Ruth Hartland is the director of a trauma unit, a psychotherapist with years of experience, wise and respected by her peers. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never "fit in," disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return. Enter a new patient, Dan, who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but her own complicated feelings cloud her professional judgement. Boundaries she would never have crossed with another patient are crossed. And before long, events spiral out of control...