Listen for the Lie

As a Bonus Episode, Ben teases that he’ll be doing interviews with Lucy and Matt, and he interviews Nina again. He asks her if he heard the rumors that Kathleen (Lucy’s mom) and Colin were having an affair, even though he’s 32 years younger than him.

Lucy expects her mom to freak out, but she doesn’t. Instead, the party for Beverly continues as planned. Their extended family arrives, and so does Ben. Kathleen is not pleased to see him there. Everyone else is shocked while Lucy jokes around with Ben. Eventually, the topic of the podcast comes up, and Lucy tells them she’s doing an interview for it.

Her uncle Keith starts getting riled up about the recent episode until Kathleen finally admits that it’s true. She slept with Colin that day. She says that she’s his alibi. Don sighs and Kathleen makes it clear he doesn’t have any room to be upset about anything.

All through the party, the murderous voice in Lucy’s head grows louder. As the party winds down, Lucy thinks about how the voice in her head is Savannah’s voice, and she thinks about that night.

In a flashback to five years ago, Lucy and Savannah had discuss a recent fight with Matt that escalated into violence. Lucy has a bruise, and Matt has some scratches on him. Lucy wants to go stay with her parents, but Matt is threatening to say that she pushed him down the stairs once. In reality, she’d been angry with him when he was drunk again and he’d tripped. But it’s a lie he likes to repeat like it’s the truth.

Savannah then tells her “the truth doesn’t matter. I have an idea. Let’s kill your husband.” (These are the “murderous voices” that’ve been on repeat throughout the book.)

After the birthday party, Lucy gets together with Nina and Emmett. Nina introduces her kids, John and Chris. Nina’s mom also comes over to watch the kids while they talk.

Nina says that people in town are realizing they were too quick to judge when it came to what happened with Savvy. She says that the fact that the police chose not to charge her probably should’ve held more weight.

As they talk, Lucy imagines Savvy there with them — but the real one. The version people talk about now is some “angelic blond angel” with “a halo shimmering around her head.” The real version was someone messy, with grown out highlights, imperfect makeup and a “frayed red bra strap sticking out from her tank top.”

Flashing back again to five years ago, Lucy tells Savannah she could never do that. Savannah says he deserves it and that she’s sick of seeing her with bruises. Savannah also says she’d never let her do it alone — she’d help her.

On Episode 5, Ben interviews Matt. Matt says they had a passionate relationship, but they were poor communicators who should’ve gone to therapy. He admits that he asked her to leave the house after Savvy’s body was found. He says that it was a lot to handle, and the police were asking questions that made him uncomfortable. Matt says he feels bad for sending her away.

Ben then brings up that Matt was seen at woman’s house a number of times while Lucy was away, and Ben also says that sources have said Matt was sleeping with this person even prior to Savannah’s death. Matt denies it.

Ben then turns to the wedding. Matt admits he was drunk, but drove home. Ben starts asking if he stayed home, and then Matt interjects, saying he’s going to leave. Ben starts saying that a neighbor confirmed he was home all night, but admitted later to lying. Instead, they saw a car drive up and a woman came to see him, but they got into an argument in the driveway. She left, and the he drove away. Ben then notes that Matt walked away and hasn’t responded since then.

Lucy and Ben go to the woods where Savvy was found at Ben’s request. Paige joins them too. Then they get in the car and start driving down the small road, the one where Savvy’s car was abandoned, toward the Byrd estate. Then they get out and walk on foot. Lucy admits that being out here is upsetting for her. In her mind, there’s a swarm of memories of Savannah and she thinks about their plan to kill Matt. Lucy starts to feel unwell and collapses, but Ben slows her fall.

Ben takes her to her grandmother’s house to recuperate. They talk about Lucy’s books and her grandma tells her how unhappy she was with her grandfather.

In the second half of Episode 5, Ben interviews Beverly. Beverly says she was always suspicious of Matt. She felt like he was just putting on a show. Once she heard him say about Savvy to Don, “That little slut hates me.

Kathleen gets mad at her mom for going on Ben’s podcast and trashing Matt. Lucy thinks about how her mom has a tendency to protect the men in her life.

Meanwhile, Lucy still hasn’t decided what she plans to divulge about Matt when Ben interviews her. She meets with Ben to grab a drink. At the bar, Nina is there too with some friends. She says hi, but seems disapproving of Ben and walks away. Ben says he like Nina and Emmett because they’re on Lucy’s side.

Later, they’re leaving the bar when Matt angrily confronts Ben. Lucy notices Ben start recording as Matt approaches. Matt slams him against the car and leaves.

Lucy and Ben go back to his hotel for a drink. Ben asks Lucy if she’s ever considered that Matt could’ve done it. In her head, Lucy thinks of how it’s possible they went after Matt that night and he killed Savvy in self-defense. However, Lucy is skeptical because she thinks Matt would have gone to the police if that happened. Lucy tells ben that he has no motive and Savvy was definitely not sleeping with him.

Lucy and Ben drunkenly have sex.

The next morning Lucy sneaks out, but Ben calls her in the morning. He says that he’s cutting together an episode and there’s part of an interview that makes him uncomfortable so she can veto it if she wants. Lucy points out that his podcasting ethics have gone out the window. Then, he says that the interview is with Savvy’s younger sister, Maya Harper. Lucy asks to see it.

The clip includes the recording of what happened with Matt the night before. Then, in the unedited segment of the Maya Harper interview, Maya talks about Savvy hated Matt and loved Lucy. Maya says she thinks that Savvy thought Matt was abusive.

After listening to the clip, Lucy asks him not to include the part about Matt being abusive. She then heads to go see Maya. As she does she thinks about Savvy’s deepest darkest secret — that she killed a man once and didn’t regret it because he deserved it.

In a flashback from five years ago, Lucy recalls how after Savvy suggested killing Matt, she admitted to having killed a man before. His name was Troy Henderson, they met at a bar, and he “put his hands on” her. Savvy says that she stabbed him to death, put his body in her car and then dumped him in a swamp. She never heard anything about it. Lucy asks if that’s why she left college, and Savvy tries to be dismissive about it.

Lucy finds Maya as she leaves work, and she asks to talk. At first Maya doesn’t want to talk, but Lucy mentions Troy. Maya wonders if it was someone who knew Troy that killed Savvy, but Lucy says she hired a PI a while back and it seems like no one was really looking for Troy. Maya then thinks out loud that Lucy must actually not remember that night since otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense to hire someone to follow a lead if she’s the killer.

Lucy promises not to tell Ben about it, but she says she wanted to talk to her so they could get on the same page about never telling anyone about that, since as far as Lucy knows Maya is the only other person that Savvy told.

The next morning, Lucy goes to talk to Matt, but instead she runs into Julia, his second wife, who is dragging some luggage out of the house and has bloodshot eyes. Julia says not to go in because Matt is in a bad mood. She also says she wants to talk to the podcaster. Soon, Lucy, Julia, Paige and Ben all meet up in a hotel room. Lucy leaves before they start the interview.

In the Lucy interview, Lucy talks about how she’s been separated from Matt for a few months and finally moved out today. They were married for three years. She says that Matt is good at making people feel comfortable. They met in Houston at a conference and were long distance at first. He pushed for her to Plimpton, but once they moved in together, he was moodier. She describes his drinking and the violence that accompanied his drinking. Then he’d turn it around and say that she was the one hitting him.

She was always curious about Lucy, not just because she was a murder suspect but because she wondered if she went through the same thing. Matt always had kind things to say about her and seemed sad that things ended between them.

She says that one night Matt drunkenly commented that he should have done a better job of protecting her “that night”, and when she tried to clarify what he meant he seemed to realize he’d slipped up. Julia thinks Matt may have been there when Savvy died.

There’s a throng of people reaching out to Lucy after Julia’s episode is posted. Lucy still doesn’t know the best way to handle this and worries about what others might say in response. She hints to her parents that he hit her too, but says she doesn’t intend to make any tearful podcast confessions.

Matt comes to talk to her to make sure she doesn’t plan on saying anything. She recalls how after Savvy’s death he seemed to know he could make her seem violent to make things worse for her.

Matt then tells her Julia is wrong and that he wasn’t there that night. He says that she should stop helping this guy, and that she should trust that he’s protecting her by telling her this. Lucy keeps demanding to know who he argued with that night, and finally he admits that it was Nina Garcia. When Lucy talks to Ben, and she tells him that it was Nina and she thinks they were sleeping together.

The next day, Lucy and Ben are in bed together when Paige drops by and realizes they’re sleeping together. Paige yells at Ben.

Lucy and Emmett meet up later. He says that Nina is upset about the podcast, and he tells her that Nina is still sleeping with Matt. She’s been cheating on him. Nina’s an alcoholic, as is Matt, so they like to drink together. As they chat, Lucy recalls a night where she and Emmett kissed. Lucy wonders how different things would’ve been if she’d have left Matt for Emmett then.

