Fourteen-year-old Judy has always believed she knows the people who matter most in her life. Akshaye has raised her, Nirmala has been part of her home for as long as she can remember, and the memories of her mother, Ananya, are all she has left of the past. But when strange messages begin appearing and a mysterious wooden figure from Judy's childhood dreams turns up in the real world, the boundaries between memory and reality begin to disappear.
Then someone sends her a warning:
The adults around her refuse to talk about it, and every question seems to lead to another silence. As a series of disturbing deaths begins to connect the present with events from ten years earlier, Judy finds herself following fragments of a story that everyone else seems determined to keep buried.
The closer Judy gets to the truth, the more she begins to question the people she has trusted all her life. Why did her mother leave behind so many unanswered questions? Why does the mysterious man seem to know things about her past? And why does Akshaye appear to be protecting her from something he refuses to name?
But the truth is more complicated than Judy expects.
Because discovering the past means discovering something about who she is, where she came from, and why so many people have spent years protecting a secret that was never meant to be found.
And sometimes, the person standing closest to you is the one you know the least.
You never know.