Happy Wednesday. If you've been waiting for someone to say out loud what we've all been thinking about Holly Jonas, today's your day. Also on the docket: Gabi bribes Liam to leave town - and Ari, Chad and Belle actually have a real date (until EJ and Cat crash it), and EJ casually drops the biggest tease of the week. Let's get into it.

Forwarded to you? I write The Salem Dispatch every weekday — recaps, spoilers, and the stories behind the stories.

Gabi Goes Behind Ari's Back

It didn't take long. Less than a week after Ari begged her mother to stop interfering in her love life, Gabi summons Liam to the DiMera mansion and hands him a check for $150,000 to leave Salem and never contact Ari again. Liam laughs it off at first — he barely knows Gabi, and he's not about to let some rich woman buy him out of town. But Gabi knows exactly where to push. She brings up his hardscrabble life, his son, and the fact that this is more money than he's ever seen.

Liam pushes back. His parents are in Salem. His plea deal requires him to stay in town for literacy tutoring, and he's already switched tutors once — the DA isn't going to let him skip out. His current tutor is Julie Williams, which gets an eye roll from Gabi (fun to see that rivalry still alive!). She tells him she'll handle Julie and the plea deal. All he has to do is agree right now: take the money, leave town, and never talk to Ari again. Liam, who barely knows Ari and has no deep roots holding him here, says yes.

Holly Can't Escape Sophia

Holly and Ari are celebrating the end of their freshman year at the Brady Pub, but Holly can't stay in the moment. She passed chemistry with a C — her first C ever — and blames the fog she's been in since Sophia drugged her. But it's more than grades. She's having constant images of Sophia at Bayview, the things Sophia said to her, the way Sophia looked at her. "Even though she's gone, I still can't get her out of my head."

Ari gently suggests talking to someone — a therapist, someone who wouldn't judge. Holly shuts it down fast and pivots to offense: what about Ari dating a criminal? The Liam argument flares up and then burns out just as quickly. Holly lands a low blow about Ari's mom being thousands of miles away, immediately regrets it, and they patch things up. "Ride or die," Ari says. They mean it.

But there's a difference between these two friends that's getting harder to ignore. Ari admits she feels guilty for the things she said to Sophia, even though she meant every word. She's troubled by it, but she's settled. Holly is the opposite. She insists she doesn't feel guilty, doesn't feel responsible, and refuses to fake it: "I hate what happened to Sophia. But I don't feel responsible for it. And I think it'd be worse if I pretended to feel guilty when I don't." And yet Holly is the one who can't stop thinking about Sophia, the one who can't eat, the one whose grades collapsed. Not feeling guilty and not being affected are two very different things, and Holly hasn't figured that out yet.

Amy Choi Won't Let Go

Amy is back at the memorial site on the pier, arranging flowers among the cards and candles. Sarah finds her there. The conversation starts gently — Sarah offers her sympathies — but Amy isn't interested in comfort from anyone connected to Holly Jonas.

Amy tells Sarah that Holly hasn't left a single card, a single kind word at the memorial. Sarah suggests Holly may feel it's not her place, given how things ended. Amy isn't having it: "She obviously feels no remorse whatsoever for how she treated my daughter."

Sarah tries a different angle. She tells Amy she's lost a child of her own, and that in her grief, the person she struggled most to forgive was herself. It's a real moment — Sarah speaking from a place Amy doesn't expect. But Amy's position is fixed. She says she won't feel peace toward Holly "until justice has been served." There's a memorial service for Sophia tomorrow, and Amy's grief is hardening into something else entirely.

EJ and Cat at Small Bar

EJ and Cat are at Small Bar for what EJ insists is not a work dinner. He does a poor job of keeping it that way. The hospital board situation is on his mind — since Kayla's bombshell yesterday about the state complaint, EJ's been calculating. He tells Cat the board has no real leverage: without him, there's no buyer for the hospital, and Xander doesn't have the money this time. Cat presses him on whether he's going to pursue FDA-approved channels for the drug. EJ deflects.

Two things come out of this dinner that matter. First, EJ's drug has no hospital IP claim — all funding was private, all the lab work has been moved to his own property. That makes the drug entirely his, which is exactly what the ISA would be worried about. Second, EJ wants to recover his lost memories from the Italian rehab facility. He's already booked hypnosis with Marlena. He remembers Cat reading Wuthering Heights to him while he was in a coma, and he wants to know what else happened. Cat tries to discourage him gently — "the brain suppresses certain memories because it's trying to protect itself" — but EJ is determined.

And then there's Sydney. EJ says his daughter will be coming back to Salem soon, once she finishes school. He describes her as "whip-smart, strong like her mother, witty and charming like her father." It's played as a throwaway, but it's the first time we've heard Sydney's return teased on-screen.

Chad and Belle Finally Have Their Second Date

They finally have their date. At the town square, dressed up, trying to be a regular couple for an afternoon. They talk about their kids. Thomas is obsessed with the Cubs but not great at actually playing baseball ("He's been catching more bugs than balls in the outfield"). Charlotte's doing art camp and deciding between ballet and gymnastics. Belle talks about Shawn and Claire and the road trips they used to take.

Then John Black comes up. John loved the Cubs, and Chad remembers his smile — "a smile that made you feel really safe." Belle gets emotional. Chad suggests they go to a Cubs game next time, to honor her dad. Belle says yes to the Cubs game and yes to a third date.

Switching topics, Chad admits his relationship with Jack and Jennifer hasn't recovered from the custody fight, and that when EJ was hiding someone in the lab, he thought it was Abigail being brought back. "Obviously it wasn't Abigail, so I was upset for no reason." Belle: "I wouldn't put anything past EJ."

The date ends with EJ and Cat walking into the square - awkward on all counts.

