Chapter 1 opens with a dream in which the protagonist, Frankie Elkin, is swimming through the depths of a lake. She comes across a sunken vehicle containing Lani Whitehorse, a young single mother with a history of difficult relationships with men. Lani disappeared months earlier and the local investigators decided she ran off and left her three-year old daughter behind. In the dream, Frankie finds Lani’s body trapped in the car. The dead Lani turns to Frankie, grabs her, and pulls her into the car while saying, “Too late.”

Frankie wakes on a train in Boston. Reflecting on the way law enforcement was so quick to dismiss Lani, Frankie wonders why they assumed that Lani couldn’t be a good mother despite having a difficult personal life.

Frankie specializes in missing children from marginalized social groups. Her current case is Angelique Lovelie Badeau, a Haitian girl from Boston’s Mattapan district. Frankie reflects that Angelique deserves better than to be forgotten because she is a dark-skinned girl from a poor neighborhood. As Frankie prepares for her new case, she thinks back to her former AA sponsor, Paul, who told her she was searching for the lost to punish herself.