Last Day

In mid-July, Beth Lathrop is found dead in her sealed, freezing bedroom at 45 Church Street in Black Hall, Connecticut. She is six months pregnant with a boy she planned to name Matthew. Her older sister, Kate Woodward, a private jet pilot, has been unable to reach Beth for three days. Kate calls the police and breaks into the house with two officers, discovering Beth's body: skull cracked behind her ear, a purple ligature mark around her neck, torn black lace underwear on the floor, and a bloodstained marble owl sculpture beneath the bed. An empty gilded frame hangs on the bedroom wall, its canvas cut out.

Detective Conor Reid of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad arrives, immediately shaken. Twenty-three years earlier, as a young trooper, he was first on the scene at the family's art gallery, where Kate, Beth, and their mother, Helen, had been bound and gagged in the basement by hired thieves. Helen choked on her gag and died. The robbery had been orchestrated by the girls' father, Garth Woodward, to fund gambling debts. Among the stolen paintings was Moonlight by Benjamin Morrison. Reid's brother Tom, a Coast Guard commander, intercepted the thieves and recovered the art. Garth was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life without parole. Reid has watched over the sisters ever since and suspects Beth's husband, Pete Lathrop, from the start.

Kate tells Reid that Pete is on an annual sailing trip and reveals he had an affair with Nicola Corliss, a former gallery assistant, fathering a son with her. Beth discovered the affair when she found Pete and Nicola in bed at Cloudlands, the estate of Kate and Beth's late grandmother, Mathilda Harkness, which Pete had secretly rented to Nicola. Sam, Beth's sixteen-year-old daughter, volunteers a startling detail: The painting Moonlight was nearly stolen from the house the previous year but turned up hidden in a hall closet. The painting now missing from the empty frame is that same work.

Reid theorizes Pete sealed the windows, maximized the air conditioner, and posted a note on the door to manipulate the estimated time of death and create an alibi. When Pete calls the house and Reid answers, Pete's reaction sounds rehearsed, and he lets slip the word "murdered" before Reid has used it. Reid flies Pete back to Connecticut and tells him directly he believes Pete killed Beth.

The investigation widens through interviews with Pete's sailing companions. Nick Waterston confirms Pete was never out of sight but describes him as performatively worried about Beth. Nick's wife, Scotty Waterston, one of Beth's closest friends, hints Pete may have been violent, describing bruises Beth concealed with makeup. When Reid persuades Pete to remove his shirts, Pete's back reveals deep fingernail scratches and a severe bite wound that do not match Beth's dental impressions or undamaged fingernails. Pete claims the injuries came from sex.

Reid also investigates Martin Harris, a convicted sex offender whose past crimes involved home invasions and a fixation on lace lingerie, paralleling elements of Beth's murder scene. Harris describes unpublished details of the crime, claiming he "dreamed" them.

Pete's perspective chapters reveal his calculating nature. His relationship with Beth was deliberate from the start: Working for the insurance company that underwrote the gallery, he researched the Woodward case, sought Beth out, and exploited her trauma by presenting himself as uniquely capable of understanding her. He rehearses the narrative of his last morning with Beth obsessively and privately reflects that her death made his life easier.

Meanwhile, Kate cares for Sam, who is struggling with grief and self-harm. Kate spends time at the gallery and discovers hidden items in Beth's desk: a charcoal nude drawing signed "JH," a small ornate key, and a phone number. When a client mentions an artist named Jed Hilliard whom Beth recommended, Kate connects the initials. She learns from Scotty, a fellow member of their lifelong friend group called the Compass Rose, that Beth met Jed at Ainsworth prison while visiting their father. After his release from a marijuana charge, Beth helped Jed find work, and they fell in love. Kate is devastated that Beth kept this secret from her while confiding in Scotty and their friend Lulu.

Kate visits her father in prison for the first time in twenty-three years; Garth insists Jed is peaceful. When Reid interviews Jed, he confirms his love for Beth and their plans to marry but refuses to discuss whether he is Matthew's father. His alibi is airtight: He was on Fishers Island giving art lessons the entire week Beth died. Kate gives Reid a sonogram found among Jed's belongings, inscribed in Beth's handwriting, suggesting Jed may be the father.

Pete insists on taking a polygraph and passes. Reid theorizes Pete performed the actions he described, such as embracing Beth after she was already dead, so the machine registered truthful responses. However, no evidence of polygraph research appears on Pete's computers. A forensic accountant determines Beth's trust leaves Pete far less than he would receive in a divorce, eliminating financial motive.

Kate experiences a dissociative episode at the gallery and is drawn to a beehive oven in the basement, a childhood hiding place. The ornate key fits its lock. Inside, she finds letters from Jed and the missing Moonlight, rolled up. On the back is a heart drawn in blood, echoing a ritual the four friends performed as teenagers when they became "blood sisters." Kate realizes Beth stole the painting herself. In November, Lulu confirms this, showing Kate photos of Beth and Lulu cutting the painting from its frame the week before Beth died. Beth intended the empty frame as a message to Pete: He was nothing but an empty space, and she was leaving.

The true killer proves to be someone unexpected. Reid discovers that Harris's knowledge of the crime scene came from Scotty, who has been sharing unpublished details of Beth's death with Harris at a soup kitchen. At Beth's birthday gathering at Cloudlands, Scotty's younger daughter, Julie Waterston, who has schizotypal personality disorder and acute observational skills, provides crucial testimony. Julie insists her mother's supposed call to Beth that morning was actually made at lunchtime, after Pete had left, with no one on the other end. Julie also says Scotty had blood on her neck and chin when she returned home. Reid arrives and arrests Scotty.

The full picture emerges across multiple perspectives. Scotty gardened with Beth that morning and followed her inside. Beth showed Scotty the empty frame and explained she had cut the painting free. Scotty, unstable from marital troubles and heavy drinking, confronted Beth about her affair with Jed and her refusal to tell the father about Matthew. Beth slapped Scotty. Scotty struck Beth with the marble owl, strangled her, staged the scene to resemble a sexual assault, turned up the air conditioning, and left. The scratches and bite on Pete's back, long suggestive of his guilt, came from Nicola during a separate violent altercation the week before Beth's death. Sam later confesses she hid Moonlight in the closet the previous year, hoping the apparent break-in would make Pete stay home.

In an epilogue set the following May, Kate carries a wild rabbit she rescued to the meadow above Mathilda's house and releases it into the tall grass. She draws a heart in the grass without blood. Conor climbs the hill toward her. Through months of grief and caring for Sam, Kate has begun to recover the emotional capacity that froze inside her twenty-three years ago. In a final passage narrated from Beth's perspective as a spirit in the bardo, a transitional state in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Beth watches her sister's happiness, kisses Kate's head, and rises with the moon.