Recap / Cold Case S 4 E 16 The Good Bye Room

Directed by Holly Dale

Written by Jennifer Johnson

Lilly and the team reopen the case of Hilary West, a 17-year-old girl who in 1964, gave birth to a baby girl at St. Mary's, a church-run home for unwed mothers, only to be murdered the next day. As the team investigates further, they soon discover the institution had kept some dark secrets.

Tropes for this episode:

• Defiled Forever: What Sister Margaret wanted the girls at the home to believe. Hilary defies this after seeing her newborn daughter for the first time.
  Hilary: Because how can I be bad… and make an angel like her?
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • In the '60s, getting pregnant outside of marriage was considered an absolute scandal. This was partly why Hilary's case went cold, as her loved ones were afraid of the resulting stigma if her pregnancy became known. The detectives lampshade it.
    Kat: Glad I was an unwed mother in the '90s, not the '60s.
  • Sex ed was also mentioned to be nonexistent in schools back in the 1960s, with teenagers only encouraged to practice abstinence. After Hilary gets pregnant, she defends that "no one told us it could happen".
• Determinator: Karen never stopped looking for her son after she was released from St. Mary's and has joined multiple adoption search groups in the present. Lilly is able to convince Karen to turn herself in for Hilary's murder by giving her a file on her son, who wants to meet her.
• Gene Hunting: Barbara Lakey, after learning the truth of her adoption, goes to Lilly and her team to solve Hilary’s murder. Likewise, Karen Watson spent decades trying to track down the son she gave up for adoption with no success (until Lilly steps in).
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: As the flashback was set in the 1960s, abortion services were largely inaccessible and illegal then, and as such pregnant teens were often sent to convents such as St. Mary's.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While Karen did kill Hilary in a moment of weakness and insanity, she was also a victim of circumstances and is clearly not the true villain of the episode or even the worst person featured:
  • The cruel and unsympathetic nuns at St. Mary's were in fact not just jerks, but baby brokers who took money in order to send the babies away to childless, wealthy couples. Aside from the main nun, Sister Margaret, being called out on this by the detectives, no real justice is delivered to her or the others involved with the scam.
  • Hilary's father, Bill, while indeed a Standard '50s Father, is also an uncaring jerk who sent her away to the home in the first place and never mentioned her again after her murder, and also treated her mother like a slave.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Karen temporarily lost her sanity when she found giving up her newborn son was much harder than she thought it would be. When Hilary tries to run off with her daughter, the already unstable Karen does not want to see another keep her baby when she herself had to give away hers, so she intercepts Hilary and kills her in a fit of rage.
• Hiding Behind Religion: Stern and unsympathetic Sister Margaret was accepting bribes from wealthy couples so they could cut in line to adopt. When questioned about it in the present day, she claims she gave the money to St. Mary’s.
• Honorable Marriage Proposal: Hilary gets one from her boyfriend Huck when he gets her pregnant. Subverted, however, as he goes back on his promise after Hilary is sent to the home, using it as his way out.
• Housewife: Deconstructed with Hilary's mother, who dropped out of college when she became pregnant to marry her father. Patricia was then left stifled and unfulfilled because her husband "turned [her] into his cook, his laundry girl." The reason she pushes Hilary to give up her baby is she doesn't want her daughter to throw her future away and end up like her.
• I Have No Daughter!: Implied. Patricia states to the detectives that Bill never spoke of Hilary after sending her to the church-run home, right up to his dying day.
• I Reject Your Reality: Of the Baby Be Mine variety. When Karen confronts an escaping Hilary, her jealousy delves into a delusion that the latter is taking her baby and demands that she give "him" back despite Hilary's protests otherwise. Karen proceeds to smash in Hilary's head with a rock and bring her baby back to the institution with her. It wasn't until Hilary's daughter was taken away and put up for adoption as well that Karen came out of the delusion and realized what she had done.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While their methods are cruel, abusive, and traumatizing, the nuns at St. Mary's are right in that the expectant mothers are too young to have children, and giving their babies up to adoptive families who can take care of them is a safer option. Hilary's mother even shared this sentiment.
  • Huck defends breaking his promise to Hilary and seeing another girl after she was sent away in that, at the time, there wasn't anything he could've done for her without risking his own reputation when he had just been accepted into college. Thus, he thought moving on was for the best for both of them.
• Job's Only Volunteer: The only reason why The Alcoholic Dr. Finnegan was allowed to work for the St. Mary's Home For Unwed Mothers before being suspended for causing the deaths of multiple patients was because he was the only doctor they could afford.
• Kids Are Cruel: A pair of grade-school boys begin pelting the expectant teens with eggs while yelling and mooing at them when they're about to go out shopping. While Hilary is too stunned and confused to retaliate, Karen throws some rocks back at them.
• Knight Templar: The nuns genuinely believed they were doing right by the girls under their care by helping them regain their purity in the eyes of society. Sister Margaret is an interesting case as she not only came to repent her actions, she was so moved by Hilary's rejection of the notion that her motherhood tainted her character that she agreed to let Hilary try to escape from the home with her baby daughter.
• Madness Mantra: After being forced to give up her son, a heartbroken Karen continually mutters that she wants him "back in his bassinet." When killing Hilary due to thinking that she has Karen's baby, she repeatedly yells, "I want him back!" and even put Hilary's daughter in her son's bassinet afterwards.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Huck has since come to regret how things ended between him and Hilary, and not trying to find out what happened to their child.
  • Patricia is similarly remorseful for leaving Hilary at the convent and being unable to protect her daughter.
• My Greatest Second Chance: It's implied Huck and Patricia will make up for abandoning Hilary and their subsequent years of silence by getting to know their daughter/granddaughter, Barbara.
• My Secret Pregnancy: The entire purpose of maternity homes like St. Mary's was so unwed mothers could give birth in secret and then return to their lives without being shamed for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Sadly Truth in Television, along with what Hilary and the other girls endured during there—substandard medical care, disownment by their families, abuse by the caretakers, and having their babies anonymously adopted out against their wishes.
• Oblivious Adoption: Barbara had no idea she was adopted until she stumbled upon her original birth certificate from St. Mary's in her late adoptive mother's possessions. It's suggested this is the norm for all of the children adopted out of St. Mary's and other church-run institutions.
• Shotgun Wedding: Patricia admits that Hilary was born six months after she and Bill married.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Gender-Inverted with Hilary's daughter Barbara, who becomes this to her father, Huck, and maternal grandmother, Patricia.
• Tap on the Head: Karen fatally wounds Hilary by hitting her head with a rock.
• Teen Pregnancy: Hilary and her peers at St. Mary’s are all pregnant teens.
• Tragic Keepsake: Patricia kept the tape Hilary made for her unborn baby as a memento, from which the detectives learn about St. Mary's baby-selling operation. Patricia later gives the tape to Barbara.
• Troubled Teen: Karen was expelled from her high school for physically assaulting another girl.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Enforced with Patricia, who was subservient to her husband largely due to the time period. She didn't want to leave Hilary at St. Mary's, especially after witnessing how the girls were really treated there, but couldn't take her daughter out without Bill's approval. After Hilary's murder, Patricia was pressured by Bill to stay quiet for decades, which also prevented her from tracking down her granddaughter.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Throughout nearly her whole stay at St. Mary’s, Hilary still believes she will get to keep her child and marry her high school sweetheart who fathered the child. Her illusions are shattered when she sees Huck with another girl, and again when her mother comes to the home to beg her to go through with the adoption, telling her she is woefully unprepared for parenthood.