Fran reveals to Matilda what she learned at the police station AND at the river. Fran reveals--unintentionally--that her soul is no longer alone. And she fights with herself and her aunt over what to do next.

A little about where Daddy came from. And why and when he lost his head on Fran. And why Fran worries he might have lost it on her mother, Robbie, in what would end up being his last chance.

Fran—feeling like herself and completely NOT herself—goes to the police station to see Sheriff Noble, where she gets new information, from both this side and the other.

Fran wakes up feeling not entirely herself. And learns from Aunt Matilda long-kept secrets about John and her mother and the "scene of the crime."

Fran is delirious after a cold-river dive and on the way home and at Matilda's cannot tell what's real from dreams. More memories surface, of Mother and of past...loves and past...traumas.

Fran relives the night she came home to find her mother gone and the entire county's worth of cops on her front porch, along with her father, coming apart at the seams. Why wouldn't they let her inside the house? And where was John?

Fran, Surly, and Matilda drive to the Pearl River, to the "site." Fran feels oddly powerful, then oddly numb, then oddly confused. And in the middle of it, she meets the new Black female sheriff. And wonders if she's made a new problem or a new friend. She is consumed by visions.

Fran's memory of the day her mother disappeared in 1991 returns with a vengeance.

Fran Boden, with her dog Surly in tow, returns to Oka, Mississippi and, before she can visit the site of the remains, she must reunite with her ornery Aunt Matilda and her non-verbal cousin Gabe. And contend with a new non-human visitor, not to mention a flood of memories that try to drown her.

Fran remembers her mother...and her father...and the first day she realized she wasn't like anyone else.