Night Always Comes: What Happened to Lynette When She was Sixteen?

Netflix’s ‘Night Always Comes’ unfolds over the course of one night, where Lynette tries to get the money she needs to buy back the house she grew up in and which she still lives in with her mother and brother. When her mother refuses her help her seal the deal, Lynette takes it upon herself to get the entire amount. Over the course of the night, she delves into the dark corners of the city as well as her own past. One of the major things to surface from her encounter with an old acquaintance is something traumatic that happened to her when she was sixteen and changed the entire course of her life. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Lynette’s Desire for Love Led Her Down a Dark Path

Lynette’s relationship with her mother had always been fraught. The duo had clashed for a long time, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that Lynette found her mother to be emotionally unavailable. Doreen was so focused on providing for her family that she expended her entire energy into just that. The struggles of life tired her out such that she didn’t seem to have any love left, at least not for Lynette. Or so her daughter believed. This emotional distance pushed Lynette to look for love elsewhere, and this is when Tommy came into her life. He was much older than her, but that didn’t seem to concern her. All she saw was a person who was ready to love her and take care of her. So, she decided to leave her house and move in with him.

Whatever illusions Lynette had about having a happy life, full of love, with Tommy were shattered soon enough. It seems that he had his own plans for her, which involved sex work. He would take her to posh areas of the city, where his clients would be waiting for young Lynette. She was sixteen at the time, but her being underage didn’t seem to bother anyone. Moreover, this wasn’t something that Lynette wanted to do, and she told Tommy as much. She hoped that he would show pity on her and let her go back home. However, Tommy didn’t need to play the good guy anymore, because he knew that she had nowhere else to go. She had willingly left her home, and her mother didn’t seem very concerned with where she had been, so he figured that no one would care what happened to Lynette. He turned out to be right because the teenager did feel like she didn’t have a choice. At this point, she was scared of Tommy, and she knew that things might not end well for her if she didn’t do as she was asked. So, she relented.

The abuse went on for a while as Tommy pimped out Lynette to his clients, entirely unfazed by the impact that it was having on her. It took some time for her to find the strength within her to call it quits and walk away from Tommy and the hell he was putting her through. She went back home, only to discover that her absence hadn’t done anything to make her mother love her more. In fact, Doreen seemed to grow more resentful of Lynette, even blaming her for walking away from the family and accepting no responsibility for the things that had happened to her daughter. She seemed unaffected when Lynette told her about what happened with Tommy. While Doreen refused to see the impact that her loveless behaviour had on her daughter, Lynette was permanently changed by the abuse, the effects of which become an important part of her journey in the movie.

Read More: Night Always Comes Ending Explained: Does Lynette Buy the House?