Did Cora and the man she murdered have a history?
To the murder of Frankie Belmont, Cora Tannetti pleads guilty.
She could spend the rest of her life in prison.
Credit: Peter Kramer/USA Network
Mason and a young policewoman recognize each other near the courthouse entrance they went to high school together.
She takes him out a side door to avoid the press waiting outside.
Later, he’ll get back to work installing air conditioning (or is it heating?
Ambrose goes to see Cora to ask her why she’s pleading guilty.
If the Twinkie defense worked for Dan White, maybe the slicing-a-pear ennui defense could work for Cora.
“Why not fight for a shot at reuniting with your family?”
“What makes you think I want my life back?”
And if Cora’s case goes to trial, they’ll have to establish motive.
Ambrose sits down with Leah Belmont, who’s looking bedraggled and exhausted in a hospital gown.
There was something wrong with her.
There was an accident.
“It almost ruined his life,” Leah says.
“You doing more of that plant whispering s?”
Leroy asks the next morning.
That’s a dealbreaker, ladies.
“Text me next time,” she says.
She places the chocolate bar inside.
He won’t stop until she tells him something.
Is she just going to let her family suffer, without explanation?
“I met Frankie on July 3,” Cora says abruptly.
That shuts Ambrose up.
They spent the night together.
Two weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant, but she didn’t have his number.
And in trying to track him down, she found out “JD” was a fake name.
Instead, she stepped in front of a car.
“I used to pray a lot when I was little,” she tells Ambrose.
“What kind of a God kills your baby but lets you survive?”
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But he has other things to attend to first.
At a family gathering, Ambrose gives a pair of binoculars as a birthday present to his grandson.
The kid isn’t exactly thrilled: It’s not theStar WarsLegos he wanted.
He tells her he wants to move back in.
Childhood memory alert: Cora’s mother, of course, found that bundle of treasures.
At Mom’s urging, Cora buries her keepsakes in the yard.
Mason returns to a memory of his own: having sex with Cora.
She freaks out when he initiates oral sex, smashing his head between her thighs.
Outside of Memory World (can you tell I am growing increasingly tired of Memory World?
), Mason’s policewoman friend interviews him.
Did Cora ever mention a JD?
“No,” he says, shaking his head less than convincingly.
In turn, Mason begs her for some information, anything to go on.
Who’s this JD?
She gives in, telling him Cora got pregnant from a one-night stand with him.
Mason is rocked by this revelation.
Ambrose digs through the case’s neatly bagged evidence until he finds a phone.
“Do you know how to get the music off of this?”
he asks another cop.
He drives to Carl’s Taproom, listening to Frankie’s song in the car all the while.
The bartender there recognizes Cora both from a photo the detective shows her and from the news.
Cora had been dancing with another girl “so sauced she couldn’t stand up straight.”
There was a guy with them, too, but not Frankie.
The man was blond.
Ambrose’s next stop is Frankie’s parents' house.
They never heard their son use the nickname JD, and they refuse to believe Cora’s story.
“Frankie was good.
He was too good.
And that’s not all.
They’re alive and well, living just half an hour away.
Cora returns to her cell from the shower to find the mattress and bedding stripped from her bunk.
Childhood memory alert: Cora’s mother, visibly upset, tends to sores on Phoebe’s back.
Cora tries to comfort her, but it’s no use.
“Because I’m a sinner and I took the chocolate from Aunt Margaret,” Cora says.
That night, she digs up the chocolate.
Cora eats it under cover of darkness, defiantly staring up at the house.
In another interview with Cora, Ambrose asks why she lied about her parents and the pregnancy.
She insists he turn it off.
He turns it up.
Mason pays a (thankfully less violent) visit to Cora himself.
Why didn’t she tell him about the pregnancy?
And why did she lie to the cops about Frankie?
“I know JD,” Mason says.
“He’s got that truck.
I knew some of his friends before we met.”
Did JD hurt her?
She says it doesn’t matter anymore.
But he insists it does.
He’s still around, the friend says, and not too far away.
Cora’s husband requests an introduction.
Ambrose carries his suitcases back into the house, where he and his wife share a peaceful dinner.
But their meal is interrupted when a bird flies into their sliding glass door.
“Come back,” he whispers, and it soon perks up, flying off seemingly unharmed.
“Metaphoooooor,” the birdsong might as well whistle through the wind.
As the Ambroses get ready for bed, Harry notices the scrapes and bruises Cora left on his chest.
Ambrose has Leroy meet him at the station late that night.
He’s had an epiphany: The song triggers Cora.
They review Ambrose’s injuries and the security footage of Cora attacking him.
