Beth is the eldest Thomas sibling, a divorced woman in her forties who moved back into her childhood home in Allen's Grove to care for her ailing mother. A high school knee injury prevented her from leaving town on an athletic scholarship, leaving her feeling stuck while her younger brother found success elsewhere. She struggles with severe trust issues, heightened by her father's unexplained disappearance seven years ago, and she views her younger sister's addiction history with deep suspicion.

Nicole is the middle Thomas child, an imaginative woman in her thirties whose life derailed following her father's disappearance. Injured in a car crash while frantically searching for him, she developed an opioid addiction that she continually battles. She aspires to write a book and relies heavily on journaling to cope with emotional pain, though her siblings treat her as an unreliable burden.

Michael is the youngest Thomas sibling and the only one to leave their small hometown. Now a wealthy tech executive living in California, he returns to Wisconsin out of obligation following his mother's death. He views his sisters as stuck in a dead-end town and maintains an aloof, self-assured demeanor around them, preferring to buy his way out of uncomfortable family situations.

Laura is the recently deceased matriarch of the Thomas family, whose passing brings her three estranged children back under one roof. During the late 1990s, she obsessively recorded her family's life on VHS tapes and in detailed journals. Her cryptic final words and the sealed letters she leaves behind set her children on a path to uncover the family's buried history.

Brian is the missing patriarch of the Thomas family. He supposedly abandoned his wife and three children seven years before the novel begins, leaving only a brief, five-word apology note. In the 1999 video footage found by his children, he appears panicked and covered in blood, raising immediate questions about his past actions.

Emma is a 12-year-old girl who vanished without a trace in the summer of 1999 during the Allen's Grove summer festival. She was an enthusiastic child who loved competing in local games like potato sack races and egg tosses. Her disappearance devastated her family and cast a long shadow over the tight-knit community.

Lucas is Beth's former high school boyfriend and the older brother of Emma Harper. He has returned to Allen's Grove to care for his mother, who suffers from severe dementia. Like Beth, he is divorced and carries the heavy emotional baggage of his family's past tragedies.

Susan is Lucas and Emma's mother. The unresolved disappearance of her 12-year-old daughter severely impacted her mental health over the decades. Now elderly and suffering from dementia, she struggles to distinguish the past from the present, frequently asking for her missing child.

Charles is an outcast in Allen's Grove who lives in a derelict home with his elderly mother. Known for keeping a messy yard full of broken-down vehicles, he becomes an easy target for local suspicion. The community isolates him further following a high-profile police investigation into Emma's disappearance.

Christie is an odd, sheltered teenager living in Allen's Grove in the late 1990s. Her overbearing parents do not allow her to attend regular school. She has a habit of wandering the town taking candid photographs before she, too, is reported missing a few months after Emma Harper.

Casey is a former classmate of the Thomas siblings who now works as a detective for the Walworth County Sheriff's Department. He maintains a friendly connection with Nicole and discreetly provides her with access to old police files for her writing project.

Eddie is the late father of Emma and Lucas Harper. Following his daughter's disappearance in 1999, he was consumed by intense grief and anger. His tragic death deeply affected his surviving son and left his wife to manage the family's sorrow alone.

Marissa is Beth's adult daughter who currently serves in the military at a naval base in South Korea. The physical distance between them mirrors their emotional estrangement, as she and her mother have lost touch over the years.

Craig is the local lawyer who handles Laura Thomas's estate. He surprises the siblings by presenting a formal will, distributing their mother's possessions, and revealing a lockbox key along with three sealed letters.