1. When we first meet Anna, she can’t admit that she cares about the little boy who’s missing. What changes in this situation? How does Anna find compassion she didn’t think she had?

2. Anna’s only friend isn’t really a friend. She knows that “one of us had been a drowning person, and the other, a life raft.” How has being helped so much by Kent and others defined Anna’s ability to connect with other people?

3. How does the Ransey family’s history in the town of Parks color Sheriff Keller’s approach to the case of Aidan going missing? How can media representation or other commentary hurt the chances of justice being served?

4. The Dairy Bar is a place that Anna gravitates toward, a place she can reclaim from a childhood she’s had to leave behind. What are the touchstone locations of your childhood? Where is the place in your current life that reminds you most of a cherished place or person?

5. Anna returns to her old town and sees simultaneously what is the same and what is different, layers over time over top one another. (The word for this phenomenon is palimpsest.) Have you ever returned to a place you hadn’t been in years? What changes or enduring artifacts stood out to you?

6. What complex feelings do you see between Anna and Theresa during their unexpected reunion?

7. Left for dead, Anna finds strength not just in her son but in the child she once was. What emotions are at work here?

8. What do you think will be different for Anna after the end of this story? How has she changed?