The novel opens with a missed phone call from Nic’s brother, telling her that their father is in “bad shape” (3). She ruminates throughout the day before responding, letting him know that she’s going to come home. 

She packs up her apartment, surveying the emptiness. Her fiancé, Everett, stops by briefly to wish her well before he must go to a meeting across town. The drive from Philadelphia to Cooley Ridge, North Carolina, is nine hours. As Nic drives, memories of her family and her past cross her mind. Nic, whose full name is Nicolette Farrell, left home 10 years ago, moving from her small town to a big city. Time and distance have made her past a haze of memory, “the outline of a ghost town full of ghosts” (8). 

She and her older brother, Daniel, had put their father into a facility, and their mother died when Nicolette was 16. A letter her father had written, which includes, “I need to talk to you. That girl. I saw that girl,” nags Nic’s thoughts (4). 

When Nic arrives to the house, awkward formalities exist between her and her brother; time has truncated their relationship.