All Her Little Secrets

Ellice answers the phone, and it is Michael’s wife Anna. She tells Ellice that she needs to speak with her urgently.

Ellice arrives at Michael’s house on her lunch break. Anna tells Ellice that someone broke into their house during Michael’s funeral. Although the perpetrator did not steal anything, Anna thinks that the person was looking for the key to Michael’s safe deposit box. The manila folder Anna found in the safe deposit box holds a resignation letter from Michael and an email thread between Michael and a lawyer named Geoffrey Gallagher. Michael wrote a phone number in the margins of the email thread. Michael asked Gallagher for legal advice on the Libertad deal. Gallagher is a lawyer who specializes in giving legal advice to executives who get into criminal trouble.

Ellice tells Anna that she needs to talk to the police, but Anna refuses because the police think she is involved with his murder. Anna tells Ellice that she will tell the police about her affair with Michael if she does not investigate Michael’s death at work.

When Ellice returns to her office, Detective Bradford enters. Detective Bradford tells Ellice that they obtained security footage from the lobby, and she shows Ellice a couple of photos of a man wearing a baseball cap. Bradford says that the man entered the lobby the day before Michael was killed, and he used Ellice’s missing ID badge to gain access. Ellice says she does not know the man, even though it is Sam in the pictures.

Ellice looks for Sam at a store that she knows he frequents. As she leaves the store, she runs into Sam’s friend, Juice. Ellice asks Juice about Sam’s new job, but he does not know anything about it. Ellice gets Juice’s number in case she has to call him about Sam, then heads to Sam’s house.

Ellice knocks on Sam’s door, but he does not answer. She starts to worry, so she climbs in through the bathroom window. On the kitchen table, she sees her missing ID badge and a burner phone. She opens the phone and sees a text with pictures of a man she does not recognize. She recognizes the phone number as the same number that Michael wrote down in the margins of Gallagher’s email chain. She calls the number and a phone rings behind her. As she turns around, someone hits her from behind. Before Ellice can get up, the intruder runs out, taking the phone and her ID badge with them.

Rather than return to Chillicothe for the holidays, Vera suggests that Ellice go to Vera’s cousin’s house in North Carolina, and that she and Sam will meet her there. The winter of her senior year, Ellice rushes to the house, eager to see Sam and Vera. Vera tells Ellice that Sam stole a car in Augusta and that he is in a juvenile detention center. Ellice cries because she knows that Sam’s predicament is her fault because she was not there to help him.

Ellice returns to her office and Googles Geoffrey Gallagher, realizing that it is the same man that she saw on Sam’s burner phone. Ellice calls Gallagher’s law firm. A lawyer named Chris Knight tells her that he does not know when Gallagher will be back in the office, but that he can send her all Gallagher’s files on Houghton Transportation.

Ellice goes to Hardy’s office, and he tells her that Detective Bradford said that Jonathan will not return her calls. Hardy tells Ellice that he does not trust Jonathan.

When Ellice returns to her office, Chris Knight calls. He tells her that they have no record of doing business with anyone at Houghton. Ellice asks for Gallagher’s phone number so she can talk to him personally, but Knight tells her that his family has reported him missing.

Rudy comes to see Ellice’s new office and tells her that he just got out of an Operations meeting where the shipping items for a certain week looked suspicious. Rudy leaves as Hardy enters the office, and Hardy shows Ellice a document of bank accounts. He tells her that Jonathan and Max are involved in some suspicious business with Libertad Excursiones. Hardy says that he suspects that they were laundering money for Libertad.

Ellice asks Nate about the Libertad deal over lunch because she has concerns on the ethics of the deal. Before she can go further, Willow sits down at the table and makes small talk. Since they do not have privacy, Nate leaves for a meeting, and Willow and Ellice are left alone. Ellice asks Willow why she follows Nate around so much, and Willow tells Ellice that Nate has early-onset Alzheimer’s. She says that that Jonathan appointed her to help Nate with his memory as much as she could, while Jonathan and Max run everything else. The board of directors does not know about Nate’s health, and they plan to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Ellice meets Rudy in the park. She informs Rudy about everything that she found on Libertad and Michael’s resignation before his murder. She tells Rudy that Jonathan and Max are acting as CEO with Nate as their puppet. Rudy says that she must take this information to the police. Ellice’s phone rings, and she sees that Sam is calling her.

Sam tells her that Jonathan Everett hired him to do surveillance work. Ellice tells Sam that they have his face on security footage entering the lobby the day before Michael was killed. Sam tells her that he was meeting Jonathan, who gave him the ID badge, and that he hired Sam to trail Gallagher. Ellice tells him that Gallagher is missing and encourages Sam to come with her to the police station to clear things up. However, Sam reminds her that he is on probation and cannot involve himself in a murder investigation. Ellice thinks that Jonathan is trying to frame Sam for Michael and Gallagher’s murder, but Sam does not believe her.

When Ellice gets in her car, she notices an envelope on the dashboard. The envelope has the words “some secrets are worth keeping” typed on the front (207). The envelope holds a copy of a 1979 newspaper article with the headline “Local Investigators Search for Missing Sheriff’s Deputy” (207).

Ellice hates living in Willie Jay’s house. At night, Willie Jay comes into the children’s room and gets Ellice out of bed. When Willie Jay wakes Ellice up, he takes her to the shed in the backyard and rapes her. Ellice disassociates as soon as she enters the shed.

Frightened by the envelope, Ellice drives to Sam’s house. Ellice believes that Jonathan put it in her car and that he knows about what happened in Chillicothe. Ellice tries to get Sam to agree to go to the police, but he tells her that he is sick of arguing and he just wants to spend time with her. Sam thinks that he will take Vera back to Chillicothe and live with her in her old house. He knows that Vera does not like the nursing home, and he wants her to be comfortable and happy before she dies. Ellice decides that she wants to go home and tells Sam she understands that he does not want to go to the police, but that for his own safety, he should stay away from Jonathan. Ellice hugs and tells him that she loves him.