The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window Season 1 Episode 7 Recap

Detective Lane tells Anna that Carol told them she had come at her with a palette knife before. She thought Carol was harassing Buell, and she was washing her brushes when that happened, Anna replies, so she forgot she had a knife in her hand. Carol also told them she saw Anna having a confrontation with Chastity the day of the murder. Anna explains she confronted Chastity because of throwing out the markers she gave Emma.

Their session was interrupted when a technician steps in to get Anna’s fingerprints. The detective asks her why she paints flowers. She recalls she painted landscapes and sailboats for tourists to buy, barely making ends meet. But one day, she was bored, and so she painted her dog as Mona Lisa—people liked it. She got tons of orders to paint dogs on masterpieces, but she got burnt out. She stopped painting until she got pregnant with Elizabeth, inspired by a bouquet of flowers the nurse brought in. She painted again lying on the hospital bed while on bed rest, but she stopped painting again when Elizabeth died.

Detective Lane tells Anna again to get herself a lawyer, but she says she doesn’t need one because she didn’t do anything. The detective quickly responds she might have murdered Chastity—she just didn’t remember. Anna gets upset. Detective Lane plays a recording of Anna’s 911 call, where she did not sound so good. Anna exclaims she wouldn’t hurt anyone, but the detective tells her the story of a man who murdered his wife of 33 years. He drank alcohol with pills and woke up the next morning, not knowing he did it.

A police officer comes in and cuffs Anna, saying the prints were a match. She spends the night alone in her cell, seeing flashbacks of Chastity and her. Anna suffers from a nightmare: Douglas gets married to another woman, so Anna kills her.

The next morning, Sloane gets Anna out of jail on bail. She asks Anna if she did it. Anna gets upset—she tells her there is nothing to tell because she didn’t do it. Sloane brings her home.

When Anna gets home, she forgets something outside. She finds Neil outside, who shows her a gun. He knows she was charged with murder, so he tells her he will use the gun on her if she ever comes near him or Emma again.

Anna comes back in crying, falling asleep by the front door. When she awakens, she looks for wine but finds nothing. She screams in frustration until she hears footsteps in the attic. She grabs a knife and pulls the attic door string. Blood drips down and lands on her carpet. She sees flashbacks of her stabbing someone. She drops the knife and calls her therapist.

Anna tells him she thinks she killed someone, and she is being accused of murder. She then confesses mixing alcohol with pills, saying she might have done the murder but doesn’t remember. The therapist knows her better than anyone—he is her ex-husband, Douglas. Anna blames herself for killing their daughter because she insisted Douglas takes her to work. But Douglas also takes the blame, saying it was his fault because he couldn’t protect their daughter.

Anna tells Douglas maybe it’s not their fault but Massacre Mike, so he’s the one they should be hating and not themselves. “I could never hate you, Anna,” Douglas tells her. Anna tells him she’s the one who destroyed their marriage by shutting him out. But he tells her it was his fault; he didn’t know how to handle everything.

Douglas tells her to go up the attic. Anna obliges and finds out what dripped: red paint. But she is still not convinced because of a memory of her stabbing something. She sees a painting of Chastity full of stab marks; she realizes she stabbed a painting. But the police found a murder weapon with her fingerprints on it, she tells Douglas. “Someone could have taken the knife from the house,” he tells Anna and then asks, “Could anyone have gotten into the house without you knowing?” She sees a pair of gloves and remembers Buell brought her home when she passed out on the street. Seeing an area where someone could have slept, Anna deduces Buell has been living in the attic, explaining the noises she heard.

Anna asks Douglas how Buell came to be their handyman. He reveals Buell was his very first patient. He was criminally insane, and he got convicted for murdering his entire family with a claw hammer. Douglas rehabilitated him and got him released early. Anna furiously tells Douglas the mailbox Buell has been fixing for many years is still not fixed. Anna concludes Buell killed Chastity and must have taken her palette knives, but he was wearing gloves, so Anna’s fingerprints were the ones the police found.

Douglas asks Anna to get out of the house. It is raining, so Anna hesitates. She looks out the window and sees Buell holding a hammer, heading to Neil’s house. She screams.

Our Thoughts

Woah, that was quite a twist. From the start, we wondered what’s taking Buell so long to fix the mailbox. Now, we know he’s busy doing other things, e.g., killing people, so he cannot focus on his job. We don’t want to judge here, but seriously, Douglas has a problem here. First, he brings an 8-year-old to work and leaves her alone with a psychopath; then, he gets a criminally insane ex-con to be their handyman. Oh, Douglas, why?

Well, at least now we know Anna is innocent. Whew!