Lorraine – “Rain” – McGinty is 44, somewhat accident-prone, and not terribly attractive. Her latest lover, Lance, has just announced that he’s gay. Shattered, Rain flees for a small town in the mountains, spending everything she has on the purchase of a small house. She is dreaming about what she can do with the house – if she ever gets a job – when she meets her next-door-neighbour, Eric Shade. Eric, short, blond & 50-ish, is definitely not her type – a point brought home in spades when she starts getting to know him. Pushy, insensitive, and thoroughly annoying, Eric manages to piss her off every time he opens his mouth. Nonetheless, in the course of conversation, he learns that Rain has past experience in janitorial work, and offers her a job at a decent rate of pay. He has just been hired to renovate the local Coyote Inn, and he needs someone to do the cleaning. Rain manages to put her dislike of Eric Shade aside long enough to accept the much-needed job.

The inn is owned by an elderly lady by the name of Margaret McCrae. They meet with her lawyer, Malcolm Whittacker – who is handling the renovation project for her – and begin work on the inn.

One of the reasons Rain most dislikes Eric is his innate ability to insinuate himself into her life – whether she likes it or not. He expects her - as his neighbour - to cater to his needs while he, in turn, plays ‘good neighbour’ by getting her a job, building her new steps, fixing her car, and patching up her various wounds and scrapes. He doesn’t see any problem with that arrangement; Rain does.

The first day on the job, Rain encounters Margaret McCrae, the inn’s owner, on the stairwell. Mrs. McCrae takes Rain aside and tells her why she is having the inn renovated. For years, Margaret has held onto the inn in hopes of passing it on to her missing granddaughter. But time is running out; Margaret doesn’t expect to live much longer, and she is no closer to finding the missing Callandria McCrae than she was thirty-odd years ago. She has been advised to fix up the old inn with a view to selling it.

Callandria, she tells Rain, was abducted from a picnic ground at the age of two. Searches turned up no trace of the child, and she has been presumed dead for more than three decades now. Margaret doesn’t believe the child was killed. Encouraged by her psychic friend, Sophia Redfearne, Margaret believes the child – now an adult – is still alive, and unaware of her true identity.

Desperate to find her, she begs Rain to “take the case”. Rain is no detective; she knows nothing about finding missing persons, and cannot imagine what she could find out that four decades of policemen and private detectives haven’t already discovered. She tells Margaret this, but Margaret does not agree. Sophia has told her that Rain is the one, so Rain must take the case! Rain does not believe in psychics, but Eric turns out to be slightly less skeptical. He assures Rain that Sophia is the “real thing”, and that if Sophia thinks the kid is still alive – and Rain can find her – well, Sophia is probably right.

In the end, Rain finds herself unable to take away the last hope of an ailing old lady – especially when that ailing old lady is signing her much-needed pay cheques – and reluctantly agrees to look into it. She has no hope whatsoever of succeeding, but as long as Margaret is willing to finance it, she feels she has no choice but to agree.

Eric gives Rain as much background as he knows: Callandria was the only child of Calvin McCrae – Margaret’s son – and his wife, Alexandria. They had been picnicking in a roadside spot near Jones lake; while their attention was momentarily elsewhere, the child disappeared. Search parties were formed, but no trace of the child was ever found. Alexandria, the child’s mother, killed herself a year later. There was some suggestion that guilt might be involved – apparently, Alexandria hadn’t wanted a baby at all – but no suggestion that the mother was in any way involved. That possibility, apparently, had been thoroughly checked by the authorities. Calvin, the child’s father, drank himself to death six years later.

After some discussion, it is decided that they should start by talking to one of the policemen who handled the case. Ed Cornish is now retired, but quite willing to talk. He invites a retired Social Services worker – Eleanor Shaddick – to join them. Eleanor was called in to help with the investigation, and tells Eric and Rain that Alexandria suffered from post-natal depression – but that she did, indeed, love and want the child. Ed tells them all he knows about the case – what steps were taken, and what was found (nothing). He also agrees to give them copies of all the files relating to the case. Later review of the files reveals an exhaustive investigation that left no stone unturned. There had been a single interview with the psychic, Sophia Redfearne, but her ‘visions’ about mountains and lakes and penguins had yielded not a single tangible lead. She had, apparently, contacted them several more times over the years, but again, she could offer nothing concrete.

From the files, they obtain the name of Alexandria’s sister – Victoria Hamlin – and decide to contact her. Apparently, Alexandria had been having some strange dreams after the child disappeared. Perhaps Victoria could shed some light on her sister’s true state of mind at that time. (Rain still tends to think that Alexandria is probably behind her child’s disappearance.) They also find the name of a local handyman – Wilfred Connolly – who was apparently quite fond of the child. Could he have been a closet pedophile? Although Connolly had an airtight alibi for the time of the child’s disappearance – and was thus discounted as a suspect – Rain feels there’s a possibility that he could have set the kidnapping up. There was one other name worth investigating: Sylvia Rensick. She was the neighbour who had brought Eleanor Shaddick, the child-care worker, into the game. Concerned about the constantly-crying baby and constantly-fighting parents, Sylvia had called Social Services in to investigate. There was just one more possibility in the files: a man who was pretty sure he’d seen the little girl at a roadside stop in the Kamloops area, a couple of days after she disappeared. Unfortunately, he couldn’t connect the child to any particular adult or vehicle, so the police hadn’t been able to pursue it.

