Opening
A missing revolver resurfaces as the story’s fulcrum, yoking a fresh death to an old double murder. While one sister confronts betrayal encoded in emails and call logs, another unearths secrets she buried with her childhood. Flashbacks trace how the sisters learn to endure, sharpening every choice they make now.
What Happens
Chapter 36: JJ Now
Juliette "JJ" Palmer meets Daphne Palmer at a secluded cottage, registering how steady and self-possessed her sister has become. Inside the sparse, sterile space, Daphne admits she was the woman with the dog shadowing the Palmer house and has quietly watched both sisters since their return. She then drops the bomb: she hid the murder weapon—a revolver with a white grip—under the carriage house floorboards fourteen years ago. When she went to recover it that morning after seeing Emma Palmer on the grounds, the toolbox sat open. The gun is gone.
JJ confirms the gun originally belonged to her ex, Logan Ellis. The sisters soften toward each other, apologizing for old wounds and recognizing the cost of their upbringing. Daphne opens up about Irene Palmer: their mother insisted Daphne’s asthma was “in her head” and would deliberately trigger panic to prove it, deepening the family’s Family Trauma and Dysfunction.
Pressed about the past, JJ can only dredge up jagged fragments: yellow wallpaper, the weight of the white-gripped gun in her palm, and a “red hand.” When Daphne asks what really happened with Nathan Gates the night he died, JJ hedges—she says she stopped by to talk to Emma, found only Nathan, shared wine, and left around 8:30. As JJ refuses to elaborate, Daphne ends with a chilling hook: the gun isn’t the only thing she left in the carriage house.
Chapter 37: Emma Now
Emma, stung after her lawyer dismisses her theories, remembers the call Nathan made right after he found the flash drive. With Gabriel Mahoney beside her, she checks their phone account. The long call went to a number she recognizes: Addison, Nathan’s mistress. Hope cracks. After Gabriel leaves, she combs through Nathan’s phone and email records and sees the full betrayal—his affair didn’t end; it began a week after her car accident, while he played the devoted caretaker.
An unread email from Addison lands the hardest blow: instructions on how to commingle proceeds from the Palmer house sale so Nathan could secure a slice in a divorce. Emma realizes his “reconciliation” was a ploy, a textbook case of Secrets and Lies.
Then a detail in the call log snags her attention. Just before the long call to Addison, there’s a two-minute call to a local number she doesn’t recognize. She dials. A gruff, familiar voice answers: “Hadley speaking.”
Chapter 38: Daphne Then
Two months before the murders, the sisters gather in their treehouse on a warm May night. Emma’s knuckles are bruised from a clash with their mother; JJ urges caution; Emma bristles. They trade survival strategies and promises of new lives, while Daphne swallows a private dread of being left behind, tracing the fractures and protections of their Sisterhood and Shifting Loyalties.
Later, Daphne slips into the house to use the bathroom and freezes. A blue-eyed stranger—likely Kenneth Mahoney—stands in the great room. Their father, Randolph Palmer, emerges from the bathroom, rubbing his chapped, reddened hands with obsessive fury. Both men wear gray dust. The strained silence feels like a sealed vault she’s stumbled into. Daphne retreats to the treehouse with her fear, carrying a premonition that something covert and dangerous is already in motion.
Chapter 39: Emma Now
Emma takes the mysterious number to its source and confronts Rick Hadley at his house. He explains that the number belongs to the police chief’s main line (Craig Ellis); as Ellis was out, any officer, including Hadley, could have picked up. Detective Mehta knows about the call.
Then he pivots. Addison has been receiving anonymous threats to stay away from Nathan. He resurrects JJ’s old assault arrest, nudging Emma toward a conclusion: one sister could be the culprit. He also confirms Nathan called because he found something explosive on the flash drive tied to the Palmer murders and planned to bring it in the next morning. Hadley’s pitch is clear—share what she knows, and he’ll “help.”
Emma pushes back, insisting JJ wouldn’t send threats over an affair. Hadley presses: JJ is the only other sister in town, right? Emma hesitates. He goes for the jugular: “Is Daphne in Arden Hills?” Emma’s denial rings hollow. Realizing she has given away more than she meant to, she flees, doubt seeding suspicion where trust used to be.
Chapter 40: Emma Then
After running from home, Emma lands at Gabriel’s. He gently tells her she can’t stay—her parents would unleash havoc—and urges her to gut out one last year of high school. The conversation exposes a hard truth: her escape fantasy isn’t about starting anew; it’s about vanishing, proof of The Past's Influence on the Present.
Before he drives her back, Emma slips the cash she stole from her parents’ safe into Gabriel’s grandmother Lorelei’s “emergency fund” tin. Restitution made, she lets herself sleep, deep and dreamless, on Gabriel’s bed—the last quiet breath before returning to the storm.
Character Development
The sisters recalibrate around a missing weapon and a reopened past. Confessions, betrayals, and strategic silence reshape who leads, who protects, and who doubts.
- Daphne: Shifts from remembered fragility to a vigilant, pragmatic operator who has tracked her sisters and safeguarded evidence. Her account of induced panic attacks reframes her as both survivor and secret-keeper.
- Emma: Processes Nathan’s duplicity without collapsing, converting hurt into action. Her confrontation with Hadley shows new resolve—and how easily grief can be exploited.
- JJ: Yearns for amends and connection yet remains haunted by sensory shards of the murder night. Her evasions suggest both self-protection and knowledge too painful to touch.
- Hadley: Emerges as a tactician who prefers leverage to force, reframing himself as a cop pursuing the truth while isolating his target from her allies.
Themes & Symbols
Secrets propel every plot turn. The missing revolver, the flash drive, the affair, the threats to Addison, and Daphne’s long-held stash beneath the floorboards all braid into one rope of deception. Each revelation forces a choice: protect a sister, a memory, or oneself. Misdirection becomes a weapon—most effectively in Hadley’s hands—as information shifts from lifeline to trap.
Family harm defines the battlefield. Daphne’s account of engineered panic attacks exposes the mechanics of control inside the Palmer home, while the treehouse flashes show how the sisters’ loyalty forms under siege. As Emma’s evidence corrects her assumptions about Nathan, the story leans into Truth vs. Perception: what looks like a domestic implosion snaps back to the cold geometry of an unsolved double murder. The past doesn’t recede; it edits the present in real time.
Key Quotes
“Hadley speaking.”
- This simple ID flips Emma’s theory. The “mystery call” isn’t to a lover—it’s to law enforcement—reorienting Nathan’s final hours toward the Palmer case and introducing Hadley as a manipulator of narrative, not just facts.
“Is Daphne in Arden Hills?”
- A question as trap. Hadley reads Emma’s pause, extracts the truth, and weaponizes it. The line marks the moment Emma’s private circle stops being airtight.
“a ‘red hand’”
- JJ’s fractured image distills violence, guilt, and unreliable memory into one symbol. It hints she touched—or was near—the act that stained everything.
“a revolver with a white grip”
- The weapon’s stark detail turns it into an emblem of purity stained by use. Its disappearance links past murders to the current case, making absence itself the loudest clue.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters redirect the investigation from marital melodrama to a dangerous continuity with the original Palmer murders. The missing gun becomes the physical bridge between timelines; the flash drive becomes the intellectual one. As Hadley pries at fault lines, suspicion migrates from outside threats to the sisters themselves, recasting the mystery as a test of loyalty. The “Then” chapters deepen the stakes, showing how each sister learned to endure control and scarcity—skills that now determine who tells the story, who withholds it, and who pays when the truth finally surfaces.