Thirty-one-year-old Emma Blair and her fiancé, Sam, are out at dinner with Emma’s family (her parents and older sister Marie) on her father’s birthday. A week ago, Sam gave Emma an engagement ring he finally bought after two months of hunting. It is a single solitaire on a rose-gold band, and though it is not Emma’s first engagement ring, it is her first diamond.

As Emma and her family leave the restaurant after dinner, her phone rings with a number displaying the Hawaii area code. Her husband, