When a letter arrives from the other side of the ocean, Simone, a thirty-eight-year-old judge, suspects that a long-ago lover has targeted her for "the most intimate of crimes," blackmail. The prospect shatters an already tenuous peace: Simone is shouldering the burden of her husband's breakdown, her family's mounting debts, and the unexpected demands of a new job. Soon the ripple of terror that flows through Simone's world like the ghost of a former self threatens to propel her public and private lives onto a harrowing collision course.