We Are All the Same in the Dark

A crowd is chanting outside the jail where Wyatt is being held; Rusty fully believes Wyatt is guilty, while Odette still seeks to protect him.

Odette goes into Wyatt’s cell to talk to him. She tells Wyatt not to talk to the police without a lawyer; Odette’s husband, Finn, has agreed to represent him. She gives him Finn’s phone number. Wyatt asks what happened to Angel, and Odette tells him about her new eye but also instructs him never to mention that he found the girl.

Five more minutes have passed without Rusty interrupting them. Odette gives Wyatt Maggie’s phone number. She admits to him that when Rusty called about Wyatt’s arrest, Odette’s instinct was to protect him. Recalling their relationship sends Odette into a traumatic flashback of the night of her accident and Trumanell’s disappearance, after which she leaves.

Odette wakes up at sunrise to the sound of water running in the house. Panicking, she grabs her gun and goes to the bathroom, where she finds Finn in the shower. They have sex in the bedroom and break the old mirror above the bed, which Odette says is either “good luck for Finn and [her], or very, very bad” (98).

Odette goes back to bed and wakes up later that morning. While Finn is still asleep, she thinks about her “abandonment” of Wyatt after the Trumanell incident and his subsequent stay in a mental health facility. Odette’s phone rings, but the caller only sobs and says Trumanell’s name.

The caller sounds like a man, but Odette doesn’t recognize their voice. Odette reminds herself to focus on Angel and calls someone, asking them to meet her at the lake. She gets ready to leave, going through the process of putting on her prosthetic leg. She reflects on her last fight with Finn—thinking about him, she wonders if he was attracted to her because of her association with the Trumanell case.

Odette goes to a Betty Crocker cookbook in the kitchen that she has filled with details from the Trumanell case: newspaper clippings, photographs, reports from the case file, and her own personal notes. She took the recipes out to make her own “scrapbook” at 17 and has never shown it to anyone. She jots notes down in the back, including the GPS coordinates of the spot where Wyatt found Angel. A reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper hangs on the wall, and Odette takes it down, as Finn doesn’t like it. She tries to put the painting in the closet and, in doing so, she finds her father’s rattlesnake boots, which he told her he had destroyed after the night he went out looking for Trumanell. Odette examines the boots and finds that they are caked with mud and blood.

Odette is in disbelief that her father would have anything to do with Trumanell’s disappearance, but she takes the boots with her as she leaves for the lake. There, she meets with Dr. Camila Perez, a forensic scientist. Odette gives her Angel’s water bottle and gold scarf as well as her father’s boots and asks for DNA tests.

Odette finds the phone number from her father’s drawer and returns to the car to dial it; her childhood therapist, Dr. Andrea Greco, answers. Odette asks to see her and goes to her house.

Odette was Dr. Greco’s patient when she was a teenager. She did eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy after her accident, but it made her feel worse because it involved repeatedly reliving the events of that night: She worried that Dr. Greco thought Odette knew something about Trumanell’s disappearance and was trying to make her talk about it.

Dr. Greco pours whisky for herself and Odette while they talk. Odette asks her what makes a child mute, hoping to figure out how to get Angel to talk. Dr. Greco asks questions about Angel’s behavior and suggests giving her a diary and observing her body language. Odette asks why her father had Dr. Greco’s number in his drawer, why he called, and what they talked about, but Greco says he never called her. Odette drinks too much whisky; soon, she is throwing up, worried she has said too much to Dr. Greco. She notices a hidden camera in a vase.

Odette immediately leaves Dr. Greco’s house and drives home, extremely drunk. When she arrives at the Blue House, Finn is waiting outside with a woman. Finn tells her he bailed Wyatt out of jail and drove him home. Finn then came back to the house to get his belongings, and the woman pulled up as he was leaving.

As Finn leaves, Odette approaches the porch, where the woman is waiting. She introduces herself as Gretchen McBride and tells her to “[t]ell Wyatt Branson to stay the hell away from [her] daughter” (130). She explains that she had sex with Frank Branson and that he is the father of her nine-year-old daughter. Gretchen thinks Wyatt might come after her. In return, she offers a tip; she suggests Odette interview the mother of Lizzie Raymond, the young woman who resembles Trumanell. Odette is unsurprised—it is well-known that Frank Branson has other children.

