"Footprints"
Episode #315
Previously
...
- Jason and Lauren headed for Whistler and hoped that his skating audition would
go well.
- Diane e-mailed Sarah the photographs of Molly and Brent together.
- Matt urged Sarah to leave the problems of his past in the past, but she felt
uneasy doing so. Later, Sarah opened her e-mail and reacted to the photos with
rage.
SARAH FISHER'S APARTMENT
Sarah Fisher breathes heavily as she leans back in her computer chair. Pieces of her shattered mouse lie on the floor across the room, casualties of an intense collision with the wall. She stares at the scattered pieces, surprised by the power of her own reaction.
Her eyes flash back to the computer monitor. The digital photos of her ex-husband and her sister together stare back at her, unflinching in their cruelty. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have thought that they would have enough decency to stay away from each other?
"What's going on in here?" Matt Gray asks. Sarah didn't even hear him coming down the hall. She is about to attempt some sort of answer when he sees the destroyed mouse.
"Sarah?" he asks cautiously. He moves closer to her. "What happened?"
She wants to close the windows on the computer screen but realizes that she just destroyed her means of doing that. Instead she rises to her feet.
"Can you stay with Victoria for a little while?" she asks.
"Uh, yeah ..."
"I have something I need to take care of." Swiftly she moves across the room, grabs her purse from the dining room table, and scoops up the pieces of the mouse.
Matt follows her into the small kitchen as she dumps the broken plastic into the garbage.
"Sarah, what's going on?"
She walks out of the kitchen and toward the front door, not fooling herself that she could look him in the face for even a moment.
"I shouldn't be too long." She opens the door and slides outside.
"Sarah--"
She silences him by shutting the front door.
Matt considers rushing after her, but he knows that he has already left Victoria alone in the tub for long enough. He is about to shove the concern further back in his mind and return to the bathroom when he realizes something: whatever is on that computer has to be what set her off.
And as soon as he sees the screen, he knows what is going on.
"Oh God," he mutters. He makes a break for the bathroom, to get Victoria out of the tub as quickly as he can.
WHISTLER, BRITISH
COLUMBIA
Lauren Brooks tips the water bottle to her lips, but not even the slightest trickle of water makes its way into her mouth. She stares at the empty bottle, as if expecting it to refill itself magically, and then caps it and drops it onto the passenger's side floor.
"I am not seeing a Honeycutt Boulevard anywhere," Jason Fisher says, straining to see through the February darkness.
"I'm not seeing anything resembling civilization," Lauren observes wryly. She takes the folded sheet of directions from his hand to reclaim her rightful position as navigator. "There's no way we were supposed to be on this road this long."
"Yeah, I don't remember making reservations for The Middle of Nowhere."
Jason continues driving -- to delay the inevitable conclusion, Lauren supposes, that they are lost. The car moves at little more than a creep now, as if ready for Honeycutt Boulevard to spring out of thin air and appear before them.
"Figures," Jason says. "We make it up here in the nick of time, I have a great audition ... of course finding the lodge has to be difficult. It's like the grand law of vacations. Something has to go wrong."
Lauren studies the directions in hopes of finding some previously unnoticed clue, but she has no such luck. "It's not a big deal. What's important is that we got up here and that your tryout went well. We're not in a huge hurry to get to the lodge now."
"I thought you said you had to pee."
"True. And, interestingly enough, I'm also thirsty. But those are pretty minor issues." She sets the directions down on the dashboard. "Why don't we turn around and retrace our steps? We have to bump into it eventually."
Though he seems very reluctant to do so, Jason finally concedes, "All right, let's do that."
He pulls to the side of the road and swings the car around. As soon as they are pointed back in the direction from which they came, though, there is a quick jumble of events that leaves Lauren very confused. They are, as best she can tell: a sudden, jerky feeling; a weird noise that most closely resembles a long, drawn-out belch; and a stillness that is immediately and thoroughly unsettling.
"What just happened?" she asks, but she can tell that Jason is trying to figure out the same thing.
"I don't know ..."
Lauren is very aware of the utter quiet that surrounds them. And, to her horror, she notices that all the lights in the car have gone off.
Jason shakes his head in disbelief. "You have got to be shitting me."
Suddenly, being a little lost is the least of their problems.
MOLLY FISHER'S
APARTMENT
Normally, the winter air would be biting away at her exposed face and hands, but Sarah hardly notices it now. She marches toward the apartment, every fiber of her being coiled tightly with intensity. When she reaches the door, she lifts a hand and, surprised to find it already balled into a fist, pounds.
It takes only a second before she hears footsteps and the clicking of the locks being undone from inside. And then, with no barriers to separate them, there stands Molly right in front of her.
"I really thought you had a little more class than this," Sarah spits.
Molly looks genuinely confused.
"You and Brent. Did you really think I wouldn't find out?"
Sarah watches her sister's mouth open and eyes widen. Some part of her mind hopes that what Molly is going through at this moment is at least something like what Sarah felt when opened that e-mail and saw those pictures.
"Sarah, I--we--"
The grasping attempt at justification is cut short by a sharp crack across Molly's face. Sarah's own hand is now quite aware of the sharply cold air.
Molly lifts a hand to her cheek. For a second, Sarah thinks that her sister is going to strike her back, but Molly lowers her hand.
"How did you find out?" Molly asks.
