Episode 3 of Happy Face ended with Melissa’s discovery that her brother Shane was with Keith on some of his trips to the area where Heather was killed. We get our first look at Shane as he performs a controlled burn.
Keith is given another burner phone by a guard who tells him to be more discreet from now on.
Mellisa, Ivy and Tyler travel to see Shane. When Melissa calls her husband to check in, he tells her he is installing a security camera in front of the house. When they knock at the door of Shane’s cabin, a woman answers the door, embraces Melissa (who doesn’t know who this is), and introduces herself as Jillian, Keith’s girlfriend. Shane lets her stay at his place when she comes to visit Keith.
Apparently, Jillian and Keith met on a prison pen-pal site, and yes, she knows he is a convicted murderer. She even knew about his “ninth victim” Heather before anyone else, because he told her first. The girlfriend is very new-agey and claims to be an empath, telling Melissa not to worry, Keith is out of solitary and even has a new phone. Will she consent to an interview? Sure! She puts on some lipstick in preparation, and then Shane gets home.
Shane is not very happy about Jillian’s interview, so they talk about doing it another time. During dinner, Ivy and Melissa tell him they need for him to back up Keith’s confession about killing Heather, but he claims to not remember travelling to Texas with Keith as a teen. He says he doesn’t recognize a photo of Heather or of the church, and Melissa is ticked. Doesn’t he even care that an innocent man may die? But Shane shuts down.
The next morning, Melissa decides to try a different tactic, bringing doughnuts and apologizing for ambushing him. She just wants to “hang out”, and agrees to help Shane deliver a dresser from some old stuff in the shed. They talk about their grandfather (Keith’s dad), and Shane tells Melissa that their mom told him gramps used to hit on her.
When they drop off the dresser, the buyers tell him they have changed their minds about buying it. They recognize Melissa from television, and they don’t want furniture that used to belong to a serial killer. Shane says, “This is what happens when you tell our secrets on tv.” They are also turned away at a second hand store. Melissa realizes that her high school boyfriend Brenden lives an hour away, and says he owes her an apology. Guess they are going on a road trip!
Meanwhile, someone has tied a happy face balloon to Hazel’s desk at school, and she confronts Summer (Josh’s on and off girlfriend) about it. We saw Hazel and Josh earlier, when she got in his car and he gave her the money from the sale of Keith’s artwork, so apparently, word got around. But Summer says it wasn’t her, and Hazel should be careful. “We only let you hang out with us because of who your grandfather is.”
Another happy face balloon is left at school for Hazel later, but this one has a card attached. On it, the sender has put a note to “call me” with a phone number, and it’s signed “Grandpa.”
Max is feeling the bias too. Ben leaves a meeting early because he sees on the security camera that another parent has brought Max home earlier than expected. Turns out his friend that he was supposed to be with isn’t allowed to hang around with him anymore because he has “bad blood.”
Melissa finds her ex Brendan at his workplace, and he is weirdly excited to see her, hugging her and being awkwardly flirty. She gets right to the point: “You swore you would never tell anybody.” He says he didn’t, but she persists and tells him “You did other things.” That makes him uncomfortable, and he shows her pics of his kids. She leaves and talks Shane into going to a bar for a drink.
Melissa tells her brother about what happened with Max, and he says he is glad he never had kids. He apparently has only had one serious girlfriend, and asks her what all of that was about with Brendan. She tells him that the same day they found out Keith had been arrested, she found out she was pregnant. Shane says she should have told him.
Quid pro quo, Melissa wants Shane to tell him about going to Texas with Keith, and he still claims to not remember. He gets upset and says she didn’t have to go on tv. But she says she had to, because she knows she could have stopped Keith. She tells him about seeing the blood on the ceiling fan. Shane tells her not to blame herself, he could have stopped Keith too. He says “of course, I remember Texas.” Says he woke up at a hotel, and Keith was gone. He found him in his truck unconscious from taking sleeping pills. Instead of leaving him there, he called an ambulance, and Keith was mad at him. As they were leaving, Keith saw the church.
The kicker is that Keith killed two (actually three) more women after that. Both of Keith’s adult children have been blaming themselves all these years. They cry and embrace, then burn the dresser when they get back to Shane’s place. It feels very healing. Then Melissa says she doesn’t think Brendan is the one who told about the abortion, because one other person knew: Keith.
She had visited him in prison, and when she told him she was pregnant, he said she was young, but he knew she could do this. She told him she already had an abortion, and he called her a killer “just like me.” He said she should be in a cell next to him. Father of the year, right?
In present time, Melissa goes to see Keith by herself, without Ivy or Tyler. She tells him she knows he is the one who told about her abortion; she’s done with him, and this is goodbye. But she will still follow through with clearing Elijah’s name. Keith shrugs off her accusation, saying all press is good press. Melissa says she just doesn’t understand him, but he begs to differ. “You’re a killer, just like your old man.”
That stops her, and she faces him and tells him she had the abortion because she was raped, just like the women he killed. “I’m not like you at all…I’m like them.” He is stunned by this, and apologizes, saying she deserved a better dad. She agrees, and starts to leave, but he stops her with, “Don’t you want the murder weapon? The wrench?”
Cut to Melissa, Shane, Ivy and Tyler in the shed at Shane’s place, where they find the wrench wrapped up in a towel in a tool box.