Rebecca Lott is a Thirtysomething (term) poetry teacher who is widowed when her husband is killed while jogging. Helping her cope with her grief is a support system consisting of her sister Lucy Trager, a chain smoking still trying to deal with their mother's death from cancer fourteen years earlier; her best friend Sylvie Morrow, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage to Paul; and her former stepmother Alberta Russell, a high-powered Wall Street executive so caught up in the financial world she has difficulty relating to anyone not involved with it. Romance finds its way back into Rebecca's life when a Flirting handsome younger man hired to paint the house takes an interest in her, and his presence affects the other women as well.