The Girl I Used to Be

On the way back to Olivia’s house, she and Duncan discuss what she does and does not remember. Duncan says maybe she’s retaining everything that happened somewhere in her mind. He suggests hypnosis as a method to retrieve the memories. Olivia is dismissive of the idea. She shows Duncan the cigar box, and he notices that she stole a photo of her dad from the service—he disapproves of this but doesn’t say anything. Olivia tells him her theory that Jason or Sam killed her parents. Duncan doesn’t believe this, but he does show her printouts of similar unsolved murders in the area. He tries to convince her that her parents’ deaths could be part of a serial killer’s history. Olivia thinks that Duncan just doesn’t want to confront the fact that it could be someone he knows.

Olivia and Duncan meet at the library to continue their research. She is excited to tell him that she’s discovered the FBI believes serial killers and truck drivers to be so linked that they’ve invested in a task force for it. She tells him why the long-haul truck driver lifestyle suits itself so well to serial murder and reminds him that Jason is a truck driver. Duncan dismisses this idea and says that just because some truck drivers are killers doesn’t mean they all are; also, serial killers usually kill strangers, not people they know.

Olivia thinks this demonstrates, again, that Duncan only likes theories in which the killer is a stranger. They get old yearbooks and look at pictures of Olivia’s parents. In one photo, Duncan points out a red-haired man and identifies him as Ben Gault, though he says he doesn’t know if Ben still lives in town.

They ask the librarian for access to the local newspaper on microfiche, and she asks if they’re looking into Terry and Naomi’s murders. Her theory is that they picked up a hitchhiker who killed them both. Olivia still thinks it’s more likely that they were killed by someone they knew. She comes across one of the first newspaper stories about the family’s disappearance and is dismayed to read that the police were called to her grandmother’s house several times for domestic altercations and that Terry was under a restraining order following a domestic violence complaint. A new idea seizes Olivia: maybe her dad actually did do it.

She suggests that her father did kill her mother but then went elsewhere and killed himself. Duncan pushes back and reminds her there could have been a third person involved. Olivia works through several scenarios in her head and seems oddly exhilarated by the idea of her father being guilty. Duncan insists that there must have been more clues that couldn’t help at the time of the murders, but which may be more useful now. Olivia feels optimistic about what new forensic technologies might reveal.

Olivia goes to the hypnotist appointment she agreed to have. The hypnotist (Quinn) assures Olivia that hypnosis can’t make anyone do anything they wouldn’t otherwise do, like murder. After Olivia makes sure that she has patient confidentiality, she tells the hypnotist that she’s trying to recover memories of her parents’ murders. While under hypnosis, she remembers two pairs of adult legs in jeans, her mother saying no, the two people stepping close, and a spray of hot red across her face. Then she remembers running into the woods.

Olivia comes out of her hypnotic trance and tells Quinn what she saw. She tells Quinn that she didn’t see any faces, only legs, which would have been consistent with her height at the time. Olivia asks Quinn to put her back under, but Quinn has another appointment in 10 minutes. She asks Olivia who else knows what she’s doing and tells her bluntly that the more people who know, the more danger she’s in. They make another appointment for more than a week away, which frustrates Olivia; Quinn tells her that often people will have more revelations and to pay attention both to her waking memories and her dreams.