"Lillie Silva knew life as an empty nester would be hard after her only child left for college, but when her husband abruptly dumps her for another woman just as her son leaves, her world comes crashing down. Besides the fact that this announcement is a complete surprise (to say the least), what shocks Lillie most is that she isn't heartbroken. She's furious. Lillie has loved her life on Cape Cod, but as a mother, wife, and nurse-midwife, she's used to caring for other people--not taking care of herself. Now, alone for the first time in her life ... she finds an unexpected ally in her ... sister, with whom she's had a tense relationship all these years. And [a] ... babysitter in, of all people, Ben Hallowell, the driver in a car accident that nearly killed Lillie twenty years ago. And then there's Ophelia, her ex-husbhand's oddly lost niece"--