It's been seven years since Maria Buscombe disappeared, leaving a cryptic note for her husband and daughter. Seven years of living in silence. Now the news comes home that Maria has been brutally murdered. For RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, the case pulls him away from thoughts of early retirement with the love of his life, Cassandra Mitchell. But Alberg knows he won't be able to rest until he pieces together the puzzle of Maria's past. Why had she left her family so abruptly? What were the secret circumstances of her childhood adoption? And, last but not least, who was stalking the troubled woman--and why? His initial inquiries raise more questions than answers. He meets resistance and suspicion from Maria's family and glimpses the rage and pain of the dead woman's daughter, Belinda, now herself a mother-to-be. If Alberg is to solve this case, he must find the broken branch of Maria Buscombe's family tree--and the deadly secrets that reveal a terrible truth about the victim herself...