On the morning of September 20th, Californian writer and author Ed Miller wakes up, still dizzy near the bridge of Brody Canyon, his only memory of what happened previously was about driving his car alongside his wife Faye and their daughter Jenny. In the distance, he spots a figure standing on the bridge railing whom he recognizes as his father. Shooting for him, Ed runs towards the man, but he arrives too late as his father jumps right before he gets to him. Now standing near the guardrails, Ed looks down and notices his car crashed at the bottom of the canyon. He climbs in turn on the bridge and considers killing himself, but thankfully gets stopped by a by-standing truck driver who pins him to the ground and calms him down.
Robert Carrigan, an old friend of Ed, learns about the events with confusion as he never knew about his alleged wife and daughter, and even odder, the police didn't find any corpses inside or near his car, let alone evidence that they ever existed, and since the incident, Ed is caught by a serious case of vertigo, preventing him from leaving his bed. Robert contacts doctor in psychiatry and psychology Julia Lomas in the hope she heals the author and possibly unveil the truth behind his madness. Dr. Lomas travels to her new patient's home, a remote house in the hills where Ed lives, taken care of by his aunt Claire since he is bedridden. After being welcomed by Claire Miller, the doctor enters the bedroom where she meets Ed, who greets her with hostility and sarcasm, having no faith in psychologists to solve his problem, as everyone thinks of him as insane. The doctor asks him for evidence of his wife and daughter having ever existed as there is no birth certificate tying him as a father, nor marriage certificate, or photos of said wife and daughters. Ed explains that all the photos of Faye disappeared from his phone when he woke up and he never got the time to declare his daughter's birth. Dr. Lomas asks her patient to tell her more about this alleged Faye, to which Ed replies that it hearken back to a year ago when he first met her:
At the time, Ed lived alone in his house, seeking solitude in hope it would give him inspiration to write again, having been unable to do so for years now. The only company he had were his pet cat Petronius, a gift he reluctantly accepted from his aunt who feared he would be too lonely otherwise; and his neighbor Samuel Franklin who knew him when he was a child and would now occasionally go fishing or play chess with. That day, Ed was looking out the window, trying to find inspiration for his writings, after eventually settling for a starting point, he went to his desk and started typing whatever came to his mind. But eventually as he ran out of ideas and his cat kept meowing, he decided to join him downstairs; and as he was about to feed Petronius, he heard the doorbell and a female voice coming from outside. Ed opened the door to the woman, as he saw her she had a bruised and bloodstained ankle and troubles to walk, she explained that her car battery died, there were no other houses around and thus she asked the man to help her. Ed accepted and welcomed the woman, who introduced herself as Faye, to his house. After carrying her to the couch, giving her ice and letting her rest, Ed went back to his writing. In the evening, Faye woke up and after Ed invited her to eat his fridge leftovers, she joined him upstairs, underdressed and offering him a glass of wine as her "way of saying thank you". As she noticed that Ed was writing, they started discussions about each other during which Faye revealed she had finished her degree in psychology, much to Ed's disdain. She eventually took notice of Ed's book shelves and began a discussions on her favorite authors, she then grabbed a book written by Ed Miller himself and began telling him about the story she had with him, as she once skipped school and went at a book signing convention to meet him, she had to wait in line for a long time, only for him to leave unexpectedly before she even got to see his face. Ed, wondering if she really never saw his face prior, asked her to look at the back of his book where his photo is, after doing so, she realized that she was talking to Ed Miller the whole time. Meanwhile, Petronius, who accumulated animosity towards her the whole time jumped at her, baring his claws, to which Ed scolded the cat and explained to Faye that he has always been aggressive with women. Faye then asked Ed if he recalled the song that was sung at the end of his book and said she imagined the actual song and began to sing it. Later that night, they ended up kissing and Ed recalled that it ended with them sleeping together.
Dr. Lomas asks Ed if he recalls the date this happened, and after Ed's shrugging it off, she decides to hypnotize her patient, convincing him that his brain retained much more than he knows about. After Ed eventually accepts, the hypnosis sends him back to relive that moment, during which he manages to gather information such as the fact this all happened on October 8th of last year and that the name of the car renting company on Faye's car key was "Wong". The doctor, satisfied by these hints, decides to put a pause to the therapy and go outside for a break. Downstairs, she catches Claire Miller reciting unusual poetry until noticing her presence, where she offers her a lunch while talking about her nephew's childhood and love for pirates he had when younger. Dr. Lomas tries to ask her questions concerning Ed's parents but Claire doesn't answer and instead quickly changes the subject. Outside, after reviewing her therapy sessions note, the Doctor gets a phone call from Nick Reyes, the sheriff of Cerro Lake, asking her if Ed told her anything that may prove him guilty, as the sheriff has suspicions about him.
