Long Lost

Eleven-year-old Fiona Crane has spent her life in her older sister's shadow. Her earliest memory is of sitting in cold bleachers, waiting for Arden to finish figure skating practice. Now the family has uprooted from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Lost Lake, a small town in eastern Massachusetts, so Arden can be closer to her competitive skating club near Boston. Fiona's father, Steven, an anatomy professor, and her mother, Caitlin, a pediatric nurse practitioner, insist the move benefits the whole family, but Fiona has left behind her close friends and landed in a town so steeped in its own history that it seems to have no room for newcomers. In small acts of retaliation, Fiona hides one of Arden's gold medals and unties the lucky knot in her skating lace.

While Arden practices, Fiona's mother drops her at the Chisholm Memorial Library, a grand three-story brick mansion donated to the town. On the staircase landing, Fiona pauses before a portrait of Margaret Chisholm. A round-faced blond boy tells her about Margaret and leaves with an evaluating stare that deepens Fiona's sense of not belonging. In the second-floor mystery room, she discovers a book bound in dark green leather with no author name or library label. Its cover reads The Lost One and depicts a dark forest full of hidden figures.

The book tells the story of two sisters, Hazel and Pearl, from a wealthy family in a small New England town. Hazel, thirteen, is bold and crafty; Pearl, eleven, is cautious and overlooked. Their parents travel frequently, leaving the girls under the care of their strict housekeeper, Mrs. Rawlins. In the opening chapter, Hazel rescues Pearl from a tree using her mother-of-pearl-handled pocketknife, then cuts her own hair to match so they can share the blame. Fiona identifies deeply with Pearl. As she reads further, a carnival comes to town, and Hazel befriends twins Mae and Matthew while excluding Pearl. On the carnival's last night, Pearl runs home alone, convinced the Searcher, a dark hooded figure from local legend said to snatch lone wanderers, is following her.

When Fiona returns to the library, the book has vanished. Ms. Miranda, the library's director, claims no such book exists. Fiona spots it behind the circulation desk, but Ms. Miranda takes it down a hallway marked STAFF ONLY. Fiona sneaks into the director's office, retrieves the book, and smuggles it home. The next section of the story reveals Hazel's disappearance. Pearl staggers home barefoot and soaked, insisting the Searcher took her sister. A search party finds Pearl's torn dress in the swollen river but no trace of Hazel. That night, Charlie Hobbes, the twelve-year-old son of the family's groundskeeper, catches Pearl burying Hazel's pocketknife beneath an oak tree. Then the story cuts off. All remaining pages are blank, the ending erased.

Fiona begins connecting the book to reality. Street names in Lost Lake match locations in the story, and a historical map from 1910 confirms the overlap. When a scheduling conflict forces her to miss her friend Cy's birthday party so her father can drive Arden to a competition, Fiona's resentment boils over. Left alone, she rides her bike into the woods and crosses Parson's Bridge into the dense forest she believes is the Enchanted Forest from the book. She glimpses a tall, dark figure among the trees and flees. A stray curly-haired brown dog leads her to the library's off-limits third floor, where she finds a preserved bedroom containing a vanity initialed E.C. and a photograph labeled "Evelyn and Margaret, 1913." A tall woman in a long black dress orders Fiona out, calling the dog "Pixie," the same name as the dog in The Lost One.

After Fiona's mother discovers she left the house while grounded and confiscates her phone and laptop, Fiona uses Arden's tablet to research the names. "Evelyn" derives from a word meaning hazelnut, and "Margaret" means pearl: Hazel and Pearl are Evelyn and Margaret Chisholm. Ms. Miranda confirms this but insists Evelyn died of pneumonia, showing Fiona a newspaper obituary and Margaret's 1970 letter requesting that Evelyn's bedroom remain untouched. She explains that The Lost One is an unpublished, one-of-a-kind manuscript and allows Fiona to take it home. At Wayfarer's Rest Cemetery, Evelyn's gravestone bears no dates, unlike the other family stones. When Arden catches Fiona sneaking back in, she strikes a deal: Fiona owes a future favor in exchange for Arden's silence. That night, a note tucked into the book's blank pages reads "KEEP DIGGING."

During a rainstorm, the ghost dog leads Fiona to dig beneath an oak on the library grounds, where she unearths Evelyn's pocketknife. The blond boy reappears and introduces himself as Charlie Hobbes, named after his great-grandfather from the story. His great-grandfather always maintained that Evelyn disappeared rather than died of illness and that the family covered up the truth. Charlie reveals he also found and lost The Lost One the same way and believes the book is bound to the library. Together they return to Evelyn's bedroom, where the book lies on the bed with new pages. These reveal that the Chisholm family staged Evelyn's return and death, faking a funeral. Pearl's whispered confession is devastating: "The Searcher was a lie. I killed her."

That evening, Fiona discovers Arden crying alone. Arden confesses she failed to place at her recent competition and fears the family's sacrifices were for nothing. Fiona feels guilt over her sabotage. When Arden catches her trying to sneak out, Fiona admits she invented the Searcher story to scare her. Hurt, Arden tells her to go. Charlie, who hid inside the library before closing, lets Fiona in. More new pages confirm Pearl's lifelong guilt. Charlie's grandmother and Ms. Miranda arrive and escort him out, leaving Fiona alone. Both the book and the pocketknife vanish from Evelyn's room. On the staircase, Fiona encounters the ghost of young Margaret Chisholm, who reveals she wrote The Lost One but could never write the true ending, erasing it instead. Before Fiona can learn more, the library doors burst open and a black-cloaked figure, the Searcher, enters. Margaret thrusts the book into Fiona's hands and whispers "Run."

Barricaded in a room, Fiona reads the final ending. After the carnival argument, Hazel dressed in a magician's cloak and pretended to be the Searcher to frighten Pearl. Enraged, Pearl tackled Hazel and stole her knife. Hazel chased her and took a dangerous shortcut across a half-submerged log over the rain-swollen river. She fell in. Pearl dove after her but could not save her. Traumatized, Pearl constructed the Searcher story, almost believing it herself. Fiona follows Margaret's sobbing to the basement, where she tries to reach Margaret inside a large stone cistern, an old water storage tank. Cold hands seize her. It is Evelyn's ghost, who has been moving the book and restoring the erased pages all along. Lonely and furious at Margaret's lifelong silence, Evelyn wants Fiona to drown as she did. Water rises around them.

Arden arrives, having followed Pixie and Margaret's ghost to the basement. She jumps into the cistern and boosts Fiona over the wall. Fiona pulls Arden out in turn, though Arden injures her ankle. Margaret climbs in after Evelyn and pushes her out. The ghostly sisters face each other. Margaret apologizes for lying and cuts her own hair with the pocketknife, repeating the gesture of solidarity from their childhood. Evelyn softens, laughs, and acknowledges that Margaret did not cause her fall. The sisters reconcile.

The two pairs of sisters walk through the moonlit woods to the Enchanted Forest. Arden explains she came because she could not bear the thought that her angry words might be the last thing she ever said to Fiona. Fiona offers her arm for Arden to lean on and says the favor she owes should be something bigger, like coming to watch Arden skate. Evelyn and Margaret's ghosts fade into the trees, finally at peace. Three days later, The Lost One has vanished entirely, its story complete. Fiona rides through Lost Lake, which now feels restful rather than hostile, heading to watch Arden skate for the first time in years.