 Renee Unger is living the life she always hoped for: a little red-brick house in the small town of New Russia, Ohio, a good husband, a prospering construction business, and a baby on the way. When her husband s younger brother turns twenty-one and is released from juvenile prison, where he served five years for murder, Renee s cozy life begins to change. Colson comes to live with them, an injection of danger in the form of a strange, silent houseguest with haunted eyes and odd habits. Her husband, Eric, becomes obsessed with monitoring his little brother s every move, and Colson s moves become increasingly unpredictable. Nobody talks about what happened five years ago, but something shifts beneath the surface of their lives a secret that won t stay buried. Just when tensions threaten to explode into violence, the brothers disappear without a word, leaving Renee alone with a houseful of echoes and unanswered questions. She must finally step out of her rarefied world and confront the assumptions on which she s built her whole life.