At the age of ten, Liza Barton shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged stepfather, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed with Cartwright, and the tabloids compared the child to the infamous murderess Lizzie Borden, pointing even to the similarity of their names.

To erase her past, her adoptive parents change her name to Celia. At age twenty-eight, a successful interior designer in Manhattan, she marries a childless sixty-year-old widower, Laurence Foster, and they have a son. Before their marriage, she reveals to him her true identity. Two years later, on his deathbed, he makes her swear never to tell anyone so that their son, Jack, will not carry the stigma of her past.

Two years later, Celia is happily remarried. Her peace of mind is shattered when her new husband surprises her with a gift--the house where she killed her mother. And it soon becomes clear that there is someone in the community knows Celia.

More and more, there are signs that someone in the community knows Celia's true identity. When the real estate agent who sold them the house is brutally murdered and Celia is the first on the crime scene, she becomes a suspect. As she fights to prove her innocence, she has no idea that she and her son, Jack, are now the targets of a killer.