At the moment, Nick is investigating the car crash incident and heads to the ranch of Samuel and Esther Franklin, Ed's neighbor and uncle and aunt of Adam, the sheriff's associate, with the hope of finding witnesses. As he arrives at the place, the sheriff only finds cut telephone fuses, an unkempt farm and the neglected horse, Frankie Laine, in the barn. Worried, he eventually decides to break into the house, only to find the dead body of Samuel Franklin in the basement, with a gunshot wound to the head and no sign of his wife Esther.
Back in Ed's house to resume his therapy, Dr. Lomas, trying to find a possible origin of his vertigo, asks him about his childhood, and particularly the treehouse that used to be in his garden where his aunt Claire said he would often play pirates, to which Ed recalls:
Ed Miller or as he was known as a child, Eddie, used to imagine himself as the Dreaded Captain Roberts, a character he saw in a movie, and had an imaginary hunchbacked lackey named Flanagan. That day, as he was looking for his hook hand, he heard a call from his father, John, telling him to go to his office. Following the order of "Governor Miller" to join him to "discuss highly important matters", Eddie went to his father's room where he shared their "Pirate Brotherhood secret handshake" before he sent him on a quest to retrieve "you-know-what" in the garage without getting caught by his mother. Eddie went looking here to find a box of Frangles potato chips, as he recalled his father hiding treats all over the house for him to find. At this moment, Maddy, Eddie's mother, arrived and parked her car into the garage; trying not to be seen, Eddie hid under a shelf, but as Maddy was unpacking her purchases from the car boot, she spotted her son and asked him what he was doing here, reminding him that she didn't like having him play in the garage and then told him to join her to help store the groceries. Eddie, trying to preserve the secret he made with his father, climbed to his office using the vines near his room window. He remembered his father scolding him for taking this kind of risk as he already fell from there once, though it didn't leave him with any vertigo. After that, Eddie went to help his mother as he promised, he descended to the kitchen where she was busy cutting vegetables for dinner. As Eddie was storing the groceries, his mother began to cry, and when the boy went to comfort her, he noticed that she cut herself with the knife, and assumed her tears were due to that. She then left the kitchen, and Eddie, noticing a towel that he forgot to store, went to the bathroom, noticing blood stains along the way, and his memories of the events ended as he opened the door behind which stood his mother. Dr. Lomas, finding many details odd about this memory, decides to attempt another hypnosis on Ed, and the latter ends up reliving the moment. Ed now tells a different story: his father called him in his office in a more aggressive manner and when he came into it, forgetting to knock, John began to raise his fist, and there was no secret handshake, which Ed assumes must have happened on a different day. As he went in the garage to find "you-know-what", Eddie came back with a bottle of alcohol and when he gave it to his father, back in his office, the latter began to drink and asked him to sit down on the chair and made him read one of his writing, before suddenly snatching it from his hands and angrily throwing it away while ranting about how he was a failure as a writer and told Eddie he was just a worthless as himself. After he went to help his mother, Eddie followed her to the bathroom where he found her crying on the floor alongside a positive pregnancy test. Dr. Lomas, having learned enough, put an end to the therapy.
That evening, in the motel where Julia Lomas went to spend the night, she calls Robert Carrigan to converse with him about Ed's well-being. She shares her suspicions of Claire Miller whom she thinks is hiding something. Eventually the discussion leads to Ed's parents, to which Robert reveals the doctor that the author's father committed suicide by jumping off a bridge when he was around nine-years old, while his mother died a few days earlier in a car accident. Dr. Lomas, angry that she hadn't been told about it sooner, asks Robert how he met Ed and if they were still close. Robert tells how he met Ed Miller as his novel was given to him by their college professor, and when he later met him, offered to publish his book. But the two became estranged after an accident involving Robert's daughter, Veronica, and upon saying her name, the editor suddenly stops and remembers that the day before yesterday was the eighth anniversary of his daughter's death. Eventually, as the conversation has derailed away from Ed, it comes to an end with dinner being ready.
The morning of the day after, Sheriff Reyes and Adam Franklin drive to Brody Canyon to investigate the crashed car, thinking there may be a connection to this incident and the murder of Adam's uncle. The latter, still shaken by what happened, gets comforted by the sheriff who tells him that they are going to find his aunt Esther and his uncle's assassin. After descending down the canyon, the sheriff finds a cap near the car, and, as he approaches the car itself, suddenly reminds himself that he was here years ago, witnessing and crying over the dead bodies of Maddy and her daughter. After finally regaining composure, Sheriff Reyes begins to check the car and find a bottle of alcohol and a gun in the glove compartment which he takes as evidence.
