Content Warning: The source material for this study guide depicts or references death by suicide, drug addiction, and sexual abuse, and it includes descriptions of gore. There are also scenes depicting violence against unhoused people. Finally, the novel briefly hints at damaging stereotypes about mental illness and psychosis in order to ultimately subvert those stereotypes.

Quincy Carpenter runs through the forest from an unseen threat. She sees a car and reaches out for the man standing in the headlights, hoping he will save her from her friends’ killer.

Unlike the prologue and the interludes that utilize an omniscient narrator, the numbered chapters are told using Quincy’s first-person voice.

Ten years after the events at Pine Cottage, Quincy is a baking blogger living with her boyfriend, public defender Jeff Richards, in New York City. Quincy is making Halloween cupcakes for her website when Jeff calls to say that his flight out of Chicago is delayed. Shortly after, the police officer who saved Quincy at Pine Cottage, Franklin Cooper (Coop), asks if they can meet up. Coop periodically visits to check on Quincy.

Quincy takes a Xanax and meets Coop at their usual café.