The most central character in this narrative, Jenna Gray, is known in her married life as Jennifer Peterson. Readers first see her in her role as an abused wife, although they don’t yet know it. First, she is portrayed as the victim, who lost her child in an accident. The major twist in the book is that she is actually arrested for killing the child—although additional twists soon reveal that the truth is much more complicated even than that, and she is actually not guilty at all. She certainly blames herself, however: “Everything I look after dies,” (85) she tells Bethan, when offered a kitten.

Jenna initially comes off as a grieving mother who leaves her life to start anew but seems afraid of living again; however, her reasons for starting anew turn out to be much different and under more sinister conditions than readers are first given to believe. In truth, she is a broken woman. Most of her actions in the beginning can be attributed to her grief and related emotions, such as fear. She is sorrowful, but over the course of the year after the accident, she works on beginning a new path.