Rain stumbles across Wilfred Connolly’s personal website on-line; it seems he’s a big fan of the UFO Conspiracy, and is personally convinced that little Callandria was abducted by aliens. They cross Wilfred Connolly off the list.

Victoria Hamlin felt her sister’s death was more accident than suicide. Alexandria had a lot of trouble sleeping after her daughter disappeared, and what sleep she did get was haunted by weird dreams. She had died from an overdose of sleeping pills. The conversation with Victoria works to dispel Rain’s suspicion about Alexandria’s involvement and replace it with sympathy. The only other thing Victoria can offer in the way of help is the news that Alexandria actually found a scrap of cloth stuck in some brambles where her daughter disappeared. She stuck it in her pocket and forgot about it, so the police were never aware of its existence. There were no visible stains on the scrap of cloth, so no useful testing could have been done, anyway. But now that DNA testing was available, it might be worthwhile to let the police have it. Who was in possession of it now? Why, Sophia Redfearne, of course. Rain is reluctant to meet the so-called ‘psychic’, but it’s looking more and more like she won’t have any choice.

To Rain’s amazement, Sophia Redfearne is not the old crone she was expecting, but a beautiful dark-haired woman who doesn’t look a day over thirty – despite the fact that she must be at least forty. Sophia quickly convinces Rain that her psychic ability is genuine, but Rain refuses to give up her skepticism – especially when Sophia suggests that Rain might secretly have the ‘hots’ for Eric!

Nonetheless, Rain perseveres with the interview, getting Sophia to elucidate on her visions, and pressing her to release the scrap of cloth to the police for testing. Sophia refuses on the grounds that testing will reveal nothing useable – the people who took Callandria, she feels, will not be found in any police data banks. They are, she feels, a childless couple who took the little girl to raise as their own. They do not – and never did – intend her any harm.

Sophia feels this couple has something to do with the visions she has had about a lake bottom being dragged, but she feels that this event took place before the little girl was kidnapped. She feels the child – now a woman – lives in a place surrounded by mountains. And the penguin in the vision is a blue one - a drawing. And no, she doesn’t know what that means.

Having no other avenues to pursue, Rain searches online for anything about an area lake being dragged in the 1970’s, but it was a daunting task and it yielded no results. For lack of any better idea, she drafted an email of inquiry for all the lakeside community newspapers, and sent it off.

Several days later, while cleaning up some boxes in the inn’s basement, Rain stumbles across a piece of paper torn from a notebook. It is, apparently, a note scribbled by Callandria’s mother concerning a dream she’d been having. The dream involved seeing her child on a houseboat, though they had never taken her on a houseboat.

Later, she gets a response from the Sicamous newspaper about the accidental drowning of a small girl – from a houseboat on Mara Lake. Was it possible that Callandria McCrae had been taken by this couple to ‘replace’ the child they had lost? It seemed a trip to the Okanagan was in order.

Margaret McCrae gladly grants them time off from the inn to pursue this lead – and more than willingly pays for it.

They reach Sicamous the next day (in less than good spirits, having fought all the way) and take the only available motel room – with just one bed. Nervous about what might happen, Rain has too much to drink that night and makes a total fool of herself. Fortunately, Eric doesn’t hold it against her – and is actually nice to her the next day.

They hit City Hall the next morning and obtained a copy of  the death certificate for the little girl who fell off the houseboat and drowned in 1972. From this, they are able to obtain the names of the parents: Norman and Joyce Watson, their address in Calgary, and the name of the doctor who signed the death certificate: a Dr. Elliot Cameron. They later discover that this doctor is dead, but are able to track down another doctor Dr. Emerson, who not only knew Dr. Cameron but who also remembered the case. They have lunch with Dr. Emerson, who fills them in on the details of the accident. He tells them that the death had definitely been accidental, that the family had been here on vacation, and that the little girl who drowned – Lucy Watson – had been a ‘miracle child’; the odds of the Watsons being able to have another one were about zero. Dr. Emerson remembers his colleague being concerned because the Watsons seemed unwilling – or unable – to accept the death of their little Lucy, and had refused to notify friends and family back home of her loss. This, to Rain, makes it even more likely that they kidnapped Callandria McCrae and passed her off as their own little Lucy.

Their next stop is the place where the Watsons rented their houseboat. Fortunately, the same couple still runs the business, and Moira Hensen’s recall is near perfect. She explains what happened the day that little Lucy fell overboard, outlines her subsequent concern over the Watsons’ refusal to contact anyone, and her chagrin at their sudden, unannounced departure – especially since they owed her money. Moira remembers that prior to the drowning, the couple had mentioned moving to the city of Nelson – the man, Norman Watson – had apparently been offered a job at the power plant there. This gives some credence to Sophia’s claim that they lived among mountains. Calgary doesn’t have any, but Nelson certainly does. Now hot on the trail, Eric and Rain head off to Nelson . . .