Charlie didn't mean to hurt her, but now his wife is dead, and he must do what is necessary to protect his children.
Charlie Marconi is an affable, educated, underachiever, a loving father, whose sense of self is based on the cast-iron certainty that he is a good man. Is it Charlie’s fault that he was once an abused child, that there is a poisonous rage bubbling beneath his gentle exterior, that, in a moment of misdirected anger, he murders his wife and dumps her body in the sea?
Charlie deals with the resultant guilt and fear the way he dealt with the pain of childhood, through a conscious act of denial. No one must ever know, because if no one knows, then it never happened.
But someone does know. Charlie’s daughter, Penny, sees something on the beach, but it is dark and she’s not quite sure. Penny too takes refuge in denial, but inadvertently drops hints to her dad.
Five months later the pressure is cranking up. Charlie is in conflict with his boss, the issue of what Penny knows remains unresolved, and he has a violent fight with his elder daughter, Eliza. This is when the police come to call.
Charlie’s great wall of self-deception is about to come tumbling down, leading us, finally, to the soul of Charlie Marconi.