Seventeen-year-old Nore Robbins is staying with her father Chuck, stepmother Lisette Bergé, stepbrother Gabe, and stepsister Josie at their Louisiana
plantation during the summer. Nore's father recently remarried after her mother died less than a year ago, and this was her first time meeting her stepmother, stepbrother, and stepsister. During her time there, she notices unusual behavior from her new family. During dinner her first evening, Josie mentions she was in
Hartford when the Ringling Circus tent caught fire. Nore finds this odd considering Josie is a teenager and the event occurred in the 1940s. A woman at the supermarket, Elaine Shannon, thought she recognized Lisette from twenty years ago, but Lisette says that she must be thinking of her mother, who Lisette stated had the same name. Nore is puzzled by this statement because Bergé is not her
maiden name, but a name she obtained from a previous marriage. One day, Lisette tells Nore that Gabe invited her to go on one of his fishing trips. While out in the river, Gabe crashes the boat into a floating log and Nore falls into the water. Nore, who cannot swim, manages to grab onto a floating log and make her way back to land. Nore tries to tell her father that Gabe drove the boat into the log on purpose and left her there, but her father attributes it to an accident. While Nore is looking for evidence that might convince her father something is not right about the new family, she finds a very old picture of Lisette, Josie, and Gabe who look the same as they do now apart from their clothing and hairstyle. Nore recalls having a conversation with Dave Parlange, who worked on the roof for her summer home, in which he tells her he knew someone named Charlie Lacouture who used to work there during the 1930s. Dave drives her to Charlie's house so she can learn more about the Bergé family. He tells them a family passed the house down to their daughter as a wedding gift when she married Henri Bergé. He says Henri and his wife died in the 1920s and their granddaughter moved back with her children during the
Great Depression, after which he was hired there. He mentions that the woman valued her privacy and kept papers and private materials in a padlocked cabin. To account for her new family's unusual behavior and the information she has gathered, Nore suspects that her stepfamily does not age and that the padlocked cabin could hold important clues. Nore and Dave agree to meet the next day to discuss their next steps. During the night, Nore sneaks into Lisette's room and grabs her keys to get into the cabin. There, she finds marriage certificates detailing Lisette's six previous marriages, and a journal entry in which Lisette discusses confronting a woman Henri Bergé was having an affair with. The woman offers Lisette eternal youth in exchange for her husband's company, and Lisette agrees on the condition her children join her as she does not want to outlive them. Nore takes the marriage certificates and journal back to her room, but not before Gabe sees her. Later that day, Nore's father is preparing for a business trip to New York. While she has left her room to try to convince her father of some of her discoveries, Gabe takes the evidence she has gathered. After Nore is unable to produce the evidence, Lisette drives Nore's father to the airport. Before Dave and Nore are to meet, Nore runs up to the gate to the house and notices that it is padlocked. She develops a plan to climb a
dovecote and jump off the fence, but decides to gather evidence of some of her discoveries from the cabin first. However, Gabe is inside the cabin waiting for her and prevents Nore from leaving. He explains to her Lisette's plan to kill both her and her father so that she could receive all of his
inheritance, since both Nore and Lisette are included in his will. Lisette has killed several of her previous husbands instead of waiting for them to die a natural death, because she did not want them to notice that they never age. Dave, who has gotten over the gate by jumping off his car, barges in while Gabe is talking. Dave forces Gabe to go out and ask his mother for the key to the padlocked gate, but Lisette is outside the cabin waiting with a gun. Dave and Nore are locked in the cabin, and the cabin is set on fire. They are saved by Josie, who was given the keys to the cabin by Gabe. Gabe told Josie he and their mother were driving out to get the fire department, and he gave Josie the keys to let Dave and Nore out of the cabin after he has left with his mother. However, Gabe missed a curve on the road and crashed the car into a tree, killing him and his mother instantly. After the ordeal, the plantation was sold to the state of Louisiana to be converted into a historical museum. Josie moves in with Nore and Chuck at their New York home. == Background ==