You Are Not Alone

Shay feels powerfully drawn to Cassandra and Jane. She begins to take yoga classes at the studio they attend and thinks about them constantly. Sean wants Jody to move in and tells Shay that she will have to find a new apartment. She feels hopelessly sad, but a text interrupts her melancholy: Cassandra and Jane would like to have a drink with her. Shay is elated and gratefully accepts their invitation.

Shay buys a new outfit and heads out to meet Cassandra and Jane. In their presence, she feels happier and less lonely. They share that they had difficult childhoods and so did Amanda: Amanda’s mother had an alcohol dependency and Amanda had been left to fend for herself.

Shay shares that she too had a difficult childhood. She tears up again. She notices that Cassandra is wearing a gold, sun-shaped necklace just like Amanda’s. She comments on it, and Jane tells her that she had a matching one that she’d loaned Amanda. Shay tells them that she found the necklace and gave it to the police. She adds that she will try to get it back, and Jane seems ecstatic.

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years prior, Cassandra and Jane’s new stepfather shows them to their new bedrooms. They are beautiful, as is the rest of the house. Their mother is happier and better-dressed, and it seems as though their lives are going to improve considerably.

Their stepfather has a son, Trey, and at first they adore him. He seems like so much fun, and they enjoy his company. Then one day they save an injured bird, but Trey brutally kills it. After that, they try to avoid him. He always seems to barge into the bathroom when they are showering and snaps their training bras. They don’t have to deal with him for long though, because his father and their mother soon divorce. Cassandra and Jane are happier living with just their mother.

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years prior, it is Shay’s birthday. Her mother buys her a new dress and makes her spaghetti and meatballs, her favorite dinner. Shay routinely keeps track of her stepfather’s alcohol consumption: too much and he becomes mean. Tonight he’s only had two drinks, which is a good sign. Her father has sent her a red bicycle, and she is excited to ride it. Shay’s mother tells her that she can ride the bike after dessert, but her stepfather ruins dessert by criticizing Shay’s weight. She begins to cry.

Shay recalls this memory on the way to the police station: She hopes to retrieve the necklace and give it back to Jane.

A detective contacts Kit, the woman who set Daphne up with James. He asks questions about James, and Kit reveals that Daphne hadn’t really clicked with James and the two hadn’t spoken again. Cassandra and Jane know that this is a problem: Daphne told the police that she and James had an “intimate” night, but James hadn’t contacted her again. She had to make up something: The police saw the angry text message she sent James after he raped her. She told the detective that she sent the message because he ghosted her. Cassandra and Jane try not to panic. They know they must keep Daphne calm, calmer than Amanda had been.

Jody begins moving her things in, and Shay looks for an apartment. She contacts the detective, asking for the necklace back, explaining that she found out it belonged to one of Amanda’s friends. The detective is irritated that Shay has been talking to Amanda’s friends, and tells her that she mailed the necklace to Amanda’s mother.

Shay then visits the hospital where Amanda worked, claiming to be a former patient. She pretends to be stunned by the news of Amanda’s death and asks if she can send a card to Amanda’s mother. The nurse gives her Amanda’s mother’s first name, Eleanor, and tells her to drop the card off at the front desk. Shay is sure she can find Amanda’s mother on her own with that information.

Valerie makes an appointment with Jody, who is a professional organizer. Before Jody’s arrival, she creates chaos in her tidy apartment. She disguises her appearance somewhat by putting her hair up and donning fake glasses. She plans to pay in cash.

She and Jody hit it off, and Valerie suggests they have a glass of wine. She’s concocted a story about a recent divorce and explains that her husband cheated with a woman he claimed was just a friend. Jody appears uneasy and admits that her boyfriend Sean has been living with a female friend, and that she is sure this woman is secretly in love with him. She also shares that Shay, her boyfriend’s roommate, keeps a creepy book full of statistics about death.

Valerie’s wonders why Shay is so fixated on Amanda and what they don’t yet know about their relationship. She decides to stay in contact with Jody: She might be an important source of information.

Shay does some online sleuthing and finds a woman named Eleanor Evinger who is the right age to be Amanda’s mother. She lives in Delaware, and Shay rents a car to go see her.

