Nothing More to Tell

Tripp flashes back to before he went to meet Shane in the woods for the leaf project, a little earlier that day. He’s still inside the school, but school’s over, and he overhears Mr. Larkin arguing with his father about the stolen money. Mr. Larkin says a student spotted the money and told him about it. Mr. Larkin wants to notify the police, but Tripp’s father begs him not to because it would upset Tripp. Tripp sneaks outside while the men continue arguing—neither of them sees Tripp nor notices he’s been eavesdropping.

While Tripp waits for Shane, he sees Mr. Larkin leave the school building and go into the woods. Tripp is worried because everyone is going to know his father stole money. Shane shows up late, and they argue and eventually split up so Shane can go meet Charlotte. Tripp gets lost for a while, then hears screaming. He follows the sound of the screaming until he finds the screamer, Charlotte, standing next to Shane who is holding a bloody rock. Mr. Larkin is lying next to them, dead. Tripp asks Shane what he did. Shane claims he just picked up the rock, and that they found Mr. Larkin already dead. Tripp notices a small metal medallion on the ground, which looks like one of his father’s keychains. Tripp puts it in his pocket before the other two notice. Tripp asks Charlotte to stop screaming so he can think. Shane says he heard people yelling and arguing before they found Larkin’s body. Tripp assumes that his father must have been arguing with Mr. Larkin and killed him in an angry outrage. If Tripp’s father gets caught for murder, he’ll go to prison, and Tripp will go to foster care.

Tripp tells Shane and Charlotte they must get their stories straight so that Shane won’t be accused of murder. Tripp thinks that “hearing voices” sounds suspicious, so he says they should say they never heard anything, and they were together the whole time.

Brynn tells Tripp that the story he made up in his head can’t possibly be true. The day Mr. Larkin died, Brynn was at the school with her own father. Their car was having trouble starting, but they saw Tripp’s father in the parking lot, and he tried to jump their car with his jumper cables. This didn’t work, so they called a tow truck, and Tripp’s father hung out with Brynn and her dad for a while, until after the police were called about the murder. This means he couldn’t have been in the woods or killed Mr. Larkin.

Tripp is dumbfounded, but Brynn points out that he could have easily asked his father where he was instead of believing for four years that he was a murderer. Tripp regrets that he covered up evidence that he thought would incriminate his father, even though he wasn’t trying to protect his father. Now, both kids believe Tripp protected Shane instead. Just then, Shane walks into Charlotte’s guest house.

Shane asks why Brynn is there. She says she came to apologize but was about to leave. Shane argues with Brynn and Tripp defends her only to almost get in a fight with Shane. Charlotte appears, disrupts the potential fight, and demands that Brynn leave. Tripp wants to leave, too, and they try to stop him, but he does so anyway. On the way back to Brynn’s car, Tripp falls over a tree root, bringing Brynn down with him. He expresses gratitude to Brynn for all her help and the two share a sweet moment.

Brynn and Tripp discuss Mr. Larkin at the bakery. She explains that Mr. Larkin had a brother at Saint Ambrose, and it might be Shane. Brynn is suspicious that every time Tripp drinks a lot, Charlotte and Shane try to keep him away from others, as if they’re afraid he might say too much. Tripp points out that Shane heard yelling, so maybe there really was a random drifter or other person who killed Mr. Larkin. However, Brynn says Shane might have made the voices up. Tripp had his headphones in, so he didn’t hear anything until Charlotte’s enduring screams. In any case, Brynn says Tripp needs to tell the police he wasn’t with Charlotte and Shane the entire time. She also considers that this might not work because the Delgados have donated so much money to the police.

Tripp shows Brynn the medallion from the crime scene and explains that it’s not his father’s after all, but just looks similar. It’s actually from a place called Mad Dog Tavern with a logo that says, “bite first,” and it has the name Billy engraved on the back. Brynn Googles the tavern and finds a Mad Dog Tavern in New Hampshire, two hours away, with the catchphrase “bite first.” They decide to drive there and ask about Mr. Larkin.

On the drive to New Hampshire, Tripp asks Brynn to the upcoming winter dance, and she accepts. They reach the bar and go inside. The owner, Rose, notices they’re underage and asks them to leave, until they explain they just want to know about the medallion and William Larkin, who may have been called William Robbins in the past. Rose reveals that Dexter Robbins, Billy/William’s father, used to own this bar, but she bought it from him after he became religious and thought owning a bar was immoral. After Dexter sold the bar to Rose, Billy still came around and loved the place, so she gave him the medallion with his name on it. Rose didn’t know Billy had died and is sad.

Rose confirms that Dexter Robbins became fanatical and controlling with his second wife, Lila, and his young son Mikey. Billy was already a teenager by this time and could go out on his own, but not Lila and Mikey, who seem to have run away from Dexter and changed their names. Rose thinks this was the right choice, and wishes Lila could also have taken Billy away, but since he wasn’t her son biologically, this would have been kidnapping. Rose lost touch with Billy for a while as he got older, but last time she saw him, he was different and angrier. Last time Rose checked, Dexter now owns a pawn shop in town. She would not put murder beyond Dexter and thinks he could be responsible for Billy’s death, especially if there was some ongoing family drama. Rose warns the kids to stay away from Dexter. Rose explains that she made a second medallion for Mikey, but Tripp notes that it was not found at the crime scene along with Billy’s.

Brynn wants to go check out local pawn shops to see if she can find where Dexter works. She goes to a few with no luck, then finally tries Last Chance Pawn Shop. The only other car in the lot is the owner’s, which turns out to be a man around Dexter’s age. Brynn pretends she’s pawning her bracelet. While Dexter examines it, Brynn puts her keys on the counter, and the medallion from Mad Dog Tavern is still on her keychain. It’s flipped to the side that just says “Billy.” Dexter sees it and asks where she got it. He becomes upset and she leaves. He follows, asking who she is and running after the car as she and Tripp drive off.

Brynn makes up with Mason and Nadia with homemade cookies and later Brynn debriefs with Ellie. Ellie thinks the photograph of an 18-year-old Lila Robbins looks generic enough to be a lot of people. She could be Shane’s mom, but she could also be a lot of moms, especially with things like hair dye and plastic surgery. Still, Brynn thinks the woman in the photograph looks very familiar. Ellie asks Brynn if knowing who’s been vandalizing the school’s posters of Mr. Larkin would be useful. Brynn says it would, but then Ellie changes the subject back to the upcoming dance, which their mom has volunteered to chaperone.

Tripp’s father asks why Tripp drank his entire liquor stash while skipping school for a week. Tripp is about to tell his dad everything about the past four years: how he thought his dad committed a murder, how he covered it up, and why he’s been so distant ever since. However, Tripp only gets as far as explaining that he recently found another dead body (Mr. Solomon) and that crime shows have been looking into Mr. Larkin’s murder. His father responds by saying if he found a dead body, he’d drink a cabinet of liquor, too.

Then Tripp says that he knows his dad took the money. Tripp’s father then explains that Lisa Marie actually stole the money, and he was trying to figure out how to deal with it. Tripp’s dad found it and brought it home, planning to return it to the school. However, when it disappeared, Tripp’s father assumed Lisa Marie had taken it back, but now realizes that Tripp had returned it. Tripp confesses he thought his father was capable of theft, but not murder. His dad forgives him for drinking the liquor, and while they make a rare and genuine connection, they don’t clear the air fully about the past.

Brynn and Ellie’s mother is sick, so Uncle Nick chaperones the winter dance instead. Brynn and Trip ride together in a van with Mason and his date, Geoff, and Nadia and her date, Pavan. When they arrive at the crowded school parking lot, Tripp and Brynn finally kiss. Inside the dance, Brynn finds some more vandalized pictures of Mr. Larkin and approaches one poster above a desk in the hallway. Ellie appears next to Brynn and excitedly announces that her “trap” was effective.