Sloane Cheney has no intention of ever returning to the South Carolina island town where she grew up. She enjoys her life in the big city and teaching at the college there. The thought of revisiting the place where her mother deserted her family is too painful.

But when Aunt Millicent, town matriarch and owner of the family's beachfront property, is murdered, Sloane must go back to sign off on the sale of the grand family home to developers. She soon finds that old friendships have shifted, as townspeople disagree over the development that would reshape their sleepy village. Sloane is directly in the line of fire, under suspicion by the police chief because of her inheritance and by her former neighbors who question her long absence.

With family members and old friends swirling treacherously around her, Sloane doesn't know who to trust, especially after a nearly fatal accident in the beach house. She digs into her family's history, uncovering new information about her mother's disappearance. What she discovers raises questions: Was her aunt's murder a simple case of greed? Or was it related to her mother's long-ago vanishing?