Content Warning: This guide mentions child abuse, death by suicide, and sexual assault.

David Burroughs is serving his fifth year of a life sentence for the murder of his three-year-old son Mathew. His family believes he did so unintentionally while in a fugue state. He made no effort to defend himself in court because he was in shock. The murder weapon was found buried in the backyard, and a former neighbor, Hilde Winslow, testified she saw David burying it.

David receives a visit from his former sister-in-law Rachel Anderson, a reporter fired for an overzealous investigation that ended poorly. She shows him a photograph she saw at the house of friend Tom Longley, who works with Rachel’s ex-husband at Merton Pharmaceuticals. The photograph was taken during a company trip to Six Flags: A boy stands in the background, with a port-wine birthmark on his cheek like Matthew.

Rachel tells David that she went to a police technician who age-progressed an old photograph of Matthew: The resulting image looks like the boy in the Six Flags photograph. Rachel admits she hasn’t shown the photograph to her older sister, David’s ex-wife Cheryl, because she is remarried and pregnant, and it might be too traumatic.