Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a house with a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at the age of forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Broome is a detective who can't let go of a cold case - a local husband and father who disappeared seventeen years ago - and spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them. Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past never truly fades away. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realisation that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream - the boredom of suburban life, the thrill of temptation, the desperation that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades - they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper thin as a heartbeat.