In September of 2009, 63-year-old RUDY “CLAY” CLAITONOWSKY, a rogue guitar instructor, and three of his teen-aged pupils disappeared without a trace into the sand dunes of Cape Henlopen, Delaware. Eight months later, Clay’s estranged, stock broker son CLIFF makes an emotional pilgrimage to the coastal town, which he abandoned twelve years prior following the death of his mother. Amending his past and that of his father, Cliff begrudgingly forges relationships with mirthful barfly JACK, his father’s closest friend, the elderly MERRILL, his mother’s one-time hospice nurse, and restaurant owner, JACEY, Clay’s former mistress and mother of CARL TULLIVAN, one of the missing teenagers. Looming beyond Cliff’s ambivalent quest is the presence of shady real estate mogul RICK TULLIVAN, Jacey’s ex-husband and father of Carl, and a spectral assemblage of reserved, faceless men, with grim ties to Clay who threaten Cliff nocturnally. As Cliff becomes mired in the unrequited love of his father and an elusive female other, the missing teenagers re-appear, one by one, with a single phrase on their listless lips: “Yes, your tide is cold and dark, Sir.”