Still Missing

Annie O'Sullivan, a thirty-two-year-old Realtor in Clayton Falls on Vancouver Island, narrates her story through weekly therapy sessions with the therapist she calls "Doc." Four months after escaping a year-long abduction, Annie is deeply traumatized: She sleeps in her closet, cannot enter buildings without knowing the exits, and follows rigid rituals mirroring the control her captor imposed.

Annie recounts the August afternoon when she was hosting an open house and a man calling himself David arrived in a tan van. Charming and enthusiastic, he asked to see the property. While Annie showed him the backyard, he pressed a gun into her lower back and forced her to the van, locking her inside with a keyless remote. Her open house signs had been removed and placed in the van, confirming the abduction was premeditated.

Annie wakes in a remote, fortified log cabin on a mountain where every potential weapon has been removed or bolted down. The man she privately calls "The Freak" reveals he has been watching her for months, producing photographs of her daily life. He establishes rigid rules: meals at set times, supervised bathroom breaks, assigned chores, nightly baths during which he shaves her body, and nightly attempts at sex.

The Freak cannot maintain arousal when Annie remains emotionally unresponsive, and his frustration turns violent. After he threatens to abduct her best friend Christina, Annie tries to seduce him by feigning arousal, but this enrages him further. Left alone for five days without food, Annie analyzes his psychology and concludes he needs genuine fear and resistance. When he returns, she expresses real terror during the rape that follows. The emotional cost is devastating.

Annie becomes pregnant roughly six weeks into captivity. The Freak is elated and begins revealing his past: His adoptive mother, Juliet, sexually abused him from childhood, forced him to help her dress for her husband, and made him shave his body. He killed his adoptive father by luring him to an old mine and later watched Juliet die of ovarian cancer. Annie is disturbed to find herself feeling compassion for him.

Over winter, The Freak's psychological manipulation intensifies. He claims the searches for Annie have been called off and that her boyfriend, Luke, has a new girlfriend. He implements a reward-and-punishment system that erodes Annie's sense of reality. During reading hour he proves articulate and passionate about literature, and Annie admits she sometimes found him interesting, which deepens her shame.

In spring, The Freak allows Annie outside to garden. She bonds with a wild mallard duck at the river, which becomes her symbol of freedom. Annie goes into labor while gardening and manages the delivery herself, giving birth to a girl. She whispers a secret name into the baby's ear. The Freak names the child Juliet after his mother and grows jealous and controlling. When the duck refuses to eat from his hand, he shoots it and forces Annie to cook and eat it. When the baby develops a fever and respiratory illness, he refuses to seek medical help.

After five days of worsening illness, Annie falls asleep from exhaustion and wakes to find the baby dead. The Freak takes the body and refuses to say where he puts it. Annie is consumed by guilt, tormenting herself over whether she could have saved her daughter.

About a week later, The Freak announces he wants Annie pregnant again immediately. While he chops wood with his back to her, Annie picks up the axe and buries it in his skull. She searches the property for her baby's body but finds nothing. She locates the van hidden on a logging road, reconnects a battery cable, and drives to the small town of Port Northfield, where she walks into the police station.

Staff Sergeant Gary Kincade of the Clayton Falls Serious Crime Unit arrives and takes charge. Calm and methodical, he earns Annie's trust. She tells him she killed The Freak. When he asks about the baby, Annie breaks down completely and is sedated. She spends two weeks in the hospital before returning to her mother Lorraine's home.

Back in Clayton Falls, Annie struggles to readjust. Lorraine drinks heavily and neglected Annie's golden retriever, Emma, for the entire year. Annie pushes away Luke and alienates Christina. She develops rigid security routines: placing cans in front of doors, keeping a knife under the bed and pepper spray nearby, and sleeping in her closet.

Over months of therapy, Annie makes gradual progress. She begins sleeping in her bed, eating on her own schedule, running with Emma, and doing bookkeeping for Luke's restaurant. She reconnects with Christina and rediscovers her passion for art. Then her house is burglarized and nothing is taken. Weeks later, a masked man lunges at her from a white van during a morning run. Annie and Emma fight him off.

Gary's investigation deepens. Annie identifies The Freak from a mug shot: His real name is Simon Rousseau, a convicted felon who served time at Kinsol prison. Gary determines that a photo Rousseau had of Annie came from inside her house, meaning someone she trusted provided it. He discovers that Lorraine's stepbrother, Dwight, was incarcerated at Kinsol alongside Rousseau. A motel maid identifies a woman matching Lorraine who visited Rousseau's room.

During an emotionally charged night, Annie drives to Gary's motel and they sleep together, her first sexual encounter since captivity. Annie takes control entirely, managing her trauma response. She leaves knowing she cannot return to Luke, recognizing that he belongs to the person she was before the abduction.

Annie defies Gary's instructions and confronts her stepfather, Wayne, at a diner, secretly recording the conversation. Wayne confesses that Lorraine orchestrated the abduction after seeing a movie about a kidnapping victim whose family profited from media attention. Lorraine wanted Annie to disappear for one week to generate fame and humiliate her competitive sister, Aunt Val. She borrowed $35,000 from a loan shark connected to Dwight to pay Rousseau, but Rousseau cut off contact and never returned Annie. Wayne also confesses he was the masked attacker and the burglar, both schemes Lorraine designed to reignite media interest and repay the loan shark. Annie walks Wayne to the police station, where he gives a full statement.

Gary interrogates Lorraine, who admits she arranged a one-week disappearance but shows no understanding of the devastation she caused. Annie visits her mother in jail. Lorraine reveals that her stepfather sexually abused her sister Val, but Val blamed Lorraine, and Lorraine was cast out of her childhood home. Lorraine compares hiring Rousseau to Annie's childhood request for ice cream that led to the car accident killing Annie's father and older sister, Daisy, revealing she has always blamed Annie for those deaths. When Annie begs her not to take the case to trial, Lorraine eagerly plans to use court proceedings to humiliate Val. Annie realizes nothing about her abduction was ever about her and leaves, telling Lorraine she will not return.

In her final sessions, Annie begins rebuilding. She agrees to sell her story to a movie producer, using the money to fund art school in the Rocky Mountains. After a fierce argument and reconciliation with Christina, during which Christina reveals her own marriage is struggling and that she slept with Luke once during Annie's absence, Annie forgives her. Breaking down in Christina's arms, Annie shares everything she endured, beginning with the secret she has guarded most fiercely: Her baby's name was Hope.