The Prologue is told from the first-person point of view of Vanessa, who is following the beautiful younger woman her ex-husband, Richard, left her for. As she stalks the other woman, she muses over the harm she has already inflicted on her unsuspecting prey, alluding to further damage if the younger woman “continues like this” (4).

Now in third person, Chapter 1 opens on Nellie, who wakes early in the morning to a woman standing over her, dressed in her new lacy, full-skirted wedding gown. Before she can scream and reach the baseball bat beside her nightstand, the hallucination fades. She falls back, wishing her fiancé Richard was home to comfort her. Since childhood, Nellie has suffered from insomnia, but her sleeplessness intensified after an incident in college. She briefly saw a counselor but was not willing to open up fully and soon stopped going.

As Nellie prepares for a long day of parent-teacher conferences for her preschool class, she receives a call from a blocked number. Then comes a voicemail: quiet, rhythmic breathing. It is the third one she has received this week.

Nellie convinces herself that her anxiety is a result of all the upcoming changes in her life.