Keaton Harper approaches Lucy. He says he just wants to talk. He says that he knows Matt and Nina well and it doesn’t sit right with him that they both been lying about being out that night.

In Episode 6, Ben includes some clips of people talking about Nina. There were rumors she and Colin slept together.

Then, he plays a clip of Nina saying that she didn’t really know Savvy. But Stephanie (someone from school) says that Nina and Savvy definitely knew each other and disliked each other. Apparently there was some drama between them about some guy.

Ben and Lucy meet at her grandmother’s place, wanting to talk about Nina. Lucy then checks on her phone and finds out that the internet has figured out that she’s Evan Knightley. Soon, her book reviews are inundated with people calling her a murderer.

Lucy goes to see Nina and demands to know why she went to see Matt that night. Nina says that she wanted to create a scene because she wanted Lucy to find out that she and Matt were sleeping together to force the issue.

The next time Lucy goes to see Ben, she sees some papers describing how he thinks she had a mental breakdown and killed Savvy. Lucy is upset, but Ben says it’s just notes from before he actually came down to Plimpton. As they talk, Lucy’s mind wanders for a moment, and Ben asks what she’s thinking about when that happens. Lucy admits that she imagines herself killing people.

When she describes this to him, Ben seems to get turned on and they have sex.

Later, Lucy sees her mom, who is concerned about Nina. In their conversation, Lucy feels like her mom is so sure that she (Lucy) is the one who did it, so her mom thinks it’s unfair to Nina that she’s getting all this negative attention. Lucy wonders why her mom doesn’t feel the same way about her own daughter. She wants to ask her mom why she’s so sure she did it, but she doesn’t, since she’s afraid to hear the answer.

In Episode 7, Ben has his interview with Lucy. She says she remembers very little about that day. Instead, she remembers the next morning, being disoriented. In her mind, she’d just left the house with Matt to go to the wedding, and then she was confused why she was suddenly dirty and walking around.

Lucy mentions how no one seemed to believe her. Her dad kept saying that if she remembered anything, she should come to him first. Ben wonders if the trauma of being disbelieved by her mom, dad and husband caused her to forget as well.

Lucy says she tried really hard to remember what happened initially, but then she stopped, hoping it would just come to her if she stopped forcing it. Ben asks if she has revisited these places to try to remember things, and she says she hasn’t for the most part. Lucy also talks about how she’s also stopped trying to remember since she doesn’t know if she’s just creating memories out of things that people have told her.

Lucy decides she wants to revisit the wedding venue to see if it’ll jog her memory. Lucy also invites Matt. As they walk around, Matt narrates what he remembers. Lucy has an image in her head of Savannah lying dead on the ground, but then she’s confused since in her memory there’s daylight and this is something that happened at night. Lucy also has a memory of kissing someone who isn’t Matt.

Later, Matt’s drops by and she goes to his place against her better judgment. They talk, and Lucy admits that she was kissing someone at the wedding. When Matt looks upset, she points out he was also cheating on her. Lucy says that she thinks Savvy saw her and tried to stop it.

Lucy and Matt start kissing, but then a memory resurfaces. Lucy remembers how Matt found her right afterwards when she was covered in blood. She recalls saying something about what Savvy tried to do. She recalls holding a tree branch.

Matt tells her that he took the tree branch from her and drove it to throw it out in a dumpster behind the bar so there’s be no murder weapon. When he returned the small road was flooded, so he headed home and assumed she’d be there but she wasn’t. In retrospect he thinks he should’ve done a better job of protecting her.

But then, he talks about their violence and going at each other, Lucy gets confused knowing she wad the one who always ended up injured. She thinks she’d never hurt Savvy and Matt was the abusive one. She stops him and says he’s lying and leaves.

At home, Lucy’s mind is spinning. She can’t remember what’s real or not anymore. She tells Ben she’s going back to Los Angeles. He asks her what’s wrong and if she remembered anything, but Lucy just says he can say whatever he wants about her.

In a flashback from five years ago, Lucy recalls kissing Matt at the wedding and him apologizing for something, promising to do better. She remembers wanting to have sex with him, but also knowing she’s getting drawn back into the something messed up.

Savvy sees them and disapproves. She yanks her away and reminds her of what Matt actually deserves. Lucy doesn’t want to do though, but she also doesn’t want to go off and have sex with Matt in the bathroom, considering how he was holding her underwater in the bathtub yesterday. Instead, she hears a familiar voice.

Back at home, Lucy talks to her dad. She asks him if Matt told him that she killed Savvy, and her dad says that he told him that night. Her dad then told her mom a few days later. They wanted to just come clean but they thought they’d wait until Lucy regained her memory.

