Warning: Spoiler Alert
Regular viewers of the ABC series “Forever,” likely caught on early, that the latest episode entitled “The Night In Question,” differed in cadence and feel from the other chapters of the show. There was no opening or closing monologue for NYPD Medical Examiner Henry Morgan in this go-round, or any of the off the cuff humor we’ve grown used to seeing. This episode had a serious and dark tone, from beginning to its closing seconds, that fit the subject as well as one of Morgan’s jackets.
Whether Abe’s interruption in Jo and Henry’s conversation, in “Best Foot Forward,” kept the pair from an intimate moment or not, his news would cause Henry’s head to spin, when he found out Abe located Abigail with help from Lucas Wahl. After thirty-years of uncertainty and guilt, Morgan would finally discover the fate of the love of his existence.
Abigail’s last known address was in Tarrytown, New York, back in 1985 and Abe suggests they take a ride over to see if anyone remembers her. Henry’s first thoughts are that Abigail’s still alive, but Abe reminds him that 95-year olds, are pretty rare amongst we mortals. Henry realizes that his wife likely has passed in the thirty-years since he last saw her. They drive out into the country and Henry wonders why Abigail would have lived out in the middle of nowhere. Abe theorizes she may have searched for peace and quiet, Morgan feels she was attempting to hide from him.
They find the house and see an elderly woman outside gardening, they tell each other it can’t be Abigail and they’re correct. However, the woman remembers Sylvia Blake, the alias Abigail used in Tarrytown. She lived in her guest cottage a long time ago. Abe explains Sylvia was his mother, she says that she woke up one morning and Sylvia was gone, but she has a box of her belongings she saved through the years.
She’s about to show Abe the box when Henry spies a winter rosebush, he says that legend has it that Alexander The Great, died from its poison. The woman tells Abe his mother planted that flower, Henry goes on a flashback to Brooklyn in 1946. Abigail, Henry and baby Abraham are in their first American home, an apartment that according to Abigail smells like warm garbage. The landlord, a middle-aged man with a thick Brooklyn accent, comes to the door and says “Youse must be Da Morgans.”
Henry introduces himself, his wife and son extends his hand and the landlord puts a pipe in his hand, telling him to bang on the radiator, when it starts hissing, else the pipes may burst, he welcomes them to America and leaves. Abigail’s looking concerned and asks her husband, if he’s sure this is a good place to raise a family? He tells her to close her eyes, then presents her with a potted winter rose, that he kept alive, during their passage on the Queen Mary. She says she thinks she’s going to like things there.
He’s returning from the memory about the same time the woman and Abe return with the box. She sees Henry looking at the ground near the bush and asks if anything’s wrong? Morgan says that land sinks when a body’s laid below it, in a shallow grave. Abe says he was a gravedigger in a former life, Henry asks for a spade and he comes up with a skull and bones. Abe asks if it’s his mother.
Mike Hanson’s on the phone with his wife Karen, about their pending ski-getaway complaining about the prices, until she hangs up on him. Jo starts to chastise him he asks why she’s not in Paris with Isaac, she responds it fell through. He asks the trip or relationship, she replies both and he expresses sorrow but for himself. He tells her the only reason he made these plans, was because she’d be in Paris. She says she and Henry will hold down the fort, Mike tells her that Morgan’s on a trip.
Fearing she’s the reason Henry left the city without telling her, she finds Lucas and asks where Henry’s at, after a couple of minutes of bluster he tells her they’re searching for Abe’s mother in Tarrytown. She asks what happened to Abe’s father and Lucas tells her he’s unaware of his circumstances, but Jo thinks there’s something funny in the equation.
The house has been declared a crime scene by the Tarrytown’s Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Vance says that Henry can’t get involved with the unearthing of the bones without NYPD authority. Jo suddenly rolls up and identifies herself, she asks if the NYPD can take over the case and Vance says if they want the old bones, they’re hers to take.
The skeleton’s assembled in the lab and Henry tells Lucas to begin the autopsy, he says that the victim’s a woman, dead for more than 25-years. He then mutters that’s strange, and says her growth plates are open, Morgan says that’s impossible, but in fact they are. That means the victim was no older than 20, ruling out it being Abigail’s remains.
Henry tells Abe that the bones aren’t those of his mother’s, they’re both relieved but frustrated that they’re still back at square one in the search for Abigail. They look in the box of Abigail’s belongings, but it gives them no clue as to what happened to her.
