Nat Montgomery is an expert hider. With a promiscuous, volatile addict for a mother, she has long since perfected the art of concealing herself behind humor. An art history major in Washington, DC, with an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Nat receives a nineteenth-birthday gift from her beloved grandmother, Gigi, who raised her and who died six months previously. The gift is a laptop containing time-release video clips of Gigi’s revelations about Nat’s grandfather, murdered in 1964 when he worked for a secret racial reconciliation group that met after hours in the Smithsonian museums. The murderer was never found, and Gigi’s family always believed he abandoned her and her unborn child.

Knowing the hole Grandpa Bobby’s disappearance left in Gigi’s heart, Nat resolves to discover the truth of what happened to him. But when her roommate Cadence disappears after asking questions about the long-dead past, Nat fears Bobby’s killer is still a threat. Casting off her inclination to hide, Nat determines to find the person who kidnapped Cadence and who may well have killed her grandfather a half-century earlier.