2000: Bright, ambitious fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017: Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa. Now Vanessa finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Asked to help defend an older high-school English teacher with whom she had an affair at age 15, Vanessa struggles to choose between her romantic teen illusions and harrowing adult perceptions.