Odette goes into the house. In the Betty Crocker book, she scribbles notes and writes in big letters, “Don’t give up” (136). She wakes up in the middle of the night to the doorbell ringing incessantly and panics. She quickly grabs her gun, puts on her leg, and goes to the door. Opening it, she finds someone has left a shovel with a math equation painted on it in red: 70 x 7.

Odette calls Rusty, and the police come to the Blue House. The police search for evidence and find that the shovel was painted with red nail polish. Rusty asks if the equation has any significance to her, and Odette says no. Gabriel, another police officer, notes that the equation is a reference to Matthew 18: “How often shall I let my brother sin against me? Seven times? And Jesus replied, not seven. Seventy times seven” (140).

Later, Rusty and Odette meet up at the park. They drive together to the Branson house, where people have hung up a sign condemning Wyatt as a murderer. Rusty tells her that before Wyatt was released from jail, he told Rusty that Trumanell’s death was his fault. Odette wants to cut down the sign, but Rusty wants to investigate the house first.

Rusty and Odette approach the house; the door is unlocked, so they enter. They call out Wyatt’s name, and he does not respond. Odette examines the kitchen while Rusty looks in the hall. She finds the kitchen sink running over onto the floor, where dozens of pennies are scattered.

There is still no sign of Wyatt, and Odette and Rusty go upstairs. Rusty asks Odette if she wants to call for backup; she says no, still worried about protecting Wyatt from further suspicion.

Odette reaches Trumanell’s room. She thinks about how it looked when the police were investigating it; she knows everything that was in it in detail, but it is bare now. Odette’s gun is pointed at the closed closet door, and Rusty comes and busts the door open. The closet is empty, except for a crawl space that is nailed shut. Rusty opens it.

Sometime later, Odette leaves the house; police are now searching it. They found the crawl space full of boxes and garbage bags, which led Rusty to think Wyatt ran away. Finally, Odette demands to know if Rusty broke into her father’s drawer and took anything. Rusty denies it, frustrated that Odette seems to be hiding something and is not being honest with him. Odette has an urge to tell him everything but leaves instead.

Odette speeds away from the scene. She returns to the park to get her car, considering telling Rusty about Angel and everything else. Odette drives to Maggie’s house. Once there, Odette checks her phone and finds 12 missed calls from the same number.

The calls are from Dr. Camila Perez, who says she obtained a DNA result from Angel’s water bottle. The DNA matches a man named Christopher Coco; Dr. Perez is almost certain the DNA belongs to his daughter. Coco had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to prison in Oklahoma, but he was released three weeks ago. Odette hurries into Maggie’s house, gun drawn, and asks to check on the girls.

Upon seeing that Angel is okay, Odette looks Christopher Coco up on the Internet, and finds he fatally shot his ex-girlfriend. Maggie says it’s possible he does not know he has a daughter and that they should not do anything until they are sure he is the reason Angel is running; Odette disagrees and wants to talk to Angel about what she has learned.

Maggie tries to calm Odette down and asks about Wyatt. Odette tells her what happened at the Branson house and says that he is missing. Maggie implores her to forget about the Trumanell case and focus on her own life, but Odette refuses. Angel appears in the doorway, and Maggie shuts the laptop with the Google searches, but not before Angel sees them.

Maggie leaves so Odette and Angel can talk. Odette asks Angel if Christopher Coco is the man she is running from. She asks Angel about her eye, but Angel still refuses to speak. Odette tells her about her own accident and talks about her father. She has a note he gave her and gives it to Angel, saying she sees herself when she looks at Angel and that she believes she and Angel were brought together for a reason. Odette decides to leave Angel at Maggie’s house for one more night. She then leaves.

Odette lies in bed, thinking, and suddenly she “know[s] where to dig” (176). She goes out to the Bransons’ field with a shovel and starts to dig, thinking about how Trumanell’s shadow is constantly “hovering” over her. One post on the Branson fence looks different from the others; an extra piece of wood is hammered in place, making a cross. She digs near it until the shovel hits something hard. Behind her, a gun cocks.