I like how through the book and the everyday of the main character we understand how difficult it is to be deaf for a single person, and how she has to adapt her life to her disability.
After Amelia discovers the body, she becomes involved more than she should. The first night her service dog, Stitch, wakes her up, and thinking that he needs to go outside, Amelia stands before her front door, and she is certain that someone has tried to break in. Her dog rushes out and even though she calls him several times, he is nowhere to be see. Amelia phones Jake, his detective friend, who sends a police unit. The only person who they find in the forest is her neighbour, Evan, who flees when he sees them, so he gets a few punches. Evan is innocent, and Amelia wonders if she was mistaken about the break-in.
The next day she goes to the job interview she missed because of her finding Gwen. Dr Joseph Huntley runs a clinic for cancer patients, and the job is clerical, but he says that with time Amelia may be given some nurse jobs. When she gets the job, she goes to the police station to give her statement, and Jake asks her to go out to celebrate. Amelia has always had a crush on Jake, but he has always seen her as his best friend's sister, but she feels that something may be changing. Jake is a widower, who lost his wife Sadie when she committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, but her body was never recovered. Amelia and Jake go out, and she mentions doing it again, and he does not say no.
During the weekend Amelia goes out on her kayak, and when she is near the spot where she found Gwen, she sees a man who on seeing her shows fear and surprise, and then he goes. When she leaves her kayak, she finds a posy of calla lilies there. When Amelia tells Jake, he says that he must be some acquaintance of Gwen's who wanted to honour her memory by placing some flowers where she died. Amelia is not convinced, and she goes to Gwen's Facebook page, and she finds someone who leaves dozens of messages, and from the photo she sees that it is the man she saw previously. Then she leaves a message, but he doesn't respond. She also sends a message to Mary, a nurse she also knows. The name of the man is Peter McNaughton.
When Amelia goes to work, she learns that what she has to do is scan patients' records to digitalize. The next day she decides to go to Gwen's funeral, and David is also there. Then she sees the man, McNaughton, and suddenly, he leaves church, and she follows him, but then he is nowhere to be found. Even though Jake has told her to leave the matter to the police, she can't stay put. From the internet, she finds the man's address, and she has a message from the nurse, Chris, who tells her that McNaughton was in the school with them, but that was when Amelia had finished. His family had sent him to a private school, but when they got bankrupt, he had to go to the comprehensive school.
Amelia decides to go to the address she finds for McNaugton, and from her car she sees McNaughton arriving, and he leaves a paper bag inside the garage. Then he calls his father, and both of them leave. Amelia then sneaks into the garage, which has been turned into an office, and she has a look around. In one of the drawers she finds cut-out articles about Gwen's murder, and then she finds a scrap book which has been hidden by using a book jacket. In the photo album she finds some photographs that show that McNaugton and Gwen were an item when they were at university. Amelia wonders if McNaughton may have contacted Gwen because he wanted to resume their past relationship and if she refused him, he may have killed her in a rage.
When Amelia gets home after just fleeing from McNaughton's house, she goes to her emails, and she finds that Gwen emailed her a month ago for her birthday. Gwen wanted to meet and tell her something strange about work. Yet, Amelia never saw that email, and she wonders what Gwen wanted to talk about.
I think that Gwen's death has to be connected to whatever she was worried about at work, and I don't know, but I have the suspicion that the death may be connected to the clinic where Amelia now works.
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