Back at the station, Wahl’s come up with a probable match to the victim. Belinda Smoot, who went missing in 1985 at the age of twenty, fits the description, Lucas also discovered that beside the blow to the head that killed the young woman, she sustained a broken arm, which got reset and was healing when she died. Henry asks Jo if she’d like to go on a trip.
They head to the Tarrytown hospital and he tells her she could have been in Paris, instead she’s enjoying the décor of the emergency ward. She says that wasn’t meant to be and Henry nods. Then she tells him from now on come to her in a situation, such as trying to find Abe’s mother. He says Abe contacted Lucas, not he and she’s one of the few people he trusts. She smiles and says she’s glad, as she thought she made him feel uncomfortable that night in Abe’s shop. He says it takes far more than that to make him feel uncomfortable.
Sylvia Blake treated Belinda for a broken arm the night of April 7, 1985, Henry suggests they look for a veteran nurse who might have worked with Sylvia. They find a lovely woman named Bertha, who remembers Sylvia fondly she tells them she was special. Henry asks why she left and Bertha says she left as she arrived, out of the blue, however she still remembers her last shift.
Sylvia was attending to Belinda who broke her arm in a car accident, when the sheriff’s department brought in a guy they found by the side of the road, the victim of a hit and run accident his motorcycle lying nearby. We see the emergency room in that moment and watch Sylvia tell the victim, she’ll patch him up. When Sylvia left the hospital she took Belinda with her. When Martinez tells Bertha that Teddy Graves was the man who checked her in, she says no wonder the girl decided not to press charges.
Turns out that Teddy Graves is a Federal Judge, which doesn’t stop Martinez and Morgan, from going to his courtroom and accusing him of being the driver, that caused a hit and run accident and that he murdered Belinda Smoot. Graves tells the pair that if someone brought the case they’re trying to pin on him in his courtroom he’d throw the case out, then drives away.
The move felt great for Jo and Henry, but it cost them the case as Graves called station Lieutenant Reece. She tells Martinez to give back the bones and tell Henry to stop wasting the city’s resources. Later Abe and Henry get called out to the street outside the antique store and meet Lucas, whose got boxes filled with dirt from Smoot’s grave. He says the soil’s a treasure chest of evidence too bad they don’t have a lab to use, as Reece told them to keep away from the case. Henry looks to Abe and asks if he thinks it’s time to tell Lucas, he smiles devilishly when Lucas asks what he’s referring to.
Lucas looks like he landed in the Land Of Oz, when Henry reveals the lab within Abe’s Antiques. He gushes that Henry’s a beautiful man. He says just when he thinks Morgan’s peaked, he reaches yet another level. While Lucas sifts through his treasure, Henry goes upstairs and pulls a book out of the box of Abigail’s belongings. He gets to a poem, written by Yates entitled When You Are Old, once again flashing back to that apartment in Brooklyn. He and Abigail are lying in bed one sunny, lazy, day when she says she has to read the poem to him as it’s so romantic. She reads a portion and stops, as they melt into each others arms.
He drops the book and an envelope falls out, he finds a letter from Abigail to him dated April 7, 1985. She apologizes for taking so long, but she realizes she needs him in her life. She writes that she’s found the perfect spot for them, in the country, with a garden and a root cellar. His reading’s interrupted by Abe calling for him and Henry shows him the letter.
He’s filled with joy that Abigail wanted them to be a family again, but Abe reminds him that her not mailing the letter bodes badly. Henry agrees, saying something tragic must have kept her from sending it. Lucas comes up from the lab with what he believes is an earing that he found in the dirt, Henry corrects him, telling his assistant it’s a tie tack. He reads the inscription in Latin, which translates to Under God She Flourishes. He tells Lucas he did great work, then says he’ll bring it to Jo.
However he heads to Graves’ office and puts the tack on the Judge’s desk, when Graves walks in he looks at it and picks it up. Morgan’s standing in the shadows, saying this is proof he killed Belinda Smoot and he asks about the nurse. When Graves fails to speak, Henry loses it and starts slamming the Judge into a wall, some court officers pull Henry off him and put Morgan in a cell.
Jo comes to bail him out, but she wants to know what’s going on, Henry says that he’s trying to find out what happened to his oldest and dearest friend’s mother. She doesn’t buy that’s all there’s to it and asks Henry what’s his connection to Abe’s mom, her cellphone rings driving the question out of her mind. She hangs up and tells Morgan that Graves just arrived at the station.
