EPISODE 81
Written by: Bre L. Drew
June 8, 2020
Last Time On Town and Country
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Steven is still adamant about not wanting a second marriage much to the disappointment of Courtney.
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Mala sensing Daniel's attraction to her boldly informs him that she has been legally separated from her husband for five years.
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The twins didn't take Sean's engagement to Tricia well at all.
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Tricia is still insecure over Sean and Louise's relationship as exes.
FRANKLIN FARM : MAIN HOUSE
Steven Sullivan nearly had forgotten he promised his mother to help her sort the attic until he was halfway on the expressway on his way home. After spending eight hours at the clinic administering physical exams on dogs, cats, and various other animals, he was ready to call it an early night. When he got home, he took the time to freshen up by taking a shower and changing into a t-shirt that displays the name of his college alma mater and an old pair of jeans. Steven roams to the door where he ascends on the stairs to the top level. Instantly the heat hits him when he reaches the loft space. He always forgets how warm it can be up here, probably one of the reasons he hardly ventures to this part of the house. The awkwardly-shape atmosphere consists of disorganized boxes and other items that were strewn around the room. The usual smell of stale must is being heightened by the fan that is plug in the socket in the corner.
"You're just in time," Esther Saunders says, she is going through old photo albums planted on the traditional antique oak bench which is a relic from the early '70s.
"What do you need me to do mom,"
Esther surveys the stack of books in front of her. "For right now just put them off to the side,"
"Ok,"
Esther wanted to tidy up the room because she thought it is time to organize things belonging to everyone in the house that can be kept, taken to Goodwill, or thrown away.
The room interrupts with a few moments of silence before Esther asks, "Steven, what's wrong?"
Before Steven can respond to her question, she holds up her hand for effect, "A mother knows when there is something on their child's mind," she says it in a way if he doesn't fill her in she won't stop going on about it.
He informs her about what was said between Courtney and himself about him protesting getting married again. Knowing full well of his mother's hatred of the Covington's, he was expecting a harsh comeback.
"Why don't you want to get married for the second time?"
JOJO'S CAFE
Tricia Meyer is relieved for once not to have a crowded café. Only about four individuals were occupying themselves with various drinks and baked goods throughout the establishment. The only consistent thing was going so far is the new Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga song Sirius XM keeps playing on a loop. The café manager is sitting at the coffee bar on her laptop, working on next week's schedule for her employees. She feels someone touching her, which she turns to see it is her fiancé visiting her. Sean Lockhart takes a seat beside her in which makes close the computer to give him her full recognition.
"Did you tell your daughters about us getting married?" Tricia asks
He moves his head. "Yeah, I did,"
Tricia can tell by the apprehension on his face their engagement isn't something neither his twins want, which doesn't surprise Tricia since from the moment they first met they saw her as the woman who took away their father from their mother, She wonders if they would have the same thought if they ever found out about their precious mother and Sean had an open marriage for a few years before their divorce,
"Maybe I should talk to them, tell them that I'm not out to hurt them and maybe they can see me as a friend rather than a wicked stepmother," she says
"Not a chance in hell," a young feminine voice calls out.
The couple sees Lynn Lockhart; alongside her mother, the two had just entered into the cafe to talk before heading home.
Sean notices the pain on his daughter's face, especially didn't take the news well earlier about him marrying the woman she called a bitch.
"Uh, Tricia, I need to talk Lenny would you mind if you give us some time to be alone?" Sean asks more of a demand than a request.
"Sure," Tricia says
Louise gives one of her twin daughters a supportive glance before heading to a table by the window.
After Tricia placing her laptop in the back office, she makes her way across the cafe with her target in sight.
COVINGTON GROUP
Whilst most of the staff have left the building for the rest of the day. Daniel Covington is still in his office on the twentieth floor of the Covington Tower, working on the annual salary adjust rewards for his executive team at his desk. Between back to back meetings throughout the afternoon in addition to a conference call, he decided to stay late until he gets a dent into the paperwork.
Three minutes later, someone knocks on the door, which made him recall releasing his secretary Evelyn home two hours ago.
"Come in," he announces to the person over the threshold.
Mere seconds Mala Gupta enters into the room looking quite arresting in a coral knit sheath dress with silver heels on her feet. And her straight dark brown hair was styled perfectly to go along with her beautiful smile.
"Hope, I'm not interrupting you," she says
Daniel doesn't take his sight off her for one minute. "Not at all, he answers generously. Please sit,"
Mala steps over to his desk, "If I sit down I think I will lose my nerve,"
"Is there something going on here or at home?" he inquires.
