closes her eyes, smiling. Skeet sits there on the bed.
Nighttime. Skeet comes out of the bedroom, and Keel's there already with Elizabeth in the living room, and they're just standing around, and when Elizabeth sees Skeet, she wants to know where her daughter is. "She's sleeping," says Skeet. He suggests that Elizabeth should wait, and before Elizabeth can work up some justified indignance over Skeet telling her when she can see her own damn daughter, Hannah comes walking in. Elizabeth approaches her and says she's come to take her home, only Lucinda's here now, so she says, "But this is my home." And she's all, "I don't know you," much to the consternation of everyone there, especially Elizabeth. She drags Hannah to a mirror so she can see who she is, but all Hannah sees is Lucinda's reflection. "Wait a minute," says Hannah, and she walks over to the desk. The music swells like there's going to be a big twist -- and Hannah just grabs a piece of paper so Elizabeth can write down her name and number so they can call her when her daughter shows up. And that's the little anticlimax we go to commercial on.
Later, Skeet, Keel, and Elizabeth sit in a coffeeshop and sulk. "I saw my daughter in that room but I didn't feel her. She is gone," says Elizabeth. Skeet half-heartedly offers up some bullshit about things being hard to understand, but she interrupts to practically yell, "My daughter is gone! She doesn't know me! Why should I understand that?" Keel does his best, but since his "best" is to start jabbering about reincarnation, she shouts at Keel too, for him to speak to her in things she can understand. Then she says she knows that they're wondering why "this Amish woman" doesn't turn to God, and she says it's because she doesn't trust a God who can do these sorts of things. You'd think she got kind of suspicious of God back when he drowned her husband, though.
Hannah's running her hand up the frame of the door to Lucinda's closet, noting the marks where her mom measured Lucinda's height. Lucinda's mom comes in, and she's doing her best to be nonchalant about the whole daughter's-soul-in-the-body-of-another-girl. Hannah asks her why she wasn't measured past age 12. "You grew up too fast," says her mom. She's got a box of clothes under her arm. "I couldn't bring myself to given them away after you..." she trails off. Awkward! Anyway, she pulls out a pink dress and says Lucinda loved it. "I still do," says Hannah. "Well," says her mother, "help yourself to all of...your things." She says she's really glad that Lucinda's home, and quickly walks out of the room. Hannah holds the dress in her arms.
I'm finding it hard to believe that the drug-riddled Lucinda loved this big ol' pink dress with its red...under...thing, like, what is that, a petticoat or something? I thought pink and red didn't go together. But Hannah wears the dress and looks at herself in the mirror (reflected as Lucinda). She trots out into the hall, where she overhears her mom and dad talking about how they don't even really know this person. Well, it's more the father who's going on about how they don't even know her, with the mother saying it'll take time. Hannah starts snarling, "You don't know me!" and backing down the hallway as we flash back to Hannah bleeding on the bed and saying "you don't know me," because I guess none of us can remember something we saw about 45 minutes ago.
In the coffee shop, Skeet and Keel and Elizabeth are still dithering over what to do (note to writers: make them do something. ANYTHING). Keel's cell phone rings, and he wanders off to answer it. "I'm never going to see her again, am I?" Elizabeth asks Skeet. Skeet says he's sorry, and that he tried as long as he could to keep her from going. Then he relays -- about time! -- Hannah's message about being sorry for the death of her father. Elizabeth has tears in her eyes. "But it wasn't her fault!" she says. "Why did this have to happen?" Skeet starts to say something, thinks better of it, then decides to say what he just thought better of saying, which was some platitude about how we can never know the reason for things. "The fact is, when you lose someone you love, no reason's ever good enough." Oh, great. Now he's going to start crying. You know, I don't remember Mulder ever losing it like this about his sister when he was investigating something that happened to someone else, and she was ABDUCTED BY ALIENS, so GET A GRIP, Skeet. Elizabeth deduces -- no flies on her! -- that Skeet lost someone as well, and after thinking about it for a moment, guesses that it was his mother. "How old were you?" she asks. "Five," says Skeet. "Oh, okay. So if you don't mind setting aside this thing that happened THIRTY YEARS AGO, can we come up with a plan to stop my daughter from vanishing?" says Elizabeth. Okay, she doesn't. But she really should. I bet she's thinking it. Instead, what she says is that maybe she was lucky to get those ten extra years she did when Hannah almost drowned. Yeah, just the kind of justification you need to give up on your daughter. Keel finally returns from his phone call. "We have a problem," he says.
Back upstairs in the apartment, Lucinda's parents are distraught. "She's gone! What kind of games are you people playing?" snaps Daddy-o when the trio enter, and then having delivered his one rage-choked line, he stomps over to his mark on the other side of the room, so his wife can wearily say that they can't go through this again. "I can't lose her again," she says. Elizabeth takes her hand to comfort her, and finally Lucinda's mom seems to realize that this might be tough on Elizabeth, and apologizes.
Skeet wanders into Hannah's room, where he checks the closet. Good thinking, Skeet! Her parents probably never thought of that! As he leaves, he sees that on the mirror on the back of the door, Hannah has scrawled "YOU DONT KNOW ME" in lipstick. He grimly notes the missing apostrophe in "don't." My God. It's worse than he thought.
We see Hannah's bare feet skipping up stairs.
Skeet comes back into the living room, wanting to know what "You don't know me" means. Lucinda's parents look stricken, and her father says it was the last line of Cinda's suicide note. Keel wants to know where Lucinda was when she cut her wrists, and her father says she was in the bathroom -- but that's not how she killed herself; that was two weeks before. We see Hannah climb onto the ledge on the roof of the building. Downstairs, her father explains that Lucinda committed suicide by throwing herself off the roof of the building. Well, you might want to get a move on, then.
Skeet bursts out the door to the roof and yells, "Hannah!" and she stiffens for a moment. Elizabeth, following close behind, seems to have a little bit more on the ball than Skeet does and yells, "Lucinda!" instead. She wants to know why Lucinda wants to do this, and Hannah says that she's angry at everything and wants it all to stop and she wants to go somewhere else, and Elizabeth says she has her whole life ahead of her and you don't know me! and I had a daughter who went away and I never got the chance to let her know how much I'd lose if she were gone and zzzzzzzzz. "You don't know me," says Hannah. "Yes, I do. You are Lucinda Morgan Bryant," says Elizabeth, and yes, aren't we all impressed at the noble Amish woman accepting that her daughter is gone. But I repeat: zzzzzzzzz. So when Lucinda's parents FINALLY chime in with their desire to help Lucinda, she smiles and turns and starts to come off the ledge, but the close-ups focusing on her feet tell everyone (including Skeet, apparently) that she's going to slip. And slip she does, and Skeet lunges forward to grab her arm and lead her safely off the ledge. But the red trim on her dress catches on the jagged lip of a pipe and rips off, so this is where the shot of the flapping red fabric came from. And Hannah walks by her Amish mom into the arms of Lucinda's parents. Elizabeth looks with tears in her eyes at Skeet, who can only make a Sympathetic Skeet Face in return.
Back in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Elizabeth washes dishes, and we get the same POV shot that Hannah had, only when the little hand tugs on her sleeve and Elizabeth turns around, there's no one there. But we hear "mother" whispered on the wind.
And then Emma shows up, bragging about how she climbed to the tallest branch on the oak tree, while Josiah assures Elizabeth that he was watching her and Elizabeth hugs Emma, so I guess she's okay with losing Hannah, because she HAS ANOTHER DAUGHTER, after all. What a load.