Hanna and Joe could never have suspected that the happiness of their youngest daughter, Dawn, would lead to the shattering of their lives. When Dawn brings her new boyfriend Rud around, the family tempers their unsettled feelings because they’re glad that Dawn, always an awkward child, seems to have blossomed. But when Hanna and Joe are savagely beaten with a croquet mallet, Rud is the suspect. Joe dies and Hanna, who survives, begins to inhabit a world of coping, denial, regret, and wistful remembrance of her family—Dawn and Iris’ sibling rivalry, Joe’s protective stability, and a teacher’s haunting statement, “It just seems like there’s something missing,” and if that means Dawn could have helped Rud murder her father. When Rud is granted an appeal, and eerily, Dawn returns to the family home, Hanna decides to try to remember that traumatic night so she can testify in the retrial and keep her husband’s murderer in jail. When her memories resurface, Hanna must finally confront the reality of who Dawn has become.