The Lost Man

Nathan watches from a distance as Ilse gets out of her car and kneels at the grave. He can’t tell what she is doing, but she stays for only about 15 minutes. After she leaves, he drives to the grave and digs into the small hole they found under Cam’s body but doesn’t find anything.

When Nathan returns home, he notices that Cam’s grave has been dug next to Carl’s. Inside, Bub and Ilse are arguing about the farm, and Bub assumes Nathan is on Ilse’s side. They realize that he feels outnumbered and trapped by the situation.

Liz confronts Nathan because he left his radio off again. Xander was worried enough that he wanted Harry to search for him. Nathan asks Ilse what she did that day. She tells him she went to the stockman’s grave for quiet time to remember Cam before the funeral. She mentions that she used a worker’s vehicle because hers has been unreliable lately. Nathan offers to look at it.

Xander asks Nathan about the results of his experiment with the flags, but he is still angry. Nathan apologizes and promises to leave his radio on in the future. Xander is unmoved.

When Nathan inspects Ilse’s car, he adjusts the seat and again remembers doing the same in Cam’s car. Ilse’s car starts, and he can’t find anything wrong with it. Harry appears saying he should have helped dig Cam’s grave. On the defensive, Nathan brings up Harry’s fight with Cam. Harry claims it was about how absent-minded Cam had been lately. Nathan reflects that although Harry feels like family, he is an employee, and he asks if Cam threatened to fire him. Harry denies it, but Nathan is doubtful. Nathan says he can’t find anything wrong with Ilse’s car, and Harry says he can’t either.

The next morning, Nathan wakes up with a headache, feeling like something is wrong. He walks toward Cam’s painting to straighten it, but Liz warns him not to. She tells him that Xander is right to be upset with him for turning his radio off the previous day and asks him to talk to Steve. Bub, already drinking, tells them that the funeral home is bringing Cam’s body.

Nathan doesn’t have his own clothes, so he wears his father’s suit. Bub drops his beer because of how much Nathan looks like Carl. Xander is wearing Cam’s suit, which fits him perfectly, surprising both Nathan and Bub. They go outside and watch as Cam’s body is unloaded from the hearse. In the distance, clouds of dust announce the arrival of their neighbors.

The service is short, and everyone from Balamara is there. Nathan recognizes most of them, although he hasn’t seen them in years. Toward the end of the service, Liz begins to cry. Lo reminds them that they are supposed to plant a tree at the grave, and Liz begins digging. Nathan brings her inside while the neighbors watch.

Everyone crowds into the house. A woman approaches Nathan and asks him to go for a drink the next time he’s in town. After she leaves, Harry says he should start going into town again and date her. He points out that, by avoiding town, Nathan isn’t offering the community a chance to forgive him.

Nathan sees Katy, who seems ill. Nathan decides to hide for a while in Ilse’s office. Sitting at her desk, he flips through the planner and notices a small checkmark, with a time next to it, on every date. He realizes the times correspond to when he pressed the GPS tracker button. He thought Liz asked Harry to give him the tracker but now realizes it was Ilse.

Ilse comes into the office and, like Harry, encourages him to talk to people. He says that even if they forgive him, he doesn’t forgive them for poisoning his dog. Ilse says Bub was dingo-baiting around that time, trying to earn money to move. He might have accidentally poisoned Kelly. She says Cam was going to warn him, but Nathan says he never did.

They agree that Cam probably neglected to tell him on purpose. She reflects that Bub must have felt bad because he stopped baiting after it happened. She asks him not to confront Bub that day. He remembers how hurt he felt when Kelly died and how it had almost driven him over the edge. Bub and Cam had known the truth all along.

Nathan sees Katy coming out of the bathroom and realizes that she is ill because she’s pregnant. He offers to get Simon, but she confesses that Cam is the father. She says that she had a bad feeling when they met Cam, but Simon needed the money, so they took the jobs even though she was not a qualified teacher. Cam manufactured reasons to be alone with her, but when she told Simon, he brushed it off, and Cam pretended she was imagining things. Katy says she got tired of resisting and had sex with him. When she told him she was pregnant, a few weeks before his death, they agreed to an abortion. Cam made an appointment at the medical center and booked a hotel in St. Helens, which explain the calls Ilse discovered. Katy plans to keep the appointment and asks Nathan not to tell Simon. As she describes how Cam manipulated her, Nathan sees parallels to Cam’s treatment of Jenna.

Nathan asks Steve what he knows about Cam and Jenna. Steve says she told him she felt safe with Cam at first but he led her out into the dunes and forced himself on her. He believes Cam raped her.

As people leave the funeral, the woman who spoke to Nathan earlier waves to him. Steve says he should go out with her. He also says Liz and Xander asked him to talk to Nathan about his wellness, and Nathan finally agrees to an appointment. They return to the topic of Jenna. Nathan remembers that the day after the phone call Carl left the farm and came back hours later telling Cam something was taken care of.