Last weekend Daniel dropped a gift basket over to her, at Mala's new home welcoming her to the residential cottage community that the Covington Group built. She was straightforward and blunt about her legal separation from her husband, who still lives in Chicago.
"Daniel, would you like to have a coffee with me?" she queries candidly.
"Yes, is now a good time?"
"It's a perfect time," she says impeccably in her British accent.
The two both grin to one another as Daniel begins opening his briefcase.
LOCKHART LAKE COTTAGE
Despite being in the presence of her boyfriend in the living room of her house on the couch making out with him. Tanner Lockhart could not shake the memory of her grandmother carrying on a vivid conversation with herself in the greenhouse on the farm earlier today. At first, she thought maybe her grandmother was on the phone or was singing. Yet not only she saw her talking to herself, but she was hugging herself as well. She wanted to tell her mother what they both witnessed, but Lenny decided against doing so, eventually stating grandma doesn't need to be seen as crazy that she is still lost after losing granddad suddenly. Knowing her sister had a point, but she has never seen her grandma like that in her seventeen years of life. It seems Tommy picks up on her mood because he lets go of their embrace with a quizzical expression on his face.
"My breath doesn't smell, does it?" he asks partly with humor and sincerity.
Tanner tucks a few loose strands of her dark brown hair behind her ear. "No," she chuckles
"Then what is it?" he asks earnestly.
Much as she wants someone to confide in what happened with her grandmother, she knows she couldn't do so because she does not have all the facts, and she thought she and Lynn should keep it to themselves for now.
She sighs, "Still can't believe my dad is marrying Tricia, that's all," she somewhat lies. Although, as she thinks about it she remembers that was the catalyst of her seeing her grandmother in that state,
When he came over, it is the first thing the two briskly talked about before they started making out.
Tommy gives a perceptive nod. "I know it isn't easy on you, so I'm here for you if you need to vent, scream, or curse,"
Tanner couldn't help but smile at her boyfriend for offering his support. "Thanks,"
Their lips began touching again however, he reaches for her shirt in which he starts to touch the skin of her back in an intimate sense.
Tanner jerks out of his clinch and on her feet. "What the hell are you doing?" she asks breathlessly
"I thought we were about to have sex," he answers
"Oh, I know that's what you wanted to do that's why I stopped it,"
HOME FARM
Courtney Covington is sitting at the table on the patio on Home Farm Estate with her eyes glued to the screen of her iPad. She decided to take in the last few hours of sunlight on this late spring evening. Try as she might she could not stop pondering the conversation she had with Steven this afternoon on their disagreement of marriage in her office. He then bolted out of her presence, sighting he had to get back to work at the animal clinic. The rest of the day she consumed herself with work to get her mind off tying the knot in the future,
The audible sounds of someone clearing their throat snapping her out of her mind.
"I was wondering what else I was going to have to do to get your attention," Max Covington remarks.
Her older brother was sitting adjacent to her at the table pouring them glasses of lemonade from the pitcher he got from Gabriella before coming outside,
"Sorry, Max," she says. I didn't mean to ignore you,"
"Hey, what's is it, let me guess it has to do with your older veterinarian significant other,"
"Am I that damn obvious?" she sips some of the delicious homemade citrus beverage.
Max takes a drink of his lemonade. "Let's just say I've been around you since you first started having crushes on the opposite sex, so I know all of the signs you get when you're having trouble with them too,"
​
"What made you want to marry Shauna only after eight months of dating her?" she asks suddenly.
Max leans back in the chair before answering his younger sister. "Because I love her, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life without her," he truthfully says. He then got clarification on what made her ask him this out of the blue.
"That is what I feel about Steven, but he doesn't want to take that next step," she replies.
"I think you need to ask yourself, can you be with Steven even if he never proposes to you?"
Courtney carefully nods her head to the question, neither confirming nor denying a response.
"Anyway, what brought you out here?" Max inquires, changing the subject entirely.
Courtney scans the screen of her tablet. "I'm planning dad's birthday party," she informs him.
"Oh yeah, it is Dad's 50th birthday," Max says with his typical dry wit.
Courtney snickers. "Very funny Maximillian, you know daddy is turning forty-five this summer, I was wondering if you and Tommy can help out here and there with the celebration," she says
"For you, I'll do anything," Max states.
Courtney gets out of the chair to put her arms around her brother's neck for helping her in more ways than one.
JOJO'S CAFE
"Get lost, Tricia," Louise says, disturbed by her ex-husband's girlfriend.