"That doesn't matter." On the drive over, she tried to figure out how Diane got ahold of those pictures, but she decided that she'd deal with Diane later. Right now, this is what's important. "The point is that I know, and I--God, Molly! I cannot believe that you would do this, after everything that's happened!"
"We didn't want you to find out like this, Sarah. We wanted to wait until the time was right. You've been so happy with Matt--"
"So you snuck around behind my back and made a complete idiot of me? Good work, Mol. Way to look out for your little sis."
"It's not like that," Molly says, her voice gaining strength. "This isn't some dirty little affair. Brent and I want to be together. We understand that there's a lot of water under the bridge, and we made the choice to keep it between the two of us until a more appropriate time."
Sarah resists the urge to slap her again. "That's where you're wrong," she says. "That is all this will ever be -- a dirty, sordid little affair."
WHISTLER, BRITISH
COLUMBIA
"It's times like this that I wish I was not a figure skater," Jason says as he pulls his head out from under the hood of the car.
Lauren folds her arms more tightly in front of her body. "Hey, hey, let's not project personal shortcomings onto others. I'm sure there are plenty of figure skaters who are perfectly competent mechanics."
Jason steps back from the car, unable to keep the grin off his face. "I don't see you under here."
"I don't even pretend to know what I'm doing."
"Yeah, well, I'm through pretending, too." He reaches into his pocket. "I guess it's time to call someone to get us out of here."
"Wow, and I don't even have to badger you to do it!" she teases.
"What can I say? I haven't been emasculated quite enough yet." He looks at the back of the owner's manual in his hand and punches a series of numbers into his cell phone. "At least I'll get my money's worth out of whatever this service is I paid for when I got this car."
"Always a bright side." Lauren shivers. It feels as though it's getting colder and colder by the minute.
"Shit," Jason mutters, looking as though he is about to hurl his phone to the ground.
"What?"
"I have no reception out here. At all."
Lauren pulls out her own phone, and sure enough, discovers the same thing.
"We are a pathetic, pathetic pair," he says, making another ill-fated attempt at a call. With a frustrated sigh, he shoves the phone back into the pocket of his jeans.
An indecisive, almost hopeless silence hovers over them. Lauren wonders if they could climb inside the car, pass out for a while, and wake up to find that this was just a bad dream and that everything is fixed.
"I guess we're walking," Jason says, sounding about as excited at the prospect as Lauren is.
"Walking where, exactly?"
"I dunno. Uh ..." He points to some spot off in the distance, marked by a smattering of indistinguishable white lights. "There."
She shoots him an incredulous look.
"Hey, we're out of options. You want a piggyback ride?"
"Nah, I think my feeble little legs can handle it."
They spend a few minutes taking the few essentials they need out of the car, primarily more comfortable shoes for Lauren and gloves and hats for both of them, and then locking their belongings up safely.
"I cannot believe we're doing this," Lauren says as they begin to walk. They step carefully through the leaves, patches of grass, and dirt that line the side of the road.
"Sorry my car's such a piece of crap." Jason stuffs his gloved hands into his pockets and casts his eyes downward.
"It's not your fault. Besides, it'll toughen us up--"
The rest of her sentence transforms into a wild scream. Jason looks up just in time to see her falling away and out of sight.
MOLLY FISHER'S
APARTMENT
"I don't know what else to say to you," Molly says. There is a pleading quality to her voice that Sarah finds strangely satisfying. "I'm sorry this had to happen. I'm sorry you had to find out this way."
Sarah shakes her head. "You're not sorry, not really. The only thing you're sorry about is that you're gonna come out of this looking like the selfish bitch you really are."
Molly's jaw tightens. "Why did you even come here? To taunt me?"
"To let you know that I know," Sarah says. "To make you look me in the face and admit that you've been having some secret affair with Brent all along."
"Sarah, please! It is so much more complicated than that!"
"Shut up, Molly! Just shut up." Sarah turns to walk away, but before she even takes a step, flips back around. "You know what? This is the final straw. No more playing nice, no more of the crap. You and Brent can do whatever the hell you want. But as far as you and I are concerned--I am through being any sort of sister to you."
She hopes her words have the desired impact, but she is not going to wait around for more of Molly's justifications. This time, she really does march off, back to her car.
She climbs inside the car and turns on the engine immediately. A glance back toward the apartment shows that Molly is still standing in the doorway, obviously undecided about what to do next.
Suddenly Molly darts out of the doorway and toward the parking lot.
I'm not listening to any more of her crap, Sarah thinks as she pulls quickly out of the parking spot.
She hits the gas and heads for the exit. In her rearview mirror, she sees Molly freeze on the sidewalk, defeated.
Sarah whips her eyes back to the road just in time to see the car coming through the parking lot entrance and straight at her. She tries to adjust the wheel, but it is too late. A broken symphony of crashing and crunching fills her senses.
In that instant, she closes her eyes. When she opens them, she is amazed--almost alarmed, strangely--to find that everything still feels the same. As far as she can tell, nothing hurts.
She opens her door and hops out just as Molly rushes up beside the wreck.
"Oh my God," Molly says, her voice coming in ragged breaths.
It takes Sarah another moment to realize what's so terrifying. But as soon as she forces herself to look at the other vehicle, every last bit of relief goes flying out of her body, replaced by complete and utter panic.
It's Matt's truck.
END OF EPISODE #315
Has
Sarah just made things even worse for herself?
Is there any chance that the Fisher sisters can ever get along?
What happened to Lauren? Can Jason help her?
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