At the end of episode 3 of The Last Anniversary, Grace tells Sophie and Callum a heartbreaking story about her mom. I suppose, really, there are two sides to this story. One is the mystery behind Enigma’s parents’ disappearance, or well, her mom and uncle’s disappearance, and the other is just generational trauma for all the women on the show. I’m quite confused about what’s going on with Rose here, though. I don’t know if it’s just her being mad about Connie leaving her house to Sophie or just Connie being dead. I’m really not sure. The poster of the show is quite interesting because in it, we see Grace facing away from the camera and Veronica, Sophie, and Rose hugging her tightly. Sophie has an almost terrified expression combined with a hint of sadness, but I’m not able to figure out what it means just yet (as a non-reader and all that). But with that said, let’s jump straight into The Last Anniversary episode 3.
Spoiler Alert
What Do The Girls Find Out About Alice?
On the night after the dinner, Sophie and the lawyer begin to get intimate; well, he places his head on her lap for strokes, but then Sophie starts to smell something weird. When she steps out, she realizes it’s a septic tank leak. Obviously this puts her off of whatever sexcapades the lawyer had in mind, so the next morning he leaves just like that, claiming he needs to be thinking about his daughter. She calls him out for leaving because she didn’t sleep with him. On the other hand, Callum invites her over for dinner because Grace thinks they should meet more people. Sophie’s delighted, but Callum says that he thinks he should tell Grace about their Thailand stuff. Sophie thinks it’s a bad idea because it’s already too late, and Callum agrees.
Meanwhile, Veronika’s dad figures out the septic stuff for Sophie, and he definitely comes across as a creep, as Veronika pointed out in the previous episode. But he tells Sophie he’d buy the house off her for Veronika, which feels quite random. Sophie tells him that she wants to try things out properly because Connie clearly wanted her there. She definitely means it, because not only is she trying to sort things out for herself, but she’s also eager to know more about this story and likes everything about the place. I guess it’s the kind of respite a single woman in her 40s desperate for a baby would like.
Veronika then tells Sophie that they need to go off to the mainland to meet with a detective who can help with the bloodstains since Sophie promised to help with the podcast and all that. The detective says that she can’t do much because the dress wasn’t preserved; it was just kept in Connie’s basement. However, she does talk about looking into the brand that made the dress for more clues, and boy, does it give them clues and a whole story of its own. The girls find out that Alice used to work at Finchenson’s Department Store, and that’s where she got her white dress made, too. While Veronika is trying to track down someone who worked with Alice, Thomas shows up at home because his wife kicked him out for a bit. Apparently they’re okay, though. On the other hand, Margie goes for her first creative composition class and might have found someone to replace her husband with, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Back at home, Sophie’s doing her research and puts on one of Alice’s dresses. She starts to dance around to classical music in the house and gets caught by a stranger, yelling “But I’m pregnant” (iconic). This is Zeke the gardener, and as you can imagine, Sophie looks at her watch and then heads out with him to explore the place. When she comes back to give Rose a package from him, Rose says some really hurtful things. For one, she tells Enigma that Sophie is looking for a husband, which Enigma says Zeke is definitely not the right guy for, but when Sophie says she’s not looking for a husband, Rose says no, she’s just looking to have a baby, meaning she knows how desperate Sophie is for a child and might’ve seen her doing the IVF treatment? But it’s very harsh either way. However, at night, Zeke and Sophie do end up sleeping together, just as Rose and Enigma predicted.
When Veronika gets back home, she has a little word with Grace and notices something’s off about her. When telling her that she’s got some new information about Alice, Grace says Alice isn’t hard to figure out; she’s just a mother who left her baby behind. At night, Grace and Enigma have another argument because Enigma says it’s Grace’s “duty” to pick up her crying baby. Enigma quickly corrects herself and says it is Grace’s “turn” to look after the boy. Now, Grace has been hallucinating scenarios about her son lately, but I do think she heard Enigma right. Anyway, she’s quite a terrible mom and gets kicked out of the house.
The next morning, Veronika and Sophie head out to meet a woman Veronika found who worked with Alice. She tells them that Alice was a beautiful woman and their boss, Mr. Finch, had his eyes on her. This is when she brings up the “breadboard man,” another unsolved mystery from back in the day. This man, Mr. Finch, was murdered at the dinner table, and nobody knows who the murderer was, but this woman tells the girls that she thinks Alice killed him, which is why she went missing. Mr. Finch had sexually assaulted Alice, and she’d told his fiancée to leave him, which got her fired. But if Alice was pregnant with Enigma, then it could be the “breadboard man’s” child. So maybe Alice felt disgusted by the baby and decided to leave her behind? She also might’ve suffered postpartum depression like her granddaughter is now and thought it best to leave.
What Does Grace Tell Sophie and Callum?
Grace is meant to take her baby to the mainland and roam around the city, but when she’s waiting for the ferry, she hallucinates that the people around her are telling her that her baby isn’t hers and that she should give him to them. This freaks her out, and she goes to the Munro home, puts her baby in the crib, and lies down on the bed. When Enigma shows up with the tour, Grace quickly picks up her baby and leaves, making it seem like everything’s okay when it clearly isn’t.
Finally, it’s time for dinner, and Sophie hands Grace some dessert. It looks like there’s some smeared on the box, which leads to Grace having an allergic reaction. Turns out that Grace is allergic to all nuts and can’t breathe. While her throat’s closing up, Grace imagines herself in the sea and Alice calling her towards her. Grace is so depressed that she wants to free herself by following her grandmother’s (possibly) footsteps. Sophie freaks out, but while Callum gives Grace the EpiPen, he asks Sophie if she can hold Ollie for a bit since he’s crying. When she’s holding the baby and Grace feels somewhat okay, she looks at Sophie holding the baby and standing next to Callum and sees them as the perfect family. I suppose she thinks she’s unfit to be a mother and that Sophie might do a better job than her. On the other hand, Enigma asks Rose at their own dinner if she thinks she’s a terrible mother. Rose tells her to eat her food, which makes it obvious that she does think so. Rose tells Enigma that everyone has monsters, and Enigma makes a monstrous sound at her. Enigma thinks she has the right to be a terrible mother because she was abandoned, but Rose reminds her that Connie was a fantastic mom to her.
At the end of The Last Anniversary episode 3, Grace tells Sophie and Callum about how her mom once watched her nearly kill herself. When Grace was around 12, Enigma stopped talking to her because she’d tracked some mud into the house (what?). She didn’t speak to her for a month, so Grace decided to buy a fruit roll that contained a lot of nuts and take it to her mom. Grace held it at Enigma and told her mom that she’d kill herself if she didn’t talk to her. Enigma watched Grace, dead in the eye, putting the fruit roll into her mouth. By this time, she was already breathless, but it was Grace who found her EpiPen, because she was responsible, just as her mom wanted her to be, and saved herself. Enigma then told Grace that a woman should always know how to save herself and be resourceful, the first words she told her daughter after she nearly killed herself. Of course Grace doesn’t want to be a mom! The parallels between Grace and Sophie’s lives are not lost on me, though, and I wonder if they’ll be able to save each other.
