Patch intervenes when he sees Aaron attacking Misty at the lake; Aaron stabs Patch and kidnaps him in a van.

Saint searches the lakeside where Patch was taken and finds only a bloody T-shirt in the grass.

While developing her camera roll in town, Saint spots Aaron's name on a modeling ad featuring Misty.

Saint arrives at Aaron's house posing as a photography subject; Aaron admits to taking the missing girls.

In Aaron's darkroom, Saint finds photos of missing girls with halos scratched above them and starts a fire to escape.

Nix breaks a window to rescue Saint from the fire; she stumbles outside and finds Patch unconscious nearby.

Police conclude Aaron died in the fire and close the investigation; Patch insists Grace is real and needs help.

Patch withdraws from Saint and steals a neighbor's car to search library records for missing girls, looking for Grace.

Sammy sees Patch's crumpled drawings of Grace, recognizes his artistic talent, and gives him a studio space and supplies.

Misty's father offers Patch a large sum of money to end his relationship with Misty so she will attend Harvard.

Saint accepts an FBI position in Kansas City despite Jimmy's protests, beginning a double life between home and career.

Jimmy violently attacks Saint after misunderstanding that she had visited an abortion clinic, forcing her to flee the marriage.

Saint tracks Patch to Arizona and pleads for him to surrender; when he flees, she shoots him in the thigh.

Patch is released from prison and Saint picks him up, driving him back to Monta Clare.

Patch finds Grace in her childhood home in Grace Falls; Patch kills Aaron; Saint lets Patch escape.

Patch's split-second decision to protect Misty from Eli Aaron sets off a chain of events that consumes his entire life and reshapes the lives of everyone around him. Saint's relentless investigation leads to Patch's rescue and the official closure of the case, though Aaron escapes and Grace remains missing. As both friends grow into adults, Patch's obsessive search for Grace and Saint's FBI career place them on a collision course with each other. Their confrontation in Arizona marks a dramatic turning point, resulting in Patch's imprisonment and eventual return to Monta Clare. After rebuilding fragile connections to the people he loves, Patch is torn away again by an act of violence before finally escaping to find Grace and end Aaron's reign of terror. Saint, now a woman who knows what is right beyond the law, lets her oldest friend disappear into freedom.

The headline events driving the story from kidnapping to resolution.

Saint begs Norma for months and saves all her money to establish a beehive at their home.

Patch steals another child's invitation, arrives at Saint's beehive uninvited, and eats large amounts of her honey.

Saint finds Tooms covered in blood on his property and calls Nix, who later tells her nothing is wrong.

Callie Montrose, a girl who visited Nix before, disappears, and months pass with no trace of her or Patch.

Patch finds past-due bills at home and begins working his mother's night custodial job to pay the debt.

Misty begins bringing Patch her terrible homemade cooking after school and later defends him against a bully's attack.

Patch and Misty dance together at her birthday party in the garden; she says her only wish was to dance with him.

Patch quits school to work in a mine and begins mailing painted portraits of missing girls to their families.

Patch meets Walter Strike, a grieving father whose daughter vanished, and learns the disappearance also derailed his son Cooper's life.

Patch spots Misty being harassed in a Boston bar, intervenes, and the two share a brief romantic night together.

Saint visits an abortion clinic far from home and notices a photograph showing Tooms at the clinic's opening ceremony.

While working the prison library, Patch realizes his colleague Cooper is the brother of a missing girl he helped find.

Nix murders Richie Montrose, who sexually abused his daughter Callie, then dies by suicide rather than face arrest.

Saint and Charlotte discover buried bones in the garden behind the Mad House, which turn out to be old dog bones.

Following a jar of purple honey as a clue, Saint and Charlotte track down Patch living on a sailboat in the Outer Banks.

Before disaster strikes, Saint and Patch share an innocent childhood defined by beehives, pirate games, and small-town mischief in rural Missouri. The disappearance of Callie Montrose deepens the community's unease, while Patch's slow recovery is marked by an unlikely friendship with Misty and a gruff mentorship with art dealer Sammy. As years pass, Patch and Misty's relationship intensifies during an unexpected reunion in Boston, with consequences neither of them anticipates. Saint's personal life grows complicated as she navigates pregnancy, her career at the FBI, and the devastating fallout of Jimmy's violence. In prison, Patch forms crucial bonds with Cooper and Blackjack, while in Monta Clare, Nix's final act of justice exposes a devastating hidden truth about Callie's death. The story closes with an emotional reunion as Saint and Charlotte follow a jar of purple honey across the coast to find Patch living freely on a sailboat.

The secondary moments and relationships that shape the story's world.

Ivy sews eye patches for Patch and calls him her little pirate, planting the identity he carries his entire life.

Saint buys Patch a flea market flintlock pistol for his birthday, the same type of gun he later uses to rob banks.

Saint searches her old school photos at home and finds Aaron's photographer stamp on them, confirming his direct access to Misty.

Trapped in Aaron's cellar in total darkness, Patch is kept alive by a mysterious girl named Grace who tells him vivid stories.

Patch breaks a brick free from the wall and strikes Aaron; Aaron beats him so severely his rib punctures a lung.

As Patch loses consciousness from fever, Grace drags him out of the burning building before being forced to flee with her father.

At Misty's birthday party, Saint pulls Misty aside and tearfully begs her not to pursue Patch, saying he is all she has.

Patch calls Saint's answering machine late at night, leaving long rambling messages describing every detail Grace ever told him.

Running out of money, Patch begins robbing banks with his unloaded flintlock pistol and mailing most of the proceeds to missing persons charities.

Saint agrees to marry Jimmy after Norma's persistent urging; on the wedding morning she plays piano beneath Patch's painting, thinking of him.

Patch sees a young shoplifting girl waiting outside for Misty and slowly realizes she is their daughter from their night in Boston.

Misty dies of cancer, and Patch is shocked to discover she named him as Charlotte's legal guardian in her will.

After Jimmy insults Saint at the zoo, Patch shoves him; Jimmy falls, strikes his head, and dies.

Saint fires her gun in the air to force entry into the prison and stops Tooms's execution; Tooms admits he lied about Grace's death.

Patch hands Saint a painting of them as young children — the pirate and the beekeeper — the first painting he has ever made for her.

The seeds of the story's tragedy are planted in quiet childhood moments — Ivy's pirate stories, a gift of a flintlock pistol — that take on enormous weight as the years unfold. The hidden heart of the mystery is Grace's secret care for Patch in Aaron's dark cellar, and her desperate act of dragging him to safety after the fire sets up decades of searching. As Patch and Saint grow into adults, seemingly minor choices — Saint's loveless marriage, Patch's late-night voicemails describing everything Grace told him — cascade into life-altering consequences neither could have foreseen. The revelation of Charlotte's existence and Misty's death force Patch to reckon with everything his obsession has cost him. An accidental killing and a daring prison escape push the story toward its long-withheld truth, when Tooms's confession finally frees Patch from the guilt that has defined his entire adult life. The story closes with a painting of two children — the pirate and the beekeeper — a symbol of hard-won peace for two friends who survived the dark together.