Finding safe refuge at a peach farm run by her best friend’s grandmother, Hattie—who taught her valuable lessons about resilience and plant grafting—Bryn built an independent life working at a garden center, even though her family’s mistreatment escalated to the point where she was completely omitted from her grandmother’s obituary and nearly crossed paths with an oblivious Ellie years later.
The heartbreaking pattern reached a surreal turning point by Easter 2021 after seven years of banishment, when Bryn returned late at night to retrieve forgotten medication and watched in stunned disbelief as Ellie and her mother, Lorraine, gathered with her own family to solemnly pray over the lock of her bedroom door.
Sneaking inside after the group departed, Bryn discovered an unfamiliar object wrapped in white tissue paper on the dining room table, realizing with a chill that the years of hidden photos and bizarre rules had been masking a much darker family secret.
