Kit McDeere is reinstated at her home health agency and assigned Lenora Hope as her first new patient.

Kit arrives at Hope's End, sees graffiti proclaiming Lenora's guilt, and meets the poised housekeeper Mrs. Baker.

Kit meets her patient, who communicates via typewriter, and reads her first message: she cannot hurt Kit.

Jessie takes Kit on a tour of the murder scenes, pointing out bloodstains, the billiard room, and the chandelier.

Miss Hope gestures toward the typewriter, signaling she wants to tell Kit the truth about what happened.

Kit looks over the terrace railing and discovers Mary Milton's corpse on the rocks below.

Detective Vick investigates Mary's death, rules it a suicide, and dismisses Kit's theory that Mary was murdered.

Carter shows Kit a photograph revealing that Lenora Hope was visibly and noticeably pregnant in the fall of 1929.

A section of the cliff beneath Hope's End breaks off and plunges into the ocean.

Mrs. Baker throws the typewriter off the cliff and burns Kit's collected typed pages in the fireplace.

Kit secretly searches Mrs. Baker's room and finds suspicious financial documents and statements from the Ocean View retirement home.

Kit visits the Ocean View retirement home and questions Berniece Mayhew about the night of the Hope murders.

Kit tears the fabric from the covered Hope family portraits and discovers that one of the three family urns is empty.

Kit confronts Mrs. Baker by name, and the housekeeper confirms she is actually Lenora Hope.

Hope's End and the cliff it stands on collapse into the ocean; Patrick dies inside alongside Lenora.

Kit McDeere reluctantly accepts an assignment caring for Lenora Hope, the woman accused of murdering her family in 1929. At the crumbling cliff-side estate Hope's End, Kit begins piecing together what really happened, aided by staff members Carter and Jessie. The discovery of her predecessor Mary's body deepens Kit's conviction that someone is willing to kill to keep the truth buried. Her investigation leads her to key evidence — a photograph of a pregnant Lenora, suspicious documents in Mrs. Baker's room, and a visit to blackmailer Berniece Mayhew. Tearing the covers from the family portraits and opening the Hope family urns, Kit finally confronts Mrs. Baker and learns the housekeeper is the real Lenora Hope. The climax arrives when Hope's End itself collapses into the sea, taking the last of the family's secrets with it.

Kit McDeere's investigation into the Hope family murders.

The typist recalls Hope's End as a prison, describing her loneliness and resentment of her father's cruel games.

The typist meets a stranger on the terrace railing who cautions her against falling and introduces himself as Ricky.

Kit confesses to Miss Hope that she left her dying mother's fentanyl bottle accessible and feels guilt over her choice.

Kit returns to Miss Hope's room to find that the page typed the night before has completely disappeared.

Miss Hope refuses to answer Kit's questions out of order, insisting the full chronology is essential to understanding events.

Jessie reveals to Kit that she knew about the secret typing project Miss Hope had conducted with caregiver Mary.

Miss Hope confirms she finished dictating the full story to Mary on the very night Mary disappeared.

Kit searches Mary's room and finds an empty space where a suitcase once sat but no manuscript.

Carter confides to Kit that he believes he may be Lenora Hope's grandson based on evidence of her 1929 pregnancy.

Neighbor Kenny climbs the estate wall to taunt the residents, exposing that Hope's End has no real perimeter security.

Miss Hope wakes in apparent terror, and the typewriter contains line after line reading only the words it's all your fault.

Jessie abruptly resigns from Hope's End and leaves Kit a Ouija board and a final cassette tape as parting gifts.

Miss Hope uses the Ouija board to confirm that Berniece Mayhew was present inside the house on the night of the murders.

Detective Vick reveals that Lenora reported only two bodies in 1929, and that Virginia Hope died six months after the murders.

Virginia dies at age 101, and her obituary describes her as a bestselling author survived by her devoted companion Kit McDeere.

Running parallel to Kit's investigation is Virginia's own story, told through typewritten interludes beginning with her meeting the young man named Ricky on the terrace at Hope's End. Back in the present, Kit wrestles with guilt over her mother's death and slowly earns her patient's trust. Evidence accumulates — disappearing pages, a missing manuscript, an empty suitcase spot — each pointing to a deliberate cover-up. Secondary characters like Carter, Jessie, and Kenny each contribute key pieces to the puzzle in unexpected ways. As Hope's End grows more dangerous, Jessie departs and a Ouija board becomes Kit's last channel to her patient's secrets. The pool closes with Virginia's death at age 101, finally free and celebrated as the bestselling author she had always wanted to be.

The hidden details and smaller revelations that shaped the mystery.

The opening interlude depicts a figure in a blood-soaked nightgown throwing a knife from the clifftop into the ocean.

Archie mentions that governess Miss Baker resigned on the very day of the Hope murders, contradicting Mrs. Baker's account of her tenure.

Kit hears unexplained sounds inside Miss Hope's locked room at night and finds a new crack splitting the wall by morning.

When Kit demands to know who entered her room overnight, Miss Hope slowly types her dead sister's name: Virginia.

The typist confides her pregnancy to her best friend Archie, who offers to help her obtain an abortion.

The typist overhears her parents fighting and learns for the first time that her father considers Lenora an illegitimate child.

The typist trails her father to a secret meeting and discovers he is having an affair with governess Miss Baker.

Lenora discovers her sister's visibly advanced pregnancy on the planned night of escape and locks Virginia in her room.

Lenora tells their mother Evangeline about Virginia's pregnancy, setting off the fatal chain of events that night.

Kit finds an unfamiliar suitcase on her father's bed containing blood vials and the pages of Virginia's typed memoir.

Kit realizes that her father Patrick is the same man Virginia knew as Ricky — the lover who accepted a bribe to abandon her.

Kit rushes back to Hope's End and arrives just in time to stop Patrick from killing Virginia in her room.

Patrick confesses he pushed Mary from the terrace and that he and Kathleen had together agreed to end her life.

Lenora confesses the true sequence of events: Evangeline stabbed Winston, Ricky then stabbed Evangeline, and Virginia attempted to hang herself.

Virginia's farewell letter reveals she was never truly paralyzed or mute, having feigned her disabilities throughout her time at Hope's End.

From the novel's very first image — a blood-soaked figure throwing a knife from the cliff into the sea — the story is built on hidden identities and buried confessions. Small contradictions in the staff's accounts and unexplained noises in the night hint that everything at Hope's End is a carefully maintained lie. The typewritten interludes gradually reveal a family destroyed by cruelty, illegitimacy, and a doomed romance, culminating in Lenora's fateful betrayal of her sister on the night of the planned escape. The present-day mystery cracks open when Kit discovers a suitcase that links her own father Patrick directly to the 1929 murders. Patrick's confession and Lenora's account of the true order of killings shatter everything Kit believed about her own family. The pool ends with Virginia's greatest secret: that she was never truly disabled, and had spent decades feigning helplessness as her only means of survival and resistance.