On a wet Monday morning in Fort Kochi, a pair of green slippers is found at the water's edge of an old stone slip, and Leelamma Chacko, seventy-four, mistress of the crumbling Tidal House, is gone. The police call it a tragic accident. The family is already speaking of the funeral. Reshma Nambiar flies in from Bengaluru with a forensic accountant's habits and a grief she buried seven years ago, when her younger brother drowned off Cherai. She finds a house that is far too tidy, a cook who will not meet her eyes, a tide book with an unfinished last line, and a lawyer who is afraid to say what he knows. Every figure in this family adds up except one. Somebody has been counting on the tide, and on nobody checking the numbers. Some houses keep their secrets below the waterline. This one has been waiting for the right person to read the footnotes.