The next day, Ed is telling Dr. Lomas about the death of his parents: They were driving his sister and himself to vacation at night. Eddie feeling drowsy could overhear John and Maddy arguing; the father insisting that it was necessary to go at this time of the day, otherwise they would arrive too late at their destination, while the mother asserted that their children needed to have time to sleep. So suddenly, a tire blew, leaving the car out of control, eventually stopping on the ledge of a cliff. Eddie was taken out of the car by his father and put to safety, but before John got the time to do the same for his wife and daughter, the car slipped into the canyon. A few days later, his father drove him home where Claire waited for him to celebrate his birthday, he stopped in the middle of the bridge and jumped off it before Eddie got time to do anything. After that, Dr. Lomas decides to use hypnosis once again and gets a different telling of the same story from her patient: That night, Maddy actually told John she would leave him and take her children with her, to which John replied that he knew about Jenny's real father and wouldn't let her reunite with him and tear his family apart, because he would "tear it apart first". And as he said it, he purposely provoked a car accident to daze his family, then drove near the ledge, took Eddie out of the car, and then kicked it off the cliff by himself.
As he wakes up from the hypnosis, Ed, having forgotten what he told her, asks the doctor to tell him the truth, but they get interrupted by Sheriff Reyes breaking into the bedroom to interrogate him. Dr. Lomas refuses to leave the room, but after Ed's demand, she finally complies. Ed's react with shock as he learns of the death of Samuel Franklin and his wife going missing, which the sheriff believes he is responsible for. During the interrogation, the sheriff gets a text from Adam telling him the police need Ed Miller's fingerprints to compare them to the one found on the gun, which Reyes manages to unofficially get from the suspect, after which he leaves the house. After Dr. Lomas is back in bedroom, Ed asks her to tell him the truth, but the doctor replies that she needs the "last piece of the puzzle" and asks him to tell her an event that made him "take sides" between his father and mother:
Ed recalls that the weekend before the incident, his father was playing spies with him and his mission was to watch over the "First Lady", and thus Eddie spied on his mother and little sister, followed them outside, and sneakily took a photo of them which he later left on his father's desk. To hear the truth, Dr. Lomas once again hypnotizes Ed, making him recall about a different version of the event. His father never came to his room to play spies with him, he spied on his mother by himself out of jealousy for the attention Jenny received from her. Outside, he caught Maddy carrying Jenny and kissing a police officer, this is what he had photographed and left on John's desk. Putting an end to the session, Dr. Lomas decides to reveal the truth to Ed, after what, he begins to remember it and feel horrible about his action that involuntarily led to his father killing his mother and sister. The doctor reassures him that he shouldn't feel guilty because it wasn't his fault, and repressing that memory only made things worse for him. Tonight, Ed attempts to stand up, which he briefly manages before falling on the ground.
This same night, at her motel, Dr. Lomas gets a visit from Sheriff Reyes, apologizing for what he did that morning and asking for her help in solving the case of Ed Miller. As they go on a walk to discuss the matter, they stumble upon a tree stump marked with various dates of what the tree went through, causing them to talk about each other's past. Eventually, the doctor realizes that the sheriff was the police officer who had an affair with Maddy Miller and asks him about it. Sheriff Reyes reveals that Maddy and he were childhood friends who got separated, but she then came back to Cerro Lake, now married to John Miller and with her son Eddie. As John became a troubled alcoholic, she started dating Nick Reyes and ended up having a daughter with him, Jenny. After Maddy and their daughter's death, Nick attempted suicide by gunshot to the head, but failed and was left with his face scarred. Sheriff Reyes tells Dr. Lomas that John Miller was dangerous, and so he believes his son to be, but the doctor is convinced that "if there is a psychopath in this story it's not Ed Miller". She then gives the Sheriff the date and the name of the agency where Faye allegedly rented a car, to which Nick agrees to investigate into.
