The Collinsport Weather Report: Episode 46: The End of the Road

Monday, August 29, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. The surf pounds at the foot of Widow’s Hill like the erratic beat of a frightened heart—a beat that is magnified in the minds of those who can find no relief from mounting tension.

Roger restlessly stalks the drawing room. He goes into the hall and puts on his coat. He picks up the phone and starts to make a call, but thinks better of it and hangs up.

The phone rings. It’s his old friend, Burke Devlin, telling Roger to be sure to be at his (Roger’s) office at eleven o’clock tonight. Bill Malloy is setting up a meeting. Roger says Bill has no right to do that. Burke hangs up.

Roger takes his coat off and goes into the drawing room, closing the door. He calls Bill. The housekeeper, Mrs. Johnson, answers. She doesn’t know where he is or when he’ll be back.

Vicki comes into the drawing room looking for a drawing (appropriately enough). Roger tells her where it is.

“Oh, thank you. I think David would kill me if I lost this.”

“My son might kill you even if you didn’t.”

Vicki says David has real potential in drawing and she thinks if they can nurture it, that will help David be creative rather than destructive. “I think it’s a way of reaching him, and showing him the world isn’t completely hostile.”

“What makes you think it isn’t? . . . Have you ever thought that David’s view might be the correct one?”

“You don’t think that.”

“Oh, don’t I, though? I was once nine years old, as David is. Unlike him, Miss Winters, I was filled with joy and the spirit of living—love and the promise of a good full life ahead. Well, maybe it’s far better to be nine years old and know how ugly life can be.”

“Well, that isn’t so.”

“Maybe it’s better to know you live in a world where hands are reaching out, waiting to tear you to shreds.”

Roger brushes aside her objections and calls her “Pollyanna, Miss Pollyanna in a world of pain.” He advises her not to waste time trying destroy David’s instinctive grasp of the truth. After a moment, he relents and looks at the drawing. “Collinwood and all its dark shadows.” He says David has captured it.

Vicki says she wants David to meet a real artist—Sam Evans. Maggie has invited her to dinner.

Roger doesn’t like this idea at all.

Vicki doesn’t think she’s ever met Sam.

Bill comes to the Evans cottage to issue his invitation for the eleven o’clock meeting tonight.

Sam says he can’t come, but Bill is angry and insistent. Sam yells back that his answer is “No, no, no!” He says it has nothing to do with him.

Bill says he told Burke that Sam said, “I’m the only thing standing between Roger Collins and a prison sentence.”

Sam says he isn’t going to let Bill tear his life apart. What about Maggie?

Bill says some things a man has to work out for himself.

Roger tries to talk Vicki into meeting with another artist instead of Sam Evans.

She says she hasn’t been invited by another artist’s daughter to his home.

Roger asks to be left alone to make phone calls.

Bill arrives and demands to see Roger.

Vicki asks Bill what kind of a man Sam is. Bill says he might learn the answer to that tonight.

Roger takes Bill into the drawing room. Bill tells him that he, Roger, Burke, and Sam are going to have the whole thing out tonight.

“Come on, Roger. It’s the end of the road, and you know it.”

Bill isn’t going to sit around and let Burke make Roger’s sister pay for something Roger did.

Roger says Sam will never show up.

Bill says he will.

“My sister will never forgive you.”

“Maybe not.” Bill tells Roger he can call the police and tell them to truth. Then they can avoid the meeting.

“That how you keep your hands clean, is that it?”

Bill tells Roger he has fifty minutes to decide if he’s going to call the police. If he doesn’t, he better show up at eleven o’clock.

Vicki wants to talk to Roger about Sam Evans. She wonders if the strange, frightening man she met on the edge of the cliff was Sam. She wonders if he can tell her something about herself.