When a phone call from her younger sister interrupts a busy morning at the office, Gillian is first surprised, then irritated. Allison has always been the favored sister --- the one who stayed close to home, got married, and gave their mother grandchildren. Gillian, on the other hand, moved across the country to become a corporate executive. Now, their mother needs a caretaker, and she is being asked to take a leave of absence from her life in New York City, return to California, and care for a woman whose primary ailment seems to be hypochondria…a woman she has never been close to.

She arrives to find the garden and yard wilted and brown, the blinds drawn, and her mother indeed in bed, waiting to die. Focused on restoring her mother’s health and will to live so she can return to her comfort zone two thousand miles away, Gillian is unprepared for this temporary situation to suddenly become brighter by the arrival of an older gentleman named Enzio, a pair of hummingbirds, and a handsome gardener. Perhaps the one thing New York is missing is the one thing she can no longer live without --- family.