October 1958. Gauri Venkataraman, a young widow and assistant auditor, climbs the rack railway to the tea estate of Kaladhara in the Nilgiri hills. She has three weeks, a red notebook, and one job: to check the books before the estate is sold. The books are not the problem. The problem is the old stone cistern behind the manager's bungalow, which the new owner's son orders opened for an inventory, and what has been lying in it since the war. A policeman who thinks in tidy lines. A doctor who is kind to everyone. A head clerk who has kept the same ledger for forty-five years. A bell that rings once, at the wrong hour, and brings the whole hillside to its doors. Everyone on Kaladhara heard something on one October night in 1941. No one has said a word since. Gauri only wants the figures to add up. This is the story of what they cost.