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There's a version of this story where Holly Jonas is the villain. It's the version Amy Choi is telling. It's the version Sophia wrote in her suicide note. And it's the version that a school social media pile-on cemented weeks ago when dozens of classmates called Holly evil, a monster, unforgivable.

In that version, Holly turned her back on a childhood friend, said cruel things to a mentally ill girl at Bayview, and showed no remorse when that girl ended up in the river. The case is clean. The verdict is in. The problem is that it's not the whole story. Not even close.

What Sophia Choi did to Holly Jonas wasn't a single act of desperation. It was a campaign that stretched across more than a year. It started in the summer of 2024, when Sophia discovered Holly and Tate's secret relationship and turned it into leverage — blackmailing Holly into giving up her waitressing job and handing over her tip money. When Sophia couldn't get Tate through manipulation, she escalated: making sexually inappropriate comments about Holly and Tate, showing up at every turn to insert herself between them, and eventually sleeping with Tate during a period when Holly had broken things off.

But that was just the prologue. Last fall, Sophia drugged Holly's drink at the dorm, then took compromising photos of her unconscious and in her underwear. She sent one of those photos to Johnny DiMera's phone — timed to arrive during an adoption home visit, deliberately sabotaging Johnny and Chanel's chance to adopt Sophia's own baby. She stole Holly's phone, wiped the data, and destroyed it. She filed false reports with child services claiming Johnny was having an affair with a student. And when all of that wasn't enough, she partnered with Kristen DiMera in an explicit pact to destroy Holly's life.

Then came the systematic drugging. Starting in February, Sophia switched Holly's supplements with psychiatric medication from Bayview — pills that left Holly confused, disoriented, and unable to function for weeks. She enlisted Rachel Black, a ten-year-old, to deliver the tampered bottles, threatening to expose Rachel if she didn't cooperate. When Holly's behavior deteriorated, everyone assumed she was spiraling on her own. Nobody asked whether something was being done to her. It took Brady Black running a covert fingerprint operation just to prove what had happened.

And even after all of that, Sophia had one more move. She created a fake social media account under the name "Lily" and posted on the dorm chat, baiting classmates into saying negative things about her. Holly took the bait and responded with words she shouldn't have used. Sophia screenshotted everything. Those screenshots ended up in the suicide note that now forms the basis of Amy Choi's cyberbullying case against Holly.

When Holly confronted Sophia at Bayview, she was angry — legitimately, furiously angry — at the person who had spent over a year blackmailing, drugging, and systematically trying to destroy her. Were the things Holly said harsh? Absolutely. Did she handle it with grace? No. But there's a wide gap between "said some mean things to the girl who drugged her" and "drove a girl to her death."

So when Amy Choi stands at the memorial pier today and tells Sarah that Holly "obviously feels no remorse whatsoever," she's telling a story with a canyon-sized hole in the middle. Amy isn't wrong that Holly hasn't left a card at the memorial. She isn't wrong that Holly hasn't reached out. But Amy either doesn't know or doesn't care about the full scope of what her daughter did to the girl she's now blaming for everything — the blackmail, the revenge photos, the drugging, the phone theft, the conspiracy with Kristen DiMera, the fake social media trap. Grief doesn't have to be fair. Amy lost her child, and her anger needs somewhere to land. But that doesn't make Holly the person Amy has decided she is.

Today, Ari told Holly she should talk to someone — a therapist, anyone. Holly shut it down immediately. Sarah told her she should attend Sophia's memorial service tomorrow. Holly said Mrs. Choi wouldn't want her there. Both of those responses sound cold if you've already decided Holly is the villain. But if you've been watching closely, they sound like something else: a nineteen-year-old who has figured out that showing up, saying the right thing, performing remorse — none of it is going to change what people have already decided about her. So she's stopped trying.

And you can see the cost. Holly got her first C ever in chemistry. She's barely eating. She's having constant images of Sophia — not guilt exactly, but something she can't name and can't shake. She told Ari today that even though Sophia is gone, she still can't get her out of her head. That's not a person who feels nothing. That's a person who doesn't know what she feels, and doesn't have anyone she trusts enough to figure it out with. Her mom is thousands of miles away. Her boyfriend keeps telling her she's overreacting. Her best friend means well but doesn't fully understand. Holly is isolated in the middle of a crowd of people who all think they know what her problem is.

What makes this story worth watching is that the show isn't letting Holly off easy, either. She's not being written as a pure victim. She's prickly and defensive. She lashed out at Ari about Liam. She's pushing away the people trying to help her and refusing to examine why. Holly is not making it easy for people to be on her side right now, and the show seems to be doing that deliberately — because a character who is both wrongly blamed and genuinely difficult is far more interesting than one who is simply innocent.

The question this story is asking isn't "is Holly guilty?" It's what happens to a person — especially a young person, especially one without her mother — when the world has already written the ending to your story, and nothing you do or say or feel is going to rewrite it. Holly is living inside that question right now. Tomorrow's memorial service is going to make it a lot harder.

In today's episode, Sarah told Amy Choi that she knows what it's like to lose a child. What was the name of Sarah's daughter who died?

(Answer at the bottom of the newsletter.)

Here’s what I’m hearing for Thursday, May 21st…

Something else on your mind about today's episode? Just hit reply. I read every response.

Mackenzie "Mickey" Horton — Sarah and Eric Brady's daughter, who was diagnosed with cancer as an infant. In a heartbreaking twist, Sarah had unknowingly been raising Kristen and Brady's daughter Rachel after Xander switched the babies at birth. When the truth came out, Sarah learned that her biological daughter Mickey had already died.

That's all for today. The Salem Dispatch publishes every weekday — recaps, spoilers, and the stories behind the stories. If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe free here so you never miss an issue. Thanks for reading! -Michael