Mr. Ferguson picks up his wife, Lorie, from dancing drunkenly at a bar. Their only child, Shelby, has recently gone missing, and Lorie copes with her grief in strange ways.

They have been married for six years. Lorie was going through a bad breakup and Mr. Ferguson did repairs at the apartment building she lived in, owned by his mother.

The detectives and the public seem to think Lorie is somehow at fault for Shelby's disappearance. The media runs pictures of her going about her life or smiling with the caption: "What about Shelby?"

The day Shelby went missing, Lorie said she'd been driving around looking for lawnmowers for sale on craigslist and had gotten coffee, running into a woman whose name she couldn't remember who she always talked to at the coffee place. She asked the woman to watch Shelby while she went to the bathroom to clean up a spill on her coat, and when she came out, both the woman and Shelby were gone.

The police don't believe her. Some witnesses saw her leave with Shelby. The detective asks Mr. Ferguson if Lorie has any history of emotional problems, and he says no.

Lorie gets a tattoo that reads Mirame quemar. Mr. Ferguson receives an anonymous email that says, "I think somebody should tell you about your wife," with a picture of Lorie dancing in a halter top that he assumes is from her younger, wild days, until he sees the tattoo. He recalls a night years ago when Lorie told him about how she was so jealous of her baby brother she would pray that he would disappear. One night, he was choking and her mom walked in just as she unwound the cord of a toy from his neck and said she saved his life. She said, “So no one ever knew the real story."

The police discover the time of Lorie's transaction at the coffee shop is hours earlier than she'd claimed. Additionally, she called a couple strange men after that, long before calling her husband. There's also footage of her going to the mall, buying and changing into a tank top. Lorie says she was at the coffee shop twice that day: that was the first time, Shelby was taken the second. Lorie confesses to her husband that since giving birth to Shelby she's spent her days sleeping with strange men. “I call men all day long, I go to their apartments. I leave my daughter in the car, especially if it’s very hot," she says. “You have a baby, your body changes. You need something else. So I let them do anything. I’ve done everything.”

That night, Mr. Ferguson dreams of finding his daughter's hair in a sack in the backyard shed. He wakes to remember they had the shed torn down years ago. The next night, Lorie remembers the woman's name: Katie Krusie. She calls the police. The woman is found. It turns out she had no children of her own but often lied and said she did, because she wanted children. For the last two months, she has been raising Shelby as "Kirsten Krusie," the daughter she'd told Lorie she had. Shelby is reunited with her parents.

They celebrate her return, then Mr. Ferguson wakes up to find Lorie gone from bed. He finds her in Shelby's room, staring intently at the crib, and decides he will have to keep vigilant watch over his daughter from now on, in part to protect her from his wife.