Will and Sara are swimming at the lodge lake when they hear a woman scream and split up to investigate.

Will finds Mercy McAlpine stabbed near a burning bachelor cottage and attempts CPR, impaling his hand on the knife still in her chest.

Mercy tells Will to tell Jon that she forgives him, then dies beside the lake.

Cecil and Bitty announce plans to sell the lodge, and Mercy threatens to expose the family's secrets if they vote to sell.

Will and Sara check in at McAlpine Lodge and meet the McAlpine family and their fellow guests.

Will recognizes Dave, his childhood bully from the children's home, working among the lodge staff.

Jon bursts drunkenly into cocktail hour, confronts Mercy about the lodge sale, and declares he wishes she were dead.

Sheriff Biscuits arrives, dismisses Mercy's death as a domestic dispute between her and Dave, and refuses to hand the case to the GBI.

Will and Sara track Dave to Camp Awinita across the lake, where Dave threatens Will with a butterfly knife before Will injures him.

Faith interviews Dave at the hospital and plays back Mercy's final panicked voicemail, which proves Dave could not have killed her.

Sara discovers during Mercy's autopsy that Mercy was pregnant at the time of her murder.

Will finds a bootlegging still and empty eye drop bottles hidden behind a locked door in the equipment shed.

Will goads Dave into a rage during cocktail hour, and Dave confesses to killing Mercy.

Will confronts Jon and realizes from their conversation that Bitty has been sexually abusing him.

Will receives a call about Dave's whereabouts but decides to send other agents and goes home to Sara instead.

Will and Sara's honeymoon at remote McAlpine Lodge is interrupted when Mercy McAlpine is found stabbed beside a burning cottage, her dying words setting the entire investigation in motion. A family dispute over selling the lodge, combined with Will's shock at recognizing his childhood bully Dave among the staff, shapes his assumptions about the killer from the outset. Despite a local sheriff unwilling to pursue the case, Will and Sara track down Dave and appear to have their prime suspect — until Faith discovers a voicemail that clears him entirely. The autopsy reveals Mercy was pregnant, adding complexity to the case, while discoveries of bootlegging and poisoning push the investigation in new directions. Will's plan to goad Dave into revealing information backfires when Dave unexpectedly confesses, but Will's instincts drive him to confront Jon and uncover a devastating truth about Bitty's abuse. In the end, with the case resolved, Will makes a quiet personal choice that signals a new chapter in his life.

The headline events of Mercy McAlpine's murder and investigation.

Will and Sara hike five miles through the mountains to reach the remote McAlpine Lodge, with Will worried Sara won't enjoy the honeymoon he planned.

Dave strangles Mercy on a trail until she nearly loses consciousness after she again refuses to vote to sell the lodge.

Mercy notices a guest's tattoo bearing the name Gabbie and wonders if he is related to the woman she believes she killed.

Sara overhears Gordon and Paul arguing in their cottage about a woman, noticing Paul is addressed by a different name.

Sara admits to Mercy in the lodge kitchen that she is actually a medical examiner, not a high school chemistry teacher.

Sara notices hidden bruising on Mercy's neck during the kitchen visit, recognizing it as a sign of recent strangulation.

Sara sees Jon leaving the lodge with a backpack and vomiting on the front steps just before screams ring out from the lake.

Will assembles the family and guests, announces Mercy's murder, and watches the McAlpine family show no real grief.

Will finds Mercy's fire-resistant backpack containing a damaged notebook, old clothing, and a phone inside the burned cottage.

Faith arrives in town, goes to the hospital, and discovers multiple missed calls from Mercy on Dave's phone.

Penny tells Faith that Cecil used his connections to keep the car accident that killed Gabbie off Mercy's official record.

Chuck collapses into the river while Will follows him down a trail, and Will pulls him ashore but he is already dead.

Sara finds the red plastic knife handle hidden inside the toilet tank in Keisha and Drew's cottage.

