Emily Thompson has always been the town's steady hand: a beloved elementary teacher, engaged, quietly ordinary. Then she wakes in the woods beside a lifeless body, mud under her nails, and no memory of how she got there. When a second corpse appears-this time in her own home-suspicions spiral into a public hunger for answers. The police have prints, footprints, and Emily's name in the center of every frame. But Emily knows the terror of disappearing into sleep; she knows the old childhood episodes she never fully explained. As the case swallows Willow Creek whole, Detective Sarah Jennings must decide whether Emily is prey or perpetrator. To save herself, Emily teams with a relentless detective and a friend who won't let her fall-then discovers a thread that ties the victims together, a history deeper than garden gossip and older than the town itself. With time and the town against her, Emily must reconnect the hours she's lost and root out the person using her sleep for their very own darkness-before the final morning finds her wrists cuffed to the truth.