The next day, Dr. Lomas comes back to Ed Miller's house, and she is badly greeted by Claire, to which Ed tells her that she doesn't approve of her therapy method as he is standing up in his office; only to fall on the ground soon after. He asks for the doctor's help as she is the one whom he thanks for this improvement. But while the events of yesterday helped Ed see clearer on his past, it made him confused about the present, and he wonders if he may actually be responsible for the deaths and disappearances around him. After the doctor reassures him of the opposite, she asks about Faye and want to hear the rest of the story:
Ed recalls that after he woke up from the night he met Faye, she disappeared "like she'd never existed". She unexpectedly came back a year later, with a baby girl named Jenny, just like his deceased little sister, whom she said was their daughter. She asked him if he would accept custody of his daughter and that if he did, she would stay with him. Ed, confused, didn't give her an answer at the moment but accepted to host Jenny and her at his guest house while giving himself time to make the decision. For the three weeks following, Faye spent nearly all of her time with Jenny, while Ed would do the shopping for them. Ed didn't ask her any questions regarding why she left him without warning after their first meeting, nor did she ask for her address or last name, not taking the time nor courage to do so. During the third week, Ed had nightmares: He woke up in the middle of the night and saw his mother, carrying his little sister, standing in his bedroom and blaming him for their death. Ed tried to reach her but felt queasy and fell unconscious on the ground. The night before the incident, Faye woke up Ed in the middle of his sleep, telling him that Jenny's body temperature was dangerously high and that they had to drive her to the hospital. The last memory Ed had of that day was that when he was in the car, Faye gave him the keys but accidentally dropped them, and he bent over to grab them; Ed forgot everything that happened between this and his awakening near the car crash and his father's suicide.
Ed now asks Dr. Lomas to hypnotize him so she can see what he forgot: After doing so, Ed recalls the nightmare where he saw his mother, he notices that she has Faye's face and the eyes of Jenny looks like the one of his daughter rather than his sister, and he has strong memories of the surrounding. He also recalls his father being a lot shorter when he saw him the morning after, and he didn't get a close look at his face. Dr. Lomas realizes that these memories being so vivid means they weren't dreams and whom he saw as his mother was actually Faye who manipulated him the whole time to make him believe he was insane. She purposely removed all traces of her and Jenny from his house and then drugged him when he was in the car to make him lose consciousness. After telling the truth to Ed, the doctor asks him if he has an idea of who could Faye truly be, and if he knows people who could have a grudge against him, to which he reply that he ditched many women and will try to investigate it on his side while the sheriff and doctor do their job. The latter notices Ed is walking as he says this, but as he notices it too, he suddenly loses balance and falls on himself again.
On his side, Sheriff Reyes goes to the Wong car-renting agency to ask for a record of women who rented cars on October 8th of last year. Amber Wong, the owner, accepts to help him if he helps her fix a car that was rented by a customer who would come soon. After doing so, which took Nick longer than expected, he managed to get the record he wanted. But right after doing so, Nick gets a phone call from Adam, telling him that the gun found in Ed Miller's car matches the bullet wound that killed his uncle. Adam, mad, says he is going to kill the author, to which the sheriff tells him to not act yet, but Adam hangs up before he can finish, and Nick decides to inform Dr. Lomas. The doctor tries to convince the sheriff that the whole thing is a frame-up by Faye, but the sheriff replies that he found no hint of her existence in the records he got, to which Dr. Lomas tells him that, being a criminal, she likely didn't use her real name. She then asks the sheriff the join her to Brody Canyon where she could find evidences of Ed telling the truth, but suddenly she encounters Adam, ready to confront whom he thinks killed his uncle, but convinces him not to let anger gets the best of him and join her too, as she could find where his aunt is.
At the canyon, the sheriff and Adam are greeted by the doctor and Sky-D, a young man with whom the police are familiar due to his many arrests. But this time, he is here because Dr. Lomas paid him to fly his drone near the bridge and at the bottom of the canyon, so they can find what she is looking for, and they find it. First they find a sports bag in the platform below the road on the bridge and then, a corpse at the bottom, where Ed's father allegedly fell, but this is the body of a blonde woman who matches Faye's description.
At the Cerro Lake Police Department, Julia Lomas and Nick Reyes have gathered all evidence they found on the body, the bag and the crashed car. They find a wig and costume meant to make one look like John Miller. A phone, which has been unlocked but contains nothing more than several pictures of Ed, including one where he is with Jenny, confirming her existence to the sheriff, as well as photos of his houses and of the woman smiling in different ways. A strong neuroleptic likely used to drug Ed to unconsciousness. A key that opens an unknown vehicle. Women's sport clothing which matches Ed's saying of what Faye wore. Climbing equipment likely used to get to the platform on the bridge. There are also three photos of evidence found near the car crash, the gun, the bottle of alcohol of the brand John Miller used to drink, and a baseball cap with an American flag on it, which the sheriff no longer believes belonged to Ed. The two debrief the theory that Faye was a psychopath who manipulated Ed, drugged and sedated him, set false evidence of him killing Samuel Franklin, then dressed as John Miller and pretended to jump off the bridge. But they still don't know what her plan was, why she killed herself, what her real identity was or where the daughter and Esther Franklin were. Then, the sheriff receives a phone calls telling him they identified the truck driver who saved Ed's from suicide as Barry Dennison, and found the location of his work place. The sheriff plans on going there tomorrow to interrogate the man.
