What Happened in Chicago? The Truth Comes Out in Heartbreaking Scene

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 9, “Unalive and Well.”]

The past is haunting Carrie Preston‘s Elsbeth Tascioni in the return of Elsbeth, and viewers finally know what that troubled past entails.

Elsbeth‘s January 30 midseason premiere revealed what happened in Chicago to make the attorney leave her life behind and start anew in New York City at the series’ start. While the episode did confirm that Elsbeth was involved in the coverup of domestic abuse victim like the headlines alleged, it also revealed that Elsbeth was kept in the dark about the extent of the harm they were causing. There’s an implication that she got involved in the Van Ness divorce case under false pretenses, but she still “made a lot of money” from her involvement, unwitting as it may have been. She’s been struggling with that guilt ever since, and it’s harder to bear since the story went public thanks to Judge Crawford (Michael Emerson, Preston’s husband).

Elsbeth, Kaya (Carra Patterson), and Smullen (Danny Mastrogiorgio) investigated an expensive wellness retreat owned by a finance bro-turned “guru” Tom Murphey (Eric McCormack) in the episode. Billy/Cole Campbell (Michael Hsu Rosen) died after leaving the retreat. As the team figured out by the episode’s end, Cole died of anaphylactic shock caused by mustard seed oil, a relative to sesame seed oil, to which Cole was deathly allergic. Cole’s sister died years prior in an experimental treatment Tom was legally barred from repeating in the aftermath. Cole underwent the treatment and left for a testing lab to prove that Tom was illegally administering it again and hopefully take him down. But Tom laced his roadtrip snacks with mustard seed oil to prevent the truth from coming out and protect his riches.

Elsbeth is coping with the truth coming out in less deadly ways. While Kaya and Smullen searched for Cole’s sister’s “journey partner” from years ago, Elsbeth checked into the retreat for her own healing journey. She became quick friends with her assigned journey partner, Sheryl (Marcia DeBonis), and opened up to her about her struggles in a heartbreaking scene by a campfire. Showrunner Jonathan Tolins previously told TV Insider that this was Elsbeth‘s “most emotional scene we’ve ever done,” and he wasn’t kidding.

“Things aren’t going very well for me back in the city,” Elsbeth admitted to Sheryl while struggling to hold back tears. The floodgates opened, and Elsbeth revealed she was tricked into participating in the coverup of a man’s domestic abuse against his first wife. She hasn’t told anyone because she doesn’t know how to ask for help.

Marcia DeBonis as Sheryl and Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni in Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 9, ‘Unalive and Well’ (Michael Parmelee / CBS)

“When I first got here Tom said that I was carrying around some heaviness, and he was right. I made a lot of money working for some bad people,” she confessed. “And OK, it’s part of the job, I know that. But then I found out I didn’t know the extent of the harm that I was participating in because I was tricked, and I do not like being tricked. And so now, I am so angry. And I’m embarrassed, because I don’t usually end up in that position. But it happened and the damage was done. Now, I can’t find the right way to explain things to my friends. I don’t know how to ask for help.”

The shame of her involvement is too much for Elsbeth to carry, so she broke down in tears. But Sheryl warmly advised that a real friend would offer support. “If your friends love you, they will want to help. You just have to be transparently honest,” Sheryl said. Elsbeth took the message to heart.

Elsbeth promised she’d open up about everything to Kaya, and she already has Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) in her corner. Wagner joined her fight to take down Judge Crawford in the December midseason finale, and he continued that crusade in the final moments of Episode 9 when meeting Captain Kershaw (a new character played by Madam Secretary‘s Jenn Colella) at a bar to drop some key intel about the murder case that introduced Crawford into the series. Kershaw’s precinct handled this case.

Remember the baseball bat that Crawford beat a man to death with? The one that the victim’s lover was accused of using to kill him? “No one could believe she was acquitted,” Kershaw told Wagner in the scene. Then he dropped this bombshell: “Why would a Red Sox fan own a bat from a New York team under any circumstance?” The confused Kershaw said she never heard of this. “That’s because Judge Crawford kept it out,” Wagner replied. Consider this case reopened and the Elsbeth-Crawford rivalry continued.

Elsbeth, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS