When Blake goes into the kitchen, there are fruit flies everywhere, even though he and Krista clean every day and set two traps. He realizes that a lot of them are clustered around the upper cabinet where they keep clean dishes, so he gets a stool to look. He finds a small, brown paper bag inside. When he starts to look into it, the stool beneath him breaks and he falls to the floor.

The bag is full of old fruit covered in flies and maggots. He realizes that Whitney must have put it there, but he can’t confront her or tell Krista about it, as she won’t believe him. Instead, he goes into Whitney’s room and drops the contents of the bag on her bed.

The following Wednesday, Blake meets Malcolm for drinks. They briefly talk about Blake’s new job and then Blake asks who took his job as VP. When Malcolm admits it was him, Blake is shocked, especially since Malcolm was never a very good employee. Annoyed by Blake’s surprise, Malcolm points out that at least he didn’t “steal” from the company. Offended, Blake insists that he never stole anything and angrily storms out of the bar.

Blake wakes up a few days later to the sound of Krista yelling his name. He finds her standing in front of Goldy’s tank, crying because Goldy is dead. He tells her that they can have a funeral for her, so she goes to get a baggie to put her in. Blake then notices the smell of bleach coming from the tank. When Krista returns, he points it out, but she insists that she can’t smell anything. Blake tells her that it was probably Whitney doing it for revenge. When Krista asks what she would need revenge for, Blake is forced to tell her about the rotting fruit.

Krista tells Blake that she likes Whitney and that he is likely imagining most of the things that she is doing wrong. Because she is visibly upset, Blake backs down, realizing that he needs to be careful so that he doesn’t lose Krista.

As Blake and Krista prepare for Goldy’s funeral, Whitney comes home. She offers to get rid of the fishbowl. Blake tries to stop her, wanting to test the water for bleach, but she dumps it before he can, winking at him when she returns.

In the backyard, Krista asks Blake to say something. He talks about how “fast” Goldy was, but Krista seems unhappy with his words. Whitney then speaks, talking about how comforting Goldy was and how she was part of the family. Krista tears up, turning to Whitney for comfort, which infuriates Blake.

Blake angrily calls Whitney a “bitch,” accusing her of killing Goldy. Shocked, Krista tries to step in, but Blake continues, insisting that he knows about the bleach. Whitney assures Krista that she understands he is just grieving, but then Krista says that Blake never really cared about Goldy. She leaves him in the backyard, and Whitney follows her into the house.

Over the next week, Blake does his best to make things up to Krista. The fruit fly situation is better in the kitchen, and he no longer has a rash since Krista started taking his clothes to the dry cleaners. Krista slowly forgives him, as she bakes cookies for the first time in weeks and they have sex for the first time in months. Things even seem better with Whitney, who largely avoids interacting with Blake.

Blake plans a dinner with Krista at a nice restaurant while she’s at work. He falls asleep on the couch, waking up when she gets home. She asks if he got her message, and he realizes that he can’t find his phone. Krista calls it, and they hear it ringing upstairs in Whitney’s room.

Blake finds his phone in the sheets of Whitney’s bed. Krista then finds a tube of lipstick—the same shade that was on his collar—on the dresser. He asks Blake about it, but Blake accuses Whitney of putting the lipstick there. Krista doesn’t believe him and tells Blake that she needs a few days away from him.

Krista goes to their bedroom and begins packing, as Blake insists that he did nothing wrong and that Whitney is behind it all. Krista interrupts him, pulling out a bottle of bleach from the closet. Blake tells her that Whitney must have put it there, but Krista accuses him of killing Goldy. She then points out that he has been acting weird for months, ever since he “stole” from his company. Blake is both upset and confused that Krista would accuse him of stealing. She had always supported him—yet now he wonders if Whitney convinced her that he was guilty. Krista tells him that she is going to stay with Becky for a few days.

Blake follows Krista out of the house, trying to get her to stay, but she ignores him and gets into a taxi. After she leaves, Mr. Zimmerly comes outside and yells at Blake for not taking care of his trash cans. Angry, Blake throws a can at him—missing intentionally—and it clatters into the street. He yells at Mr. Zimmerly that he is going to try again, but Mr. Zimmerly quickly goes inside.

After Krista leaves, Blake walks around for hours in the rain with no destination. When he finally gets home, he gets his leftover food from the night before and a beer out of the fridge. As he sits down and starts eating, he gags, feeling like something is wrong with his food. He then finds dozens of hairs in the noodles, then pulls several out of his mouth. He can tell by the color that they’re Whitney’s.

Blake goes up to Whitney’s room and angrily pounds on the door several times. After a minute, she opens it, acting as if nothing is wrong. Blake tells her that she has 30 days to get out of his house. She responds that she plans on being gone before then anyway.

A week later, on his way home from work, Blake gets a call from his dad. Blake hasn’t talked to him in weeks and realizes how much he misses him and his good advice. He admits to his dad that Krista moved out, and his father tells him to just give her the space that she needs for now. Blake then promises to go to his father’s house for Thanksgiving in a few weeks.

As Blake gets home, he realizes that Mr. Zimmerly’s trash cans are still by the road. Wanting to gloat, he knocks on his door but gets no answer. He tries the door, and it opens. Blake thinks that he should call the police but decides that Mr. Zimmerly might need help, so he goes in.

Inside, everything is quiet. He notes a clock on the mantle that looks familiar and finds a sandwich and a glass of water on the counter. He sees a light under the bathroom door but hears nothing coming from the other side. When he opens it, he screams at what he sees.

A while later, Blake is still shaken by finding Mr. Zimmerly dead on his bathroom floor with blood around his body. A police officer asks Blake why he was in the house, and Blake explains his story. The officer then says that he will have to alert Mr. Zimmerly’s daughter, which makes Blake realize he knows nothing about his neighbor.

Blake texts Krista and tells her that Mr. Zimmerly died. She responds—the first time she has done so since she moved out. However, when Blake tells her he misses her, she stops answering.

Blake goes to a laundromat nearby to do his laundry. While he waits, he puts a photo of Whitney into an image search. It returns dozens of pictures of women. He scrolls threw them, but none of them are Whitney or any woman he knows from his past.

When Blake gets up, he accidentally knocks over his laundry detergent. Seeing it, he realizes that it is not the one he normally uses. He angrily texts Krista, telling her that Whitney replaced his laundry detergent. However, she doesn’t answer, and he immediately regrets sending it.

A few days later, Blake goes to a food stand near his apartment. He feels like someone is watching him and sees a short man nearby who immediately looks away. When Blake catches the man looking again, he realizes that it is one of the people who looked at their spare room before Whitney.

Blake goes over to the man and asks what he wants. The man responds with, “What you did to Whitney […] was disgusting” (180). Blake angrily asks him what he means, but the man quickly scurries away without answering.

Blake drinks several beers in his living room. When he gets up to get another, he stumbles over the rug, realizing that he is drunker than he thought. He then notices that the rug has moved. When he drags it back to where it belongs, he sees a brown stain underneath it.

Angry and blaming Whitney, Blake begins scrubbing the stain. After it starts to come off, he realizes that it’s not brown but dark red. He then smells something “metallic” and wonders if the stain may be blood. Before he can investigate further, someone knocks on his door.

The man at the door introduces himself as Detective Garrison. He tells Blake that he wants to ask him a few questions about Mr. Zimmerly. They did an autopsy; Mr. Zimmerly didn’t die from the fall but from being hit on the back of the head.

Detective Garrison asks Blake about throwing the trash can at Mr. Zimmerly. He asks Blake to come down to the station to talk more and give his fingerprints. However, Blake insists that he can’t. Detective Garrison doesn’t force the issues, but on his way out, he tells Blake that he will be back.

It dawns on Blake why the clock in Mr. Zimmerly’s house looked familiar: he and Krista have the same one. However, when he goes to the kitchen, he realizes that their clock is gone.

Blake returns to the stain on the floor and realizes that it is definitely blood. At the same moment, Whitney comes inside. She makes a comment about the detective and Mr. Zimmerly, and Blake realizes that she could be behind what happened to him. He starts to argue with her, but she goes upstairs.

The next morning, Blake gets out of bed and hears Malcolm downstairs talking to Whitney. He sneaks downstairs and tries to listen to their conversation, but Malcolm spots him; Whitney quickly goes upstairs.

Blake asks how Malcolm knows Whitney. He responds that he only knows her from the diner where she works. Malcolm then pulls Krista’s engagement ring out of his pocket. Blake refuses to take it, but Malcolm tells him that she isn’t done with him—she just wants him to have the ring in case he needs to sell it. Blake realizes that the money from the ring would be useful.

Blake texts Krista and asks if he can see her. She initially says no, so he tells her that he is coming over to Becky’s. Realizing that he sounds aggressive, he writes “please.” After a few moments, Krista tells him to come in an hour.

At Becky’s house, Krista bakes cookies. To Blake’s surprise, she is amicable and talks sincerely with him about their relationship. She insists that she can’t move back because Blake has become “obsessed” with Whitney. She admits that she does not think he cheated on her, but she wants him to fix his life before she comes back.

In response, Blake grows agitated, insisting that he is fine. However, Becky then comes out of the other room and tells Blake that he needs to leave. Krista gives him cookies and hugs him before he goes, giving him hope that she still loves him.

Back at home, Blake pulls up the background check he did on Whitney. He finds her hometown in New Jersey and looks it up online. He gets the phone number for her high school but stops before calling, wondering if Krista is right about how obsessed he has become. Before he can decide, his phone rings.

Kenny asks Blake why he isn’t at work, and Blake realizes that he never called in. He lies and says he is sick, but Kenny tells him that someone saw him out on the street that morning. Kenny fires Blake.

Blaming Whitney for the fact that he got fired, Blake decides to call the high school after all. He lies, saying that he is looking for a transcript because Whitney applied for a job. However, when he tells the receptionist Whitney’s name, she is shocked. She tells Blake that he should “pick another candidate,” as Whitney Cross is “extremely dangerous” (210).

The receptionist tells Blake about what Whitney did in high school. Her senior year, her boyfriend, Jordan Gallo, cheated on her. Jordan’s life then fell apart—he was accused of cheating on a test, lost his football scholarship, and was found with insects crawling in his locker. Then, he supposedly died by suicide, jumping from the roof of the school. However, his parents insisted that Whitney was responsible and made it look like a death by suicide. Before the matter could be investigated, she vanished, and no one in the town has heard from her since.

Shaken by the phone call, Blake goes into the bathroom. He realizes how horrible he looks, with his hair disheveled and bags under his eyes. He goes to the kitchen and gets water, wanting a beer but not allowing himself to have one.

As Blake drinks, he notices how much worse the fruit flies have gotten. There are now several houseflies as well. He looks around and sees them clustering near the side of the refrigerator. He reaches down between the refrigerator and counter and pulls out another brown bag.

Inside the bag are three fingers, the nails painted. Disgusted and shocked, Blake pulls out his phone to call 911. However, he stops himself, thinking about Mr. Zimmerly and the bloodstain on the floor. He knows that he should report it but is afraid that it will all somehow be linked back to him because of Whitney.

Blake receives an email on his phone. It is the high school transcript that the receptionist sent over. As he reads the name of Whitney’s school again, Telmont, he thinks of how familiar it sounds, but he can’t figure out why. He then spots Whitney’s home address on the transcript and decides that he needs to speak with her parents. He puts the address in his phone and sees that it is only a couple of hours away.

Blake decides to put the fingers back next to the fridge where he found them. Although he knows his fingerprints are on them now, he hopes that it will make Whitney think that he hasn’t found them yet. He then calls Malcolm, asking to borrow his car, but Malcolm refuses.

Blake decides that he has no choice but to rent a car, despite the cost, and drives out to Telmont. He checks the mailbox and notes that the house still belongs to Whitney’s family. He knocks on the door, but no one answers, so Blake waits in the car.

Blake starts thinking about the fingers, wondering who they belong to. They looked like they were starting to decompose, so he is sure they aren’t Krista’s. However, he texts her anyway, asking if she is alright. After several moments, the message doesn’t deliver, causing him to panic.

As Blake waits for over an hour, he becomes more and more convinced that the fingers belong to Krista. He eats several of the cookies she gave him, trying to calm himself down. Finally, a car arrives at the house, and he sees an older woman get out.

After the woman goes inside, Blake goes up and rings the doorbell. The woman answers, and Blake thinks of how she doesn’t really look like Whitney. Blake introduces himself and tells her that Whitney has been living with him. He considers how to explain what he has been going through. However, in his hesitation, the woman simply tells him to “come in” as they “need to talk” (229).

Mrs. Cross and Blake sit in the living room. She tells him about Whitney’s childhood. One time, her younger brother Joey accidentally broke one of her toys. In retaliation, Whitney shoved him off the highest point of the jungle gym at the playground. She was seven at the time. Mrs. Cross also found out recently that the girl Jordan cheated on her with in high school died, six years after the incident. The thought chills Blake, as he thinks of how she held a vendetta for six years over a high school romance. Mrs. Cross warns him that whatever he did to Whitney, she will never forget it, but Blake insists that he doesn’t know what he did wrong.

Because she can tell that Blake is shaken, Mrs. Cross goes to get him a glass of water. While she’s gone, he looks at the pictures on the mantle. One of them is a family photo of Whitney with her parents. Confused, Blake asks Mrs. Cross who is in the photo; she insists that it is her daughter, but Blake is certain that the teenage girl in the photo is Krista.

Overwhelmed, Blake struggles for air. Mrs. Cross helps him outside to his car. He pulls out his phone and tries to call Stacie, but she doesn’t answer. He then goes to her Facebook and sees that her roommate has made a post asking for help finding her. Blake cheated on Krista with Stacie shortly after starting at Coble & Roy. He thought that Krista never found out, but he now realizes that the fingers must belong to Stacie.

As Blake puts his phone in his jacket pocket, he feels a piece of paper. It is a note in his handwriting—but one that he didn’t write. As he reads it, he realizes that it is a suicide note and decides that Krista must have planted it there.

Blake sees the cookies on the passenger seat and realizes that Krista may have tried to poison him. He rushes out of his car and makes himself throw up the entire contents of his stomach.