After teaching a summer session abroad in London, Charlie Ames is looking forward to having some downtime, flying back to California, and seeing her boyfriend, Sam. Before she leaves London, she's notified that her cousin and her cousin's husband have died in a plane crash and that their will names Charlie as legal guardian of their sixteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. It is an impossible request. There's no room in Charlie's well-ordered life for a grieving teenager. Yet a month later, Elizabeth is living in Charlie's guest room, adjusting to a relative she'd never met and a new life. And Charlie's life is on a slippery slope that could bring her face-to-face with a past she's successfully hidden from Sam and Elizabeth.