Mare of Easttown Season 1, Episode 4 recap: Is Katie Bailey still alive?

Mare of Easttown Season 1, Episode 4 recap: Mare struggles to take the backseat on Erin’s case.

Mare is officially suspended from work, and based on the opening scene of Mare of Easttown Season 1, Episode 4, she has no intention of telling her family. At least, not yet. The episode opens with Mare still in bed as her mom asks her if she’s planning to be home that night or work late. We know she’ll be home.

One person Mare has told? Lori. And Lori is curious whether she’ll tell her family or keep pretending to go to work every day. Lori also thinks that grief counseling isn’t the worst thing for Mare, especially after Katie, Erin and Kevin.

That night, Mare calls a “family meeting” with Siobhan and Helen. To Mare’s credit, she comes straight out and tells her mom and daughter exactly what she did in her attempts to frame Carrie and then subsequently getting benched. Helen is especially pissed. She’s lucky that Carrie can’t prove it was Mare, or they could lose Drew altogether.

The dinner turns into a good way for the women to share whatever they’ve been holding back. Siobhan says she broke up with Becca, and Helen? She’s just trying to figure out “what I’m going to do stuck in the house with you all day.”

During her first grief counseling session, Mare tells her counselor not to expect a “hallelujah” moment from her.

Later, she gets coffee with Richard. She admits that talking to Carrie was a “car crash,” although she doesn’t go into details. Richard thinks Mare is too hard on herself and offers to take her out somewhere fun that weekend to celebrate his birthday.

Drew gets to spend some time with his birth mom in this episode. It’s clear Carrie is trying really hard to make things right for her son. Meanwhile, Mare watches a video diary from Erin where she talks about her personal struggles to give DJ a good life and mentions the journals she’s written, which Mare marks down in her notes.

Erin’s difficulties make a nice parallel to what Carrie is going through with Drew, especially when Carrie turns up at Mare’s door a little while later when Drew in tow because he couldn’t sleep at her house. She’s struggling to accept that her son is more attached to Mare than her, but then we get a flashback to a time when Kevin was alive.

The flashback shows a desperate, high Kevin and Carrie ransacking Mare’s house for money while Mare tries to stop her son from taking her cash to buy more drugs. It’s a heartbreaking scene to watch, especially because it shows Mare far more broken than we’ve ever seen her. Kevin hurls verbal abuse at her, telling his mom how much he hates her and Carrie layers on top of it by calling her a “stupid f**king b*tch” before leaving. So that’s why Mare ended up with custody of Drew.

A teary-eyed Carrie tells Mare that she knows the drugs were her. “You know I’m trying really hard to get my life together. So stop. Just stop.”

Mare of Easttown Season 1, Episode 4 recap: Another girl goes missing.

Across town, a young girl named Missy Sayers (Sasha Frolova) sits in the passenger’s seat of a van with, what I assume, is a grown man. She rambles about her childhood, happier times when she was warm and safe, riding Space Mountain again and again at Disney World.

Then the man pulls over, and it’s clear Missy is working as a prostitute. She starts to initiate sex with the guy, “is this your first time doing this?” And whoever it is lunges across the seat to strangle her.

Cut to Mare watching a news broadcast of Missy’s parents desperately asking for news about their daughter’s whereabouts. And just like that, yet another young girl has vanished in Easttown. Helen wonders if there is a serial killer in town, and she might be right.

Mare of Easttown Season 1, Episode 4 recap: Siobhan’s new date sends Helen to the hospital.

Poor Helen has to comfort Becca (Madeline Weinstein) when she randomly shows up at the house to see Siobhan. Becca is devastated by the breakup. Helen sends her to the basement to wait for Siobhan to get home, unaware she’s out with Anne.

Not knowing Becca is in the basement, Siobhan and Anne go into the house, heavily making out, and the moment is ruined when Becca sees them together and starts screaming. She sprints out of the house, flings open the door and accidentally knocks Helen to the ground, forcing Siobhan to call an ambulance.

The whole thing is hilariously awkward and a little surreal. When Mare gets home, she rides in the ambulance with her mom to the hospital.

Mare goes searching through Erin’s things in hopes of finding the journals. In the process, she finds a small, gold heart necklace with the date 5-29-2017 etched into the surface.