Lucy asks why he believed she was capable of that and why he believes Matt. Her dad said it seemed like he wanted to protect her.

Her publisher texts her to say that the book is selling really well. Later, Lucy goes to have dinner with her grandma. Lucy talks about how everyone thinks she did it, but her grandmother reminders her that she doesn’t think that so it’s not true. Lucy starts to say that maybe she thinks she did it, and grandmother stops her and tells her that she knows she didn’t do it.

She stops to see Emmett after dinner, who is painting a mural. She tells him about being upset over everything and he kisses her. Suddenly, she remembers that he’s the person she was kissing at that wedding. She remembers that Savvy had seen them and been disapproving. Lucy had left and run after Savvy.

In present day, she’s still kissing Emmett when Nina interrupts. Then she remembers something.

In a flashback to the wedding, Savvy had told her to get in the car, disappointed with her for kissing Emmett and Matt. She especially gets angry about Matt, saying that they should be planning his demise. Savvy also tells her that Emmett isn’t the guy she thinks he is — he just has her on a pedestal.

Savvy says that she slept with Emmett a few months ago. She said the sex was rough in an uncaring way and he was rude afterwards. He also asked her not to tell Lucy. After that he got mean, saying he thought she was down all the time. As they talk in the car, they see Emmett’s headlights flashing behind them.

Lucy then says that she doesn’t think they should kill Matt, but she knows she should leave him and leave Plimpton. They talk about leaving town together and going to Los Angeles. They giggle about it, but then Savvy notices something.

In present day, Nina and Emmett are arguing. Lucy calls Ben and asks him when Emmett left the wedding. Ben says that Emmett claims he stayed the whole time, until 3AM and some people remember seeing him there helping to arrange rides home. Lucy asks if he could’ve left and come back, but Lucy says she remembers him leaving. She says he was driving down the small road and she remembers their eyes meeting.

She says she remembers bits and pieces, and Ben encourages her to go with him back to that road tonight to see if she can remember anything else. Before Lucy leaves, she sees Emmett grab Nina and hurt her, though she yanks free.

In a flashback, Lucy remembers how Emmett showed up on that road, wanting to talk to her. He tells her he’s crazy about her, he says he loves her and wants her to leave him. He starts kissing her, but she tells him it’s not going to happen. When he starts to argue with her, Savvy tells Lucy it’s time to go and starts to pull her away, but Emmett grabs Lucy as well.

When Emmett refuses to let go, Lucy punches him. Then, he lunges at her.

In present day, Emmett tells Lucy not to leave that he wants to talk to her. He then hangs up her call with Ben and takes her phone. He also grabs her keys and starts easing her out of the car gently.

In the flashback, Emmett is furious, calling her a bitch. Lucy grabs for Savvy as she falls down, scratching her arm. Savvy tries to grab Emmett head so Lucy can get free and finally the two women start to run into the trees. When they think they’re safe, they start to walk back to the venue, but Emmett comes after them with some type of construction hammer. He catches up to them and swings at them.

Savvy is on the ground bleeding when Emmett is about to take another swing at her. Lucy wraps herself around her and begs him to stop. Then, Matt shows up looking for them. Before Lucy can yell out for him, Emmett swings at her with the hammer. Savvy manages to yell for Matt, but them Emmett takes another swing. Savvy tries to shove Lucy out of the way and gets the full force of it instead. Lucy remembers one more swing before everything goes black.

In present day, Emmett reminds her she’s trying to hard to remember things and it’s causing her to make things up in her head. Emmett demands to know whether Matt told her that Emmett was there that night, despite promising not to say anything. Lucy thinks about how Matt didn’t say anything.

Emmett starts to tell her that Savvy was mad about seeing them kiss at the wedding because he and Savvy had hooked up. He says he left the wedding briefly to go let his dog out and came upon Lucy after he’d attached Savvy. Lucy points out that his story doesn’t account for her head injury or why he left Savannah out there to die. He says he doesn’t know how she got her head injury and that Savannah was already gone.

Lucy then says that she should’ve punched him harder, but now she’s had practice. And she punches him in the face. Emmett is confused at first, but that quickly turns to anger. He grabs at her, but she punches him in the stomach. He punches her back, but she breaks free. They continue to wrestle and crash into the store. He run in and grabs a hammer.

He swings and hits her in the chin, but she lunges at him, grabs the hammer and hits him with it. She continues to do so until Ben shows up. Emmett tries to say she’s crazy, but Lucy tells Ben that it was Emmett and that Matt saw him there.