The Girl I Used to Be

Olivia tells Duncan that she’s renting the house and has a new job at Fred Meyer; Duncan tells her that his mother also works there. After some small talk, Duncan asks to see Olivia’s hand. She shows it to him. He points out a scar on her palm and asks if she remembers how she got it or who she was with. Olivia says no. Duncan says that she was with him. He’s recognized her as Ariel.

Olivia protests, initially insisting that she is not Ariel and then, once it’s clear that Duncan won’t believe her, she tells him that she cannot be Ariel right now—not with everything that’s happening with the case. Duncan thinks that her family deserves to know and that she’s going to hurt people by keeping the secret, but he promises he won’t tell anyone. He’s angry when he leaves, but Olivia reminds herself that she needs to keep the secret because the killer may not be as generous this time as they were when they left her at Walmart.

Olivia is upset by Duncan’s disapproval, as she hoped they would be friends. She wonders if he’s right and if she owes her family the truth. She finds her determination again quickly, realizing that if her identity is known, people won’t relax their guard around her and talk as much as they would otherwise. She also doesn’t want to have to share the trauma of her past.

Because this house is the last place Olivia remembers feeling happy, she starts working on returning its furniture layout to the way it was when she lived there. She enters her mother’s old room and, without really understanding what she’s doing or why, peels back the carpet in the closet and pulls up a floorboard to reveal a space underneath, which she reaches into.

Under the floorboards is an old cigar box that Olivia’s mother used to keep hidden treasures in. Her grandmother never knew about it, but Olivia would sneak in and look through it when she was still living there as a child. She finds some miscellaneous items: a shell, pennies, a ticket stub, a ring made from a folded dollar bill. Searching the box for evidence, she finds a suspicious unsigned note written to Naomi. She also finds a grade-school Valentine signed by someone with a “J” name. Olivia wonders if her mother kept the card because it was cute or if it was a nostalgic remnant of a person with whom she had a serious relationship of some sort.

Olivia speculates about ex-lovers and romantic rivals, who may have written these notes, and whether they would have wanted her mother dead. She also finds a photobooth strip of her mother, her father, and their friend Jason. She’s struck by her mother’s beauty in the photographs and wonders if there was ever a relationship between Naomi and Jason. The second photo strip includes only her mother and father. Olivia is charmed by their formal and silly photos, but disturbed by the final picture, in which they’re both making exaggerated expressions of fear. Olivia is chilled by the idea that this may have actually been how her parents looked when they were murdered. She decides she needs to know more about the relationships between these three people in case it was the motive for the murders.

Olivia goes to Goodwill to buy basic housewares and linens. While she’s there she runs into Lauren, the purple-haired girl from the funeral. Lauren tells her that Naomi was her uncle Terry’s girlfriend and that no one spoke of him for years because most of the family secretly thought he was guilty. Olivia asks if Terry was abusive and Lauren says no. She tells Olivia that her own mother hopes that it was a stranger passing through town; otherwise, it would have to be someone she knew.

Olivia asks about Jason’s relationship with Terry and Naomi, but Lauren doesn’t have much to offer, other than that he used to be married to Naomi’s best friend (Heather) and that he’s a trucker. After Goodwill they go together to a discount grocery store. She realizes that the lack of evidence left behind by the killer tells its own story, one that exonerates her father. For example, why would Terry have bothered wiping his fingerprints out of his own truck?