The Return of Ellie Black

Content Warning: This source material contains depictions of abuse, neglect, suicide, sexual violence, and murder. Additionally, this source material discusses racism and sexism.

Two hikers find a young woman wandering through the forest. The woman tells the hikers that her name is Ellie Black and that she thinks that she is a missing person. 

Detective Chelsey Calhoun and her husband, Noah, wake up to Chelsey’s phone ringing. On the phone, Sergeant Abbott, Chelsey’s boss, tells her that Ellie Black has reappeared after being missing for two years. Abbott tells her that his son Doug, who is also a detective, has already gone to investigate the hiking trail where the hikers found Ellie. Chelsey (whose father was a police chief) thinks back to a precinct picnic when she was a child and her sister Lydia was still alive. She remembers Doug making a racist joke toward her because Chelsey, who is Japanese American, was adopted by a white family.

Abbott tells Chelsey that he wants her to go to the hospital and verify that the woman is Ellie Black. As Chelsey gets dressed, Chelsey thinks back to meeting Noah at a bar two years earlier.