Do not read this if you want to read the finished product without knowing what happens first.

Jonah Joseph arrives home one night to find the playpen left in the backyard with the baby’s toys strewn about, the back door unlocked, and his wife Ashley and daughter Ilana missing. Together with Ashley’s family, his Deaf friend Alessandro, and his Deaf neighbors, Jonah scrambles to uncover the truth about the disappearance while the police mistakenly suspect him. 

A former employee with a grudge, a landscaper with a gruesome past, and even Ashley’s own sister—with whom Jonah had once had an affair—are all suspects. A cryptic text reading, “This is what happens when you turn your back on God,” leads Jonah to reunite with his estranged father, the leader of a cultish Christian church. When his father forgives him for leaving the church to join his mother after the divorce, Jonah rejects it as a hollow attempt to weaponize forgiveness.

Periodic glimpses reveal Ashley trapped in a coffin-like box. She eventually discovers her captor is Jimmy, the teenage next-door neighbor who has been learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from Jonah, and the only hearing member of a loving Deaf family. Ashley convinces Jimmy to let her go, but as he frees her from the box, he panics and kills her while trying to choke her into unconsciousness. When Jimmy hears his father coming down the stairs to his room he ambushes him, strangles him, and stages a murder-suicide scene to frame him for Ashley’s death. The police find the father hanging by a belt around his neck and Ashley’s body on the floor at his feet with blood trickling from her ears.

Following Ashley’s funeral, Jimmy’s sister, Kay, shares her suspicions with Alessandro that on the day of the murders, she found her father’s laundry basket out of place in Jimmy’s room, the box in the basement that hadn’t been there before, and Jimmy’s pet rabbit dead on the floor with blood draining from its ears—the same way they found Ashley in the murder scene.

Alessandro descends into Jimmy’s bedroom and finds a bloody knitting needle under the bed as Jimmy walks in on him. Jimmy attacks, and during the struggle, Kay surprises them both by clobbering Jimmy with her father’s medical dictionary. 

Jimmy is convicted of murder. During the sentencing hearing, Jonah’s father enters the courtroom while Jonah is giving his victim impact statement, prompting Jonah to abandon his written statement in what appears to be a moment of grace as he unleashes unvarnished forgiveness upon Jimmy. Jimmy’s stoic facade collapses as he breaks down in court. Jonah deposits thirty dollars—thirty pieces of silver—into Jimmy’s prison commissary account. Riddled with guilt, Jimmy commits suicide in prison a few days later. The story ends with the lingering question: Was Jonah’s forgiveness an answer to his calling of faith, or was it murder?