For 10 years, newly retired policeman Michael McLoughlin has been haunted by the case of a young woman brutally murdered and the affection he felt for the victim's mother, Margaret. A favor for a friend leads him to another woman who has lost a child—her daughter has been found drowned in the same lake her stepfather died in years earlier. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Margaret, too, has been tormented by thoughts of that long, hot summer so many years ago. Memories of her daughter and the killer give her no peace and she finally returns to Dublin to face her demons, leading her back to a man she never thought she'd see again, and to a mother with grief to match her own.