Twenty-five years ago, Susan Prentice lost her mother to a tragic accident. Now she is returning home for the first time to Virginia's eastern shores and the ancestral house where her mother fell down to her death on the front steps twenty-five years ago.

Though Susan has little memory of the accident, her arrival has alarmed those who fear what may lie dormant in Susan's memory. But it is her maternal grandmother, Alex Montoro, a proud, intense, aging doyenne of the ballet, who believes that her memory must be unlocked, since Susan is the only living witness to the tragedy—and Alex suspects that her daughter's fall was no accident.

Once unlocked, Susan's memory could hold the key for solving what Alex believes to be an unsolved mystery.