Laura Brandon had promised her dying father she would visit Sarah Tolley, but her own agony is drowning out the old woman's ramblings. Her husband killed himself, and the only witness--her daughter, Emma--now refuses to speak.

Desperate, Laura turns to a man she met once nine years ago: Emma's real father. Together they search frantically for the key to Emma's silence, only to find it in an old woman's fading memories of love, despair and unspeakable evil.