London, 1930. Sir Cecil Lawton asks Maisie to establish whether his son Ralph, an airman reported killed in 1917, is truly dead. The request fulfils the final wish of Lawton’s wife, whose refusal to accept the official account led her toward spiritualists and claims of communication with the missing.
Maisie travels to France and reunites with Priscilla Evernden, whose three brothers were lost in the war and whose family history intersects with the Lawton case. Evidence of concealment and divided loyalty forces Maisie to confront the battlefield memories she has suppressed and to consider when a lie protects the living and when it becomes another form of harm.