Teddy Graves was back in Tarrytown during a semester break at Princeton, when he and his former middle-school classmate Belinda Smoot had a fling. He did kill the guy on the motorcycle, they were laughing and drinking and he didn’t see him. He went out to look at the guy and knew he was dying, Belinda begged him not to call the cops as her boyfriend would find out and he had a gun. She broke things off with him after the accident, the last time he saw her was dropping her off at the hospital. He says he tried to hide the skeletons in his closet, to protect his bright future. He gives Martinez the motor cycle driver’s medical file he stole from the hospital to cover his tracks.
Henry’s back home, reading Abigail’s unsent letter, when Abe walks in and chides his father for torturing himself reading about the garden and the root cellar. Morgan’s eyes light up and he starts running up the stairs, telling Abe he’s headed to the root cellar. He picks up Jo and they go looking for it together in the dark.
They find it, buried under leaves, they open the door and Henry recognizes Abigail’s preserves. Jo’s cellphone rings with a call from Hanson, she says the signal’s breaking up and she’ll call him back. She heads outside to call Mike whose checked out the hospital on his getaway, he says nobody signed in as a guest but asks who can hang around emergency wards carrying a gun, without signing in? Martinez responds a cop.
Just at that moment Henry finds a bloody Tarrytown Sheriff’s uniform, he hears a voice saying he’s trespassing on an active crime scene. He turns around to find Sheriff Vance standing behind him with his gun aimed at Morgan. Henry says if you’re going to kill me please tell me what happened to the nurse, Vance says Henry doesn’t get it. Jo comes up from behind Vance and makes the Sheriff lower his weapon.
Reece asks Martinez why the Tarrytown Sheriff’s in handcuffs in her station, she tells her that Vance pulled a gun on Henry. She says she’ll call internal affairs to come pick him up and nobody with a badge goes near Vance, Henry says he understands. Reece looks him in the eyes, and says she wasn’t talking to him, Henry finally catches the hint.
He goes into the interrogation room tells Vance he believes when he brought in the guy on the motorcycle, he saw Belinda in the hospital and got upset. Swept up in a jealous rage, he accidentally killed her. Vance says he got drunk they argued, he pushed her and she fell and cracked her head open. So he buried her, but he says that the nurse left before he went in the cottage. She took off in a car with a slender man with dark hair in his thirties, she never returned.
Henry realizes that perhaps Abigail drove the car off the road, as the woman who owned the cottage didn’t see her drive by. He and Jo search the woods, Morgan finds the wrecked and abandoned car, then he finds Abigail’s remains a few feet away.
They bring the bones back to the lab, this time Henry starts the autopsy saying the victim died of a broken pelvis, suffered in the crash her throat was also slit, when she went through the windshield. Lucas, quietly corrects his mentor, pointing out broken ribs that might have occurred during trying to revive her and the wound on her neck came from a knife. He says looking at the angle, it looks like she cut her own throat. Martinez asks why someone would get revived, only to cut their throat? Henry theorizes that she was trying to escape from someone, he then leaves the lab without another word.
When he returns home, he tells Abe that the man on the motorcycle’s the common denominator in all the cases. The problem’s identifying who that man was. Suddenly it dawns on Henry and he tells Abe he needs to be alone for a moment, Abe asks what’s wrong Henry screams a moment.
He uses an old rotary phone to make a call the voice on the other end is Adam’s, he realizes that Henry’s figured out he was involved in Abigail’s death. He curses at Adam and says that he killed her, but Adam explains what actually happened. He was found by the deputies, abandoned on the road somehow this incredible nurse kept him from dying. However he was so badly beaten up he begged her to kill him, then told her that he’s immortal the funny thing was she believed him. So he realized she knew another immortal and wanted her to introduce them to each other.
She was called away to help another nurse, he crawled from his bed to the defibrillator paddles and shocked himself to death. He regenerated and followed her home, but she thought Adam meant Henry harm. As they talked, Belinda came downstairs and asked if all was okay. Adam flashed a knife and asks should I take her first? Abigail tells her everything’s fine she’s just going to give the man a ride. She thought she saved the girl’s life, not realizing Vance was waiting for her to leave.
Henry asks how she died, Adam says she drove the car off the road. He tells Morgan he realizes Henry thinks he’s a monster, but he revived her. When she came to he said for two thousand years I thought I was alone, she spits out the words you’re still alone, grabs his knife and cuts her throat.
Henry says she died trying to protect me, Adam replies that a good woman’s hard to find. He hangs up the phone and we see he’s standing across the street from Abe’s shop, we can see Henry in an upstairs window. He hangs up the phone and stands in the dark, his eyes filled with tears. The lyrics of the background music, say let’s love free, let’s love now. Cause soon enough we’ll die.
The Season Finale Airs Tuesday May 5, at 10:00 pm on ABC.