The next day, as Barry Dennison comes late to his work place, he is greeted by Sheriff Reyes who wants to send him to the police station, to which Dennison runs away in fear, but gets arrested and handcuffed by Adam. After he is sent to the interrogation room, the sheriff points out that the baseball cap he found belongs to him and finds that one of his contacts, "Crazy bitch" is linked to Faye's phone. Understanding that he is suspected of murder, Barry tells the truth in the hope he will be spared the conviction: He encountered the woman one day and she offered him 200 dollars and promised 10 000 more if he fulfilled the task she had for him, which he accepted. He met her on Brody Canyon at four in the morning, she had Ed Miller unconscious in her car and said she just wanted to scare him by faking a car crash. Barry helped her push the car down the canyon, accidentally dropping his cap there in the process. He then injected antipsychotics into Miller's arms in the morning and waited for him to wake up, then, he came with his truck and stopped him from killing himself. Barry however, was not expecting the woman to jump off the bridge and he doesn't recall a baby being present at that moment.
Reuniting with Julia Lomas, the sheriff and her look at a pegboard that gathers all clues and elements of the case, while he brings out the files of a woman named Lisa E. Horowitz, who appeared on the record of the Wong agency and matched the description of Faye. She was 23-years old and had a face that matches the corpse found in the canyon. Horowitz graduated from psychology majors, which also fits Ed's memory of Faye telling him about a similar graduation, it would also explain her understanding of using antipsychotics to make Ed fall asleep. She was the daughter of wealthy parents who died while she was still a child, which Dr. Lomas points out would explain how she got the money to pay Barry Dennison. After the death of her parents, she spent several months in a high-profile psychiatric hospital of New Jersey, but just the night before her release, her best friend got drunk and fell to her death from the rooftop. Horowitz also had a membership card for a climbing wall gym club, which would explain how she accessed the platform below the bridge. She also applied for a position as a psychiatrist in training at the only psychiatric hospital of Cerro Lake, which she would have gotten as of right now if she was still alive. Dr. Lomas starting to see clearer realizes that Horowitz tried to convince Ed Miller he was insane so he would be put at the institution where she could be his psychiatrist and torture him.
Sheriff Reyes then shows the doctor an information sheet of Lisa Horowitz and claims that she got her appendix removed when she was 11-years old. To make sure, Nick calls the morgue and asks them if the body has a scar indicating such surgery, to which he is told it doesn't have one. Having her entire theory disproved, Dr. Lomas is at first left distraught but she then recalls that she had a patient at the institute where Horowitz was, and asks the sheriff the name of Lisa's friend who died falling off the roof. It was Veronica Carrigan, the adoptive daughter of Robert Carrigan. Then, the doctor comes to a realization: Lisa Horowitz was the one who died, being given alcohol and then pushed off the building by Veronica, who gave her her jacket, took her glasses and impersonated her.
Back at Ed's house, Dr. Lomas asks him to tell her what happened between Veronica Carrigan and he, while it's a painful memory he would rather not relive, Ed complies: When he and Robert Carrigan used to be friend, Veronica, who hated him for taking Robert's attention, used her father's phone to tell him to come at her home sooner. When he went, she offered him a lemonade in which she added one of her medications she was supposed to take to make him fall asleep. She then uploaded pictures of herself on her bed with her schoolgirl uniform and waited for her father to return so she could frame Ed as a pedophile. Luckily, the police investigated the incident and found that Veronica's claims weren't consistent and the photos found on Ed's phone weren't directly taken with it, they also found in her bedroom the medications she didn't take stocked in a jar. Robert had to put his adoptive daughter at the New Jersey psychiatric hospital and Ed and he became estranged from this day. Dr. Lomas, as Ed asks why she wants to know that, reveals to him that Faye was Veronica this whole time.
As he learns the truth about his past and present and makes peace with it, Ed Miller learns that he forced himself to be someone he wasn't for so long, building his imagination on the lies his aunt fed him. He tries to stand up and goes to his desk and begins writing once again. After walking in his house, reflecting on his past actions and saying, he decides to go outside, where he meets his aunt, whom he confronts about the lie she told him since he was little. He then opens the closet where he stored the chessboard Samuel Franklin and he used to play with, has he recalled a memory of Samuel and him discussing, he remembers the confession that Samuel had a bunker he built himself during the Cold War, kept hidden near his house. Ed remembers that Veronica overheard the conversation and realizes that the bunker is probably where Esther Franklin and Jenny are hidden.
