Twenty years ago, Edith Wainwright watched her lover Jack hang for a murder he didn’t commit. Even though three eyewitnesses claimed they saw someone who looked like Jack at the scene, Edith knew he was innocent: the two of them were together the night of the murder. But Jack refused to testify in his defense, and made Edith swear never to tell another soul where he had been. He was willing to die, he said, to protect her.
Since then, Edith has done her best to move on and build a life with her husband Charles—Jack’s best friend and the man she was cheating on that fateful night. But decades of guilt and lies have taken their toll, and Edith has started to wonder about the real reasons behind her long silence. When she hears rumors of a mysterious figure visiting Jack’s grave and walking the hills in a long black veil, she knows that her ghosts are returning.
Now, Edith must confront her past and uncover a town’s long-hidden secrets. As the only person who knows that the real killer is still on the loose, she must find the answers to all the questions she has been afraid to ask. What else was buried with Jack’s bones? What doesn’t she know about Charles, Jack, and their history together before she met them? And most of all, what really happened twenty years ago under the town hall light?
[Traditional, with adaptations.]
In a certain village there lived a rabbi, famed for the time he had spent studying Talmud. One day, two villagers came to see him about a dispute. The rabbi agreed to hear them out and decide the matter for them, and a small crowd gathered around.
Chaim went first. “Moshe’s chickens have been running into my yard,” he explained, describing how they were eating from his stores and harassing his children. “Moshe needs to build a fence to keep them in.”
The rabbi frowned sadly and spread his arms in empathy. “I’m afraid that you are wrong,” he began. For fifteen minutes he spoke, quoting Torah and Talmud, explaining why Moshe and his chickens had violated none of the Law. By the end of his learned explanation, the crowd was nodding and murmuring in agreement.
Now it was Moshe’s turn. “My chickens are well-behaved and I look after them carefully,” he said. It was rare that even one chicken got out, and it never went far. “I have done all I can. If Chaim is so concerned, well then he should build a fence to keep them out.”
Again the rabbi frowned, a wistful look on his face. “I’m afraid that you too are wrong,” he said. For another fifteen minutes he spoke, quoting Torah and Talmud, explaining why Moshe had failed in his obligations towards his wayward chickens. Once again, the crowd of villagers was nodding along with him—all except one.
“They can’t both be wrong!” Herschel shouted. “First you told us that Chaim was wrong, and then you told us that Moshe was wrong. Which is it? It has to be one or the other.”
The rabbi nodded sadly. “Alas, my son, I’m afraid that you are wrong as well.”