Charley Sue Channing is six years old when her mama kisses her and her sister, Edie...then disappears. Raised by their spinster great-aunt, life isn't all sunshine and butterflies. Twenty-four years later, Aunt Mattie dies and Charley Sue sets out to learn the truth, hoping to expose the past and gain the love of her mother. Instead, she risks losing everything she's held dear, including her sister. In a strange twist of fate, Edie ends up holding the one thing that Charley Sue longs for most of all. Seeking the advice of psychiatrist Harrison James, Charley Sue finds herself directed to the one place that may hold the truth. What she finds there are the secrets of nearly a quarter of a century that should never have been exhumed.