In the years that follow the tragedy, the boy’s grandmother, Dorothy, retreats into an inner world. Her daughter-in-law, Meridian, comes to care for Dorothy in the final weeks of her life. She is puzzled to find the once perfect garden in a state of devastation and neglect. Through the aged woman’s letters about love and loss and strange cryptic messages written in the garden, she begins to find answers to her own life.

But Dorothy’s letters also reveal an appalling secret.