"Louise, you do know I have the right to refuse to serve anyone," she pronounces.
Louise puts her purse onto the solid wood table and turns to face her. "What did I do to deserve your melodrama antics this time now?" she asks. "A dose of insecurity, guilt, all the above?"
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Tricia senses Louise is jealous of her but knows she can't continue to mock her, especially with her daughter and Sean in the same room.
"Treat my girls' with respect, and maybe just maybe they will show you some," Louise replies.
Tricia holds up her hand with her silver diamond ring she then starts singing the opening notes of "Here Comes The Bride" as she walks away from her with her heels clicking onto the flooring.
​
"Lynn is right, Tricia is a bitch," Louise remarks to herself.
When she notices Daniel coming into the café, she feels tense remembering the last time she saw him, which was at her dad's repast where they kissed as he comforted her over the loss of the most important man in her life. However, her feelings of tension changed more into suspicious when a gorgeous woman follows him to a table.
"I have nothing nice to say about you marrying Tricia Meyer dad," Lynn declares,
Sean knows both of his twin daughters are still trying to come to terms about him moving on with his life. But he wasn't going to change his mind about spending the rest of his life with the woman he loves. Hopefully, he can make all three women come to understand that.
"Lenny, I love you, and I'm sorry if I don't say it enough to you since I left the lake cottage,"
Lynn pinches a piece of cinnamon raisin bread and plops it in her mouth. She is touched by her father's words, she too has fond memories of her parents being happy together, when all four of them were a real family.
"But you're still marrying her, aren't you?"
"I am," he answers
Sean then embraces his daughter by hugging her.
"It's not too late to change your mind," Lynn whispers.
"I want to spend the rest of my life with her," he says with emotion.
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Whilst sitting in the lounge area, Tricia genuinely smirks, hearing her fiancé tell his daughter he wants to spend their lives together. She then smooths out her black Donna Karan off-the-shoulder jumpsuit.
Daniel and Mala were enjoying each other's company over coffee.
"I can't believe you used to sneak into nightclubs when you were a teenager," Daniel says incredulously.
Mala had told him when she was a teenager growing up in London, she often got into trouble for it by her strict mother, which is a far cry from the professional career woman she is today.
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She is holding the tall paper cup in her right hand. "Why are you so shocked?"
"Because I just have a tough time seeing you wearing a Nirvana T-Shirt clubbing," he assumes.
"You know I did have a Nirvana shirt," she chuckles softly. "I was a wild child in my youth my friends and I used fake ID's to get into clubs all over London,"
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"What made you change your partying ways?" he asks.
Mala's face conveys she is holding back something, but it easily passes. "Sometimes life knocks you down a peg or two but what I learned is you have to get back up,"
​
"What else I don't know about you, Mala Gupta?"
"Enough about me, tell me what does a CEO of a Fortune 500 company does with his free time outside the office?" she asks somewhat flirtatiously.
As Daniel gets into his hobby of playing tennis, he hears keys and other items falling onto the ground, which interrupts their discussion. Mala leaves her current spot to uncover who dropped their stuff but not before excusing herself.
Behind the pillar, she sees a blonde woman bending down picking up her things off the ground and putting them back in her purse,
"Ma'am, do you need any help?" Mala seeks verbally
Louise is still on the floor. "No, no. I got it, but thank you," then she tosses her hairbrush into her purse when she sees the woman who is with Daniel.
"Mala," Daniel calls out.
He views her and then spots Louise getting up from off the ground.
"I accidentally knocked over my purse, and I forgot it was open,"
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She now wishes she could' avoid this awkward moment she finds herself in.
Over on the couch, Tricia focuses on Louise, Sean, and the woman he came in with. She was currently being prepared to be entertained, knowing her fiancé's ex-wife and Daniel have a weird will they or won't they thing between them. She only wishes she had a life outside of the farm that doesn't involve Sean.
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Daniel gestures to Louise with better ease. "Louise this is Covington's new senior architect Mala Gupta, Mala this is Louise Saunders Lockhart who I've known since we were children,"
The two ladies shake hands pleasantly as Louise tries to deal with the awkwardness surrounding her.
"How is the farm?" Daniel asks
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The farm is doing all right," Louise says holding back the strong disbelief of him asking about business,
He stares at his date then back on Louise. "I own interest in her family's dairy farm," he briefly informs her.
"Running a farm must be hard work," Mala says
Louise wanted nothing more to storm out of here like the Tasmanian Devil to avoid any further embarrassment for one evening.
Sean approaches the scenes with his arms at his side. "You all right Louise?"
