"I'm Kate...your real mother." Melissa has very few memories of the time before she and her siblings were adopted - the cool shade of the willow tree, the faint wisp of a woman standing in front of a pink stucco house. Now a young mother herself, Melissa yearns for her real family more than ever, but after being denied information by both the state and her adoptive parents, she had all but given up hope. Then, miraculously, this strange woman called and in the sweet honeyed tones of the South said the words she had been longing to hear. Over the next thirty years, Melissa and Kate bond over a shared love of gardening, good food and family. They fill each other in on every detail of their lives, save one: the whereabouts of Melissa's biological father. Armed only with his name and the fact that he served in the navy, Melissa continues to search for him in secret. It is painstaking and filled with countless dead ends, but as she finally gets closer to the truth, everything she had ever believed about her family begins to unravel. Nothing is as it seems, and with each piece of the puzzle, she uncovers another dark secret, another bitter lie, another stolen life.