Olivia drives through the gates of Vincent Taylor’s largely unchanged Ojai hacienda, noting the house’s age and careful landscaping. A woman named Alma opens the door instead of Vincent and briskly ushers Olivia inside, directing her to his office. Olivia passes through familiar rooms, revisits her old bedroom, and reflects on her long estrangement and a painful near-sighting of Vincent years earlier at a New York conference where he failed to recognize her.

In Vincent’s study, the trappings of a famous author remain, but his computer sits dark and his desk appears staged. Their initial exchange is combative: Vincent frames her presence as a hired job, needles her about the John Calder scandal, and minimizes public suspicion that he killed his siblings. Olivia challenges his motives and methods. Alma enters with tea, denies alcohol in the house, and pressures Vincent to disclose the truth about his health.

Alma reveals that Vincent has Lewy body dementia, explaining it as a degenerative condition affecting cognition and language. She defines her role as caregiver and gatekeeper for his routines and medications. Vincent admits his disease has compromised his written language and that he cannot finish his contracted book alone. He proposes a one-week trial and presses Olivia, who silently tallies her debts and agrees to stay for at least a week.

After Alma steps out, Vincent declares he has been sober for seven years, wryly noting the irony of his illness, and produces a stack of 20–30 handwritten legal pads. He reveals that the project is not a novel but a memoir centered on his childhood and the months before Danny and Poppy’s murders. Olivia immediately recognizes the sensitivity and potential uproar of such a book and contemplates the sources she would normally interview, including her estranged mother.

Vincent refuses to allow outreach to others, insisting the manuscript already contains all necessary information and that Olivia should only transcribe and clean it up. He warns against breaching the contract. Olivia, conflicted about her process and wary of his control, accepts the materials while feeling both resistance and curiosity about his account of the past.

Pressed on his motive, Vincent admits he needs money: his care is expensive, the house needs major repairs, and he has spent most of his wealth, including equity from the home. He claims a secondary purpose: to counter decades of rumors and to memorialize Danny and Poppy as only he could. Olivia remains skeptical, believing his reasons are primarily financial and manipulative, but she commits to begin.