Jenna, a teenage girl obsessed with her missing mother, visits psychic Serenity Jones and receives a tarot reading.

While searching the sanctuary grounds with Serenity, Jenna discovers her mother's wallet hidden in a tree branch.

Jenna visits her institutionalized father Thomas, who mistakes her for Alice and cannot provide any useful answers.

Jenna tracks down Virgil Stanhope, who is living under a false identity, and convinces him to reopen the cold case.

Virgil describes the original investigation: Nevvie found trampled at the sanctuary, Alice hospitalized and then vanished overnight.

Jenna and Virgil sneak into the police station and find Jenna's own small pink Converse sneaker among the old evidence.

DNA testing confirms that the red hair found on Nevvie's clothing is a genetic match to Alice.

The trio discovers a pebble necklace submerged in the mud at the pond where Nevvie died.

Thomas violently rips the pebble necklace from Jenna's neck and slaps her when he sees her wearing it at the asylum.

Jenna secretly travels alone by bus to Tennessee to track down Gideon at a new elephant sanctuary.

Gideon confesses his affair with Alice and reveals she had planned to run away and bring Jenna with her.

Jenna learns for the first time that her mother was carrying Gideon's baby when she disappeared.

While sitting at the calf's burial site at the sanctuary, Serenity feels a sharp object and digs up a tooth.

A DNA analyst reveals the tooth belongs to a child under age five, shattering Jenna's understanding of what really happened.

Jenna's spirit appears in a hotel room mirror and tells Alice that her daughter's death was not her fault.

Jenna Metcalf is a thirteen-year-old girl who has spent years trying to find her missing mother, Alice, who vanished from an elephant sanctuary the night an employee died. She enlists a washed-up psychic named Serenity and a disgraced former detective named Virgil to reopen the cold case with new eyes. As the trio uncovers clues — Alice's hidden wallet, a pebble necklace in the mud, and a mysterious child's tooth — the investigation builds toward a devastating truth. Jenna's recovered memories reveal that the sanctuary employee Nevvie murdered her as an act of revenge for the affair that destroyed her daughter Grace's life. Jenna realizes she has been a ghost all along, unable to move on because the mystery surrounding her death was never solved. After Jenna's spirit appears to Alice and offers forgiveness, both mother and daughter finally find the closure they need to let go.

The core investigation into Alice's disappearance, from first clue to final resolution.

Serenity makes a false prediction about a kidnapped senator's son whose body is later found, destroying her psychic career.

After Jenna's first visit, Serenity dreams of an elephant, an unconscious woman, and a blue scarf.

Jenna returns to Serenity's home and produces Alice's blue scarf, which matches Serenity's dream exactly.

Alice meets Thomas in Africa when he visits her research facility and objects to an elephant collaring procedure.

Alice and Thomas begin a romance in Africa; she becomes pregnant with Jenna before he returns to the States.

Alice arrives at the New Hampshire sanctuary and decides to stay permanently, feeling the elephants need her more than her African research does.

The sanctuary elephant Maura gives birth to a stillborn calf and enters a prolonged, anguished state of grief.

Thomas's mental illness escalates and he attempts to strangle Alice; Gideon rushes in and punches Thomas to stop him.

Alice secretly visits a Dartmouth psychiatrist to seek advice on having Thomas committed, but is told he must go voluntarily.

Alice and Gideon begin a romantic affair while Thomas is away from the sanctuary claiming to seek treatment.

Virgil and Serenity visit a produce store and learn that Grace died by drowning in the Connecticut River.

Virgil and Serenity find Nevvie alive and blind in Tennessee, forcing them to question who actually died at the sanctuary.

Grace discovers Alice and Gideon together in the unfinished observation deck Thomas had been secretly building.

Alice tells Thomas about her affair and pregnancy; he threatens that Jenna will only leave over Alice's dead body.

Serenity realizes she has always possessed her psychic gift but has been communicating with ghosts rather than the living.

Before the investigation begins, Serenity's psychic career is ruined by a disastrous wrong prediction about a kidnapped senator's son, leaving her desperate to reclaim her lost gift. Meanwhile, Alice's past unfolds: she meets Thomas Metcalf in Africa, falls in love, and follows him to his New Hampshire elephant sanctuary, where she grows attached to the animals and the staff. As Thomas's mental illness worsens and turns violent, Alice finds dangerous comfort in a growing closeness with Gideon, the sanctuary's gentle handyman, and the two begin an affair. Gideon's fragile wife Grace discovers the betrayal and takes her own life, setting off the chain of events that will end in murder. In the present, Virgil and Serenity pursue leads that eventually bring them face to face with a supposedly dead woman in Tennessee, forcing them to question the very facts of the original case. The investigation closes with Serenity's most startling realization: her psychic gift never left her, because she has been speaking to ghosts the entire time.

The backstory of the sanctuary, the affair that sparked tragedy, and the hidden lives of the supporting cast.

Jenna finds an online listing for Stanhope Investigations and calls to confirm that Virgil Stanhope is still alive.

Jenna asks her grandmother why no one ever reported Alice missing; the grandmother admits she was too afraid to go inside the police station.

Jenna falls asleep at the sanctuary and recovers a childhood memory of a preschool drawing that placed Gideon in her family.

Thomas secretly covers the observation deck walls with chemical formulas for compounds that could erase traumatic memories from the brain.

Grace privately confides to Alice that she is unable to have children and has never told Gideon the truth.

Serenity and Virgil flee Nevvie's Tennessee house when the walls begin seeping water in a supernatural flood.

Jenna calls Serenity from Tennessee in distress; the full trio reunites and pieces together Alice's escape plan.

Virgil confesses to Serenity that he buried the medical examiner's report and drove his car off a cliff out of guilt.

Nevvie calmly tells Gideon she hopes he gets everything he deserves when he announces his plans to leave with Alice.

Serenity fakes a psychic vision at the sanctuary's burial site, hoping to give Jenna closure about her mother.

Jenna's recovered memory reveals that Nevvie lured her into the woods at night and killed her with a rock.

Jenna's memory shows Maura the elephant lifting her body and covering it under the oak tree with branches and leaves.

Virgil realizes in Tallulah's lab that he and Jenna are both ghosts, and he transitions peacefully into the spirit realm.

Serenity reports human remains to the police and leads investigators to the burial site near the purple mushrooms, where Jenna's bones are found.

Serenity shows Alice an origami elephant that only Jenna could have sent, and Alice finally accepts that her daughter reached out.

Jenna's search gains momentum through small but pivotal discoveries, beginning with the instinct to look up Stanhope Investigations and the buried childhood memory that first points her toward Gideon. Behind the scenes, the secrets accumulating at the sanctuary — Thomas's dangerous obsession with erasing memory, Grace's hidden inability to have children, and Nevvie's chilling farewell to Gideon — quietly build toward catastrophe. Virgil is eventually forced to confess that he deliberately buried evidence and drove off a cliff out of guilt, revealing how deeply the original cover-up distorted everything that followed. Serenity's faked vision at the sanctuary unexpectedly leads to the discovery of the tooth that cracks the case, and Jenna's repressed memories of her own murder finally surface with brutal clarity. As each ghost resolves their unfinished business, Jenna's remains are recovered and Alice is confronted with undeniable proof of her daughter's love from beyond the grave. The novel closes with both the living and the dead finally able to stop holding on.

The critical decisions, hidden secrets, and shattering discoveries that expose the full truth of Jenna's fate.