When she arrives, Eleanor is passed out on the sofa with an empty bottle of Chardonnay on the coffee table. Shay quietly sorts through the pile of mail on the table, finds the envelope from Detective Williams, and slips out of the house with it.

Ten Months Ago

Ten months prior, Cassandra and Jane ask Amanda to steal a bottle of morphine from the ER where she works. Amanda is nervous and doesn’t want to endanger her job or break the law, but she agrees. She cannot say no to Cassandra: Cassandra has a magnetism that Amanda cannot resist. She steals the painkiller from the supply room and secretly brings it home.

Jane seeks out Gina, Amanda’s supervisor. The two chat about Amanda, and Gina shares that she thought Amanda was acting strangely in the weeks leading up to her death. She also mentions the woman who visited the hospital claiming to be one of Amanda’s patients. Jane asks for a description and then tells Gina that this woman, Shay Miller, is obsessed with Amanda and might be volatile. She asks Gina to call her if Shay shows up again.

When Gina tells her that Amanda had asked for Eleanor’s address, Jane does some digging around and finds out that Eleanor found a bouquet of yellow zinnias on her coffee table, but that she didn’t see anyone drop them off. Jane is alarmed and puzzled, wondering what Shay is doing.

Cassandra and Jane stop by Shay’s apartment to retrieve the necklace. Sean and Jody are home watching a movie, and Cassandra and Jane don’t seem to want to stay. Shay had hoped they’d have a drink with her, and she is crushed.

They surprise her, however, by whisking her out of the apartment. Shay assumes they want to go have drinks somewhere, but instead they take her to a beautiful, modern apartment. One of their friends, they explain, needs a house sitter. Since they know that Shay is looking for a new place, they wonder if she might help them out. Shay is thrilled and enthusiastically accepts.

Twenty-Two Months Ago

Twenty-two months prior, Beth is exhausted. She has stage 2 breast cancer and is losing her hair now that she is undergoing chemotherapy. She finds her work as a public defender increasingly difficult and is grateful for her husband Brett. He is a struggling writer and she pays most of the bills, but she loves him. She’s always felt that they were soul mates.

Then suddenly, she comes home from work to find a note from Brett: He is leaving her. He claims that he cannot be the man she needs. Beth is gutted and does not know how she will manage on her own.

One day, as she is struggling with a bag of groceries, her neighbor offers to help her. The woman introduces herself as Valerie and explains that she just moved to New York from Los Angeles.

Jane calls and offers to help Shay with her fear of the subway. She explains that she has a friend, Anne, who might be able to assist her. Although Shay has already tried counseling and found it unhelpful, she cannot say no to Jane. She agrees to meet with Anne.

Stacey has been instructed to enter Valerie’s apartment, install extra security cameras, install tracking software on Valerie’s guest’s laptop, and photograph each page of the guest’s journal. Stacey does not question any of this, and works quickly. She reports back to Valerie, Cassandra, and Jane.

Cassandra and Jane are relieved that there will be extra surveillance on Shay. They still have no idea why she is so obsessed with Amanda and they are worried that her curiosity will uncover secrets they would like to remain buried.

Cassandra and Jane get a call from Oliver, a friend of theirs who owns a gallery. He reports that the police came by asking about Daphne, and that he provided them with the date and time of her visit to his gallery. The sisters are stunned into silence.

Shay feels like a different person inside this sleek and modern apartment. She considers joining a dating site or finally changing her hairstyle, wanting to catapult herself into a new, improved life.

As she contemplates her hair in the mirror, she notices that the primary bedroom door is slightly ajar. Worried, she texts Jane and Cassandra. They tell her that the superintendent checked on a leak earlier and that there is nothing to worry about.

Cassandra monitors Shay and is struck by her resemblance to Amanda. She knows that Shay and the detective who is investigating Daphne are the only two threats to their group, and she wants to figure out what Shay’s motivations are.

She asks Stacey to send her Shay’s calendar and looks at the month of August. She wonders if they have been thinking of Shay all wrong: They were fixated on who she is, but perhaps they should think instead of who she could be.