Tricia rolls her eyes at him, sighing at the fact, he is getting involved in this. As she sees Sean introducing himself to the woman who calls herself Mala and saying a reluctant hello to Daniel.
"I'm fine," Louise says, a bit more aggressive than she intended.
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"You know it is nice meeting you two hopefully we won't be strangers," Mala says politely in her received pronunciation,
She and Daniel both retreat to their table leaving the exes together,
Louise gazes around the café to look for their daughter, whom she found texting on her phone at the coffee bar. "How did your talk go?" she asks.
"We're getting there," he says sufficiently
LOCKHART LAKE COTTAGE
Tommy comes back into the living room, from the kitchen where he hands his girlfriend a bottle of orange Gatorade, which she accepts.
"You were ready to have sex back in March, in fact, we almost did," he says matter-of-factly.
Tanner shakes her head before taking a few sips from the bottle. "Even if I wanted too I don't want my first time on the couch my mother sits on,"
​
Tommy had been patient with her about losing her virginity to him. He isn't the type of guy to force himself on any girl, and despite having slept with plenty of girls, this would be the first time he would be having sex with someone he loves. He couldn't resist his impulse to make love with her, especially when he was looking at her.
She plays with the treble clef necklace he gave her last year around her neck. "You know what I call you later," she says dismissively.
"Can we talk about this?" Tommy urges
"Later," she replies in a low tone of voice.
When Tommy walks out of the front door heading to his Lexus SUV he realizes his girlfriend is adamant about staying a virgin for the foreseeable future.
​
FRANKLIN FARM : MAIN HOUSE
As he opened one of the old photo albums where his eyes land on a picture of his grandparents at a barbeque outside of the house,
He rakes with his hands through his semi-wet blonde hair before composing a sentence. "I don't think I meant for marriage, I mean look at them," he refers to his maternal grandparents Jimmy and Rosemary Saunders, who were both smiling in the photo taken in 1980. "They had the perfect one," he says ideally
Esther keeps silent on her parents having the perfect union since she knows that they didn't since her father's affair with Deirdre Covington happened five years after this picture was taken.
"And because of me right,"
He turns around to stare at his mother, "Mom, I didn't mean -"
​
"It's all right, " she says
​
Throughout her life as a mother, she knew her three times down the aisle had a deep impact on her only son. Despite being young when she split up with his father and Obadiah Wyatt. Steven was rather close to his stepfather, wealthy horse breeder John Dixon. Yet their split when he was a teenager probably made him wary of marriage too.
"I don't blame you," he admits. Courtney is young maybe she will realize us being together is more important than some damn piece of paper,"
The expression on Esther's face had some trepidation on it. "You know I have no love for the Covington's, but something tells me Courtney sees a future with you as her husband,"
"What should I do then?" he inquires defeatedly.
"Don't ever let fear get in the way of your future," she says simply but with an affectionate manner.
Esther points at a picture in the photo album consuming her focus."Oh my goodness, look at you as a baby you were so adorable. "
Steven sees the photo of him as an infant with golden hair and his chubby rosy cheeks being held by his uncle Peter on the long-ago discarded burnt orange couch in the living room downstairs. Seeing him made him think about how his uncle is gone forever.
"I still miss him,"
"Me too, you know what I forgot to get the storage bags in the kitchen,"
Esther casually heads out of the room as Steven flips through the pages sighting old school memories such as Louise wearing pigtails and braces, Peter and Sarah Lynn riding horses in the fields and other members of the family throughout the eighties as well.
The corner of his viewpoint in front of Steven is a piece of paper is slotted underneath the bench. Moving closer to the object, he takes it out of the compartment. The sheet of paper was faded due to it being up here for years, he estimates. Opening the document fills him with some interest wondering who it belonged to. Maybe someone misplaced it.
​
Dear, Jim
When we first started this dalliance I knew you were never going to leave your wife for me. In fact, I was never going to leave my husband for you. I'm writing to you that we must end this affair between us. But you see it is going to be difficult for me to do because I found myself completely falling for you. I know, however, we can't go on. We have so much to lose most importantly our families if we put ourselves first and I won't be the cause of so much heartbreak.
All My Love,
​
Taken-back from what he had just read, his mind starts racing about how his grandfather, a devoted husband and family man have cheated on his beloved grandmother. He assumed that he put in there so nobody would find it.
"Who in the hell wrote this letter?" he says to himself aloud.
END OF EPISODE
Will's first day at Franklin Farm might be beneficial to him in more ways than one.
Steven confides in Martha about the letter written to their grandfather.
Jordan is determined.
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