It is May 23, 1978, and twenty-four-year-old Mary Robbins is nearing the end of her third year of teaching English at Burlington High School. Although everything appears normal to everyone around her, Mary is hiding a big secret. When she disappears suddenly that May afternoon, her husband becomes the prime suspect; nothing can be proven, however, and the case unofficially closes. Twenty-seven years later, retired Burlington police detective Jack Johnson is asked by an old acquaintance to look into her son's mysterious and fatal automobile accident. His investigation leads him back into his first assignment long ago as a novice police detective-unsolved disappearance case of Mary Robbins. As he delves into the old investigation and begins interrogating suspects, he feels certain that once he solves Robbins's unexplained disappearance, a murderer's identity will be revealed. As the dots of the puzzle slowly begin to connect, the solution finally seems within reach. Unfortunately, nothing is as it appears in Burlington, Vermont; Johnson is about to uncover a surprise revelation from an unexpected source.