Christopher confesses to Faith that he repeatedly poisoned Chuck with eye drops as punishment for how Chuck treated Mercy.

Will and Amanda watch a recording of Jon confessing to Mercy's murder from inside a psychiatric hospital.

Will and Sara arrive at McAlpine Lodge expecting a peaceful honeymoon, but the lodge's isolated setting and its family's buried secrets begin surfacing immediately — from Dave's violence toward Mercy on the trail to a mysterious guest bearing a tattoo with a significant name. During the evening's cocktail hour, Sara's sharp observation of bruises on Mercy's neck and Jon's behavior before the murder give the investigators critical context they don't yet fully understand. After Mercy's death, Will and Sara piece together the scene through key physical evidence, including a fire-resistant backpack left behind and a voicemail that reframes everything. A second death — Chuck's poisoning in the river — temporarily misdirects the investigation before Christopher's confession explains how the eye drops fit in. Sara's discovery of the broken knife handle hidden in a toilet tank provides the physical evidence tying Jon to the crime. The final image of Jon confessing inside a psychiatric hospital closes the case but underscores the full weight of the McAlpine family's generational damage.

The hidden details and secondary moments that shaped the investigation.

Will and Sara lie about their professions while checking in at the lodge, calling themselves a mechanic and a chemistry teacher.

Bitty fires Mercy at cocktail hour and gives her until the end of the week to leave the lodge.

Will sits outside on a bench at night, troubled by the evening's events and reflecting on how Dave destroyed the family life he always wanted.

Delilah tells Will that the McAlpine family adopted Dave from the children's home and falsified his age to keep receiving benefits.

Amanda arrives in town and pressures Sheriff Biscuits into handing control of the murder investigation over to the GBI.

Sara checks on Monica for alcohol poisoning, then tastes the harsh lodge liquor and identifies it as bootlegged moonshine sold under a luxury label.

Faith and Will realize Dave was already a twenty-year-old adult when he began a sexual relationship with fifteen-year-old Mercy.

Christopher confesses to Faith that Cecil raped Gabbie and drove the car that night, then framed Mercy for the fatal crash.

Paul tells Will he found Mercy on the trail the night she died and forgave her, but she spat at him and rejected the forgiveness.

Paul reveals to Will that he saw Cecil stand up from his wheelchair and walk unaided inside the lodge that night.

Will tells Dave that Mercy's dying words were about forgiving Jon, and both men simultaneously realize Jon was her killer.

Mercy opens Jon's bedroom door and finds Bitty in bed with him, and realizes Bitty has been sexually abusing her son.

Mercy tries to flee with Jon to reach the police, but Jon turns cold, strangles her at the lakeshore, and grabs her knife.

Jon stabs Mercy repeatedly as she flees toward the lake, then sets the cottage on fire and leaves her dying in the water.

Bitty dies by suicide rather than face accusations, and her autopsy reveals she had terminal cancer.

The investigation's most shattering revelations come not from the obvious suspects but from the layers of deception and abuse buried inside the McAlpine family for decades. Critical turning points — Bitty firing Mercy, Amanda wresting control from the local sheriff, and Faith uncovering that Dave was falsely aged down — gradually reframe everything investigators assumed about the lodge and its people. A guest posing under a false name unlocks another layer: his sighting of Cecil standing from his wheelchair suggests the patriarch's disability may be partly fabricated, while Christopher's confession exposes Cecil as a rapist who let his own daughter carry guilt for a crime she never committed. Will's confrontation with Dave during cocktail hour ends with both men sharing a silent, devastating realization that the true killer is Jon — a teenager shaped by Bitty's abuse and years of family manipulation. The final chapters, told from Mercy's own perspective, expose the full horror of her last moments, showing her trying to save Jon's future even as he takes her life. Bitty's suicide and the revelation of her terminal cancer close the last chapter of the McAlpine family's long history of secrets.

The key decisions and revelations that exposed the McAlpine family's deepest secrets.