To her surprise, her husband agrees without hesitation.
Undeterred, Ambrose goes to see Cora’s parents.
Her mother, Elizabeth, is seriously ill, with a nasal cannula and sores on her hands.
Credit: Peter Kramer/USA Network
The Laceys haven’t spoken to Cora for years, they say.
around the Fourth of July, which happens to be Phoebe’s birthday.
Phoebe died a month later.
It’s clear Mrs. Lacey hates her elder daughter as much as she ever did.
So why didn’t they file a missing person’s report?
“Cora died when she left this house,” Mommie Dearest explains.
Cora, per usual, is lost in a bad dream: sex.
A bell rings at bar.
Cora wakes up screaming.
Guards retrieve her from her cell, wrestling her to the ground to sedate her.
They roll up her sleeves, revealing distinctive scar tissue in the crook of her arm.
It started five years ago, Cora explains, before she met Mason.
So where’d she really go when she ran away?
Ambrose can’t promise her that.
Cora says she hates him, which seems fair.
(Can I Airbnb Margaret’s apartment?)
She tried to be close with Cora, she says, but Elizabeth was a nightmare.
Mason does show up to visit Cora, but without Laine.
Ambrose, it turns out, came to question him about Cora’s drug habit.
Mason is devastated that she lied to him.
He asks if it was J.D.
who got her hooked, but Cora still tells him nothing.
Mason is “done.”
Why would he subject Laine to this?
This strikes a nerve.
Another childhood memory (don’t lose your punchcard, because the 10th one is free!
): Cora, now a preteen, still shares a bedroom with Phoebe.
“Do you think dad is screwing mom now that they’re sharing a bed?”
her little sister asks.
Before long, a furious Elizabeth finds the mag.
Phoebe says someone left it on the sidewalk; Cora immediately admits her guilt.
Later, Phoebe picks at her sister’s skinned knees and asks why she didn’t lie.
“He’d only punish us and make you sick,” Cora explains.
She asks if she could change her plea.
The lawyer discourages her: It’s really, really hard to be found not guilty for temporary insanity.
And everything about her her family, her past will be dredged up.
Cora’s reaction, basically:So you’re telling me there’s a chance?
A Caleb Walker no address, no number signed her intake form.
Ambrose spotsthe waitress-slash-dominatrixat the grocery store.
She dumps a box of clementines on the floor.
They’re both curious about the Tannetti case.
This sets Ambrose off: “You have no idea who Cora Tannetti is.
You don’t know what happened to her.
You don’t know what she’s been through, how she feels.
You don’t know anything.”
After their guests leave, the Ambroses adjourn for some lovey-dovey, missionary vanilla sex.
At Cora’s second plea hearing, she waffles in front of the judge.
What should she do?
Next thing we know and speaking of anal foreplay Ambrose is back for another may-we-remind-you-that-this-is-cable session with his dominatrix.
After Mason’s friend pointed out J.D.
at a bar, Mason returns alone and slides into the booth across from him.
how he knows Cora Lacey.
“You don’t know s, do you?”
says, laughing cruelly.
“Does she still like three guys on her?”
taunts Mason as the pair tussle on the floor.
They’re both arrested.
Defiant, she uncaps the needle, but she almost immediately loses steam.
She has no idea what she’s doing.
How much of the two months between the Fourth of July and Poughkeepsie does she remember?
“Fragments,” Cora says.
The familiar creepy wallpaper finally comes into focus in Cora’s mind.
We see, from her perspective, the bedroom it decorates.
The door opens and a man in a scrub top steps inside.
“How are you feeling today, Cora?”
