Summary

Prologue: In this short, third-person description of a scene in 1990 Virginia, people are walking along the Potomac on a cold, January day. A yellow kayak sits alone in the river, absent of its 17-year-old pilot, a supposed murderer who has committed suicide rather than face her trial. The scene is flooded with police and curious onlookers alike. A woman stands nearby, watching the scene, her coat wrapped tightly around her. She watches the police with disdain and feels that an empty kayak does not prove a suicide.

In Chapter 1, the action has moved to 2013 and the narration has changed to first-person. The speaker's name is Riley, and she begins her story by saying that she's lost nearly all of her loved ones by age 25. She is driving to coastal North Carolina to tend to her recently-dead father's estate. At a stop...