Following the death of their only offspring, an infant son named Cody, married New Yorkers Conor Ludlow and Eleanor Rigby - a struggling restaurateur and an academic working on her Ph.D. in Anthropology before Cody arrived in their lives - hit a rough spot in their relationship. Although still loving Conor, El is uncertain if she can bear what Conor represents to her and bear the grief even if Conor is no longer in her life. Following an incident, El decides to disappear from Conor's life, she taking refuge at the suburban home of her parents Julian and Mary Rigby, an academic himself and a musician respectively. Just to keep her mind active and off the thought of Conor or Cody, Julian suggests to El that she return to college and he pulls some strings for El possibly to enter into his colleague Professor Lilian Friedman's class. Despite being a therapist himself, he also tries to get El to see a therapist to deal with her grief. Meanwhile, Conor is facing his own emotional and professional problems, he believing his life being clear when he was with El. The restaurant was in part following his father Spencer Ludlow's professional footsteps, although Conor does not like to believe he is anything like his father in temperament, he who is on his third marriage, each of the previous two which failed. As Conor tries to locate El, he also has to deal with the downward slide of the restaurant, which he opened in another part as a cooperative arrangement with classically trained chef Stuart, a longtime friend who nonetheless doesn't treat cooking with much seriousness. Conor also has to deal with the logistics of packing up his and El's apartment which includes what to do with Cody's belongings. In his loneliness, Conor may fall prey to other women despite still loving El himself. With these two parallel tracks, the question becomes if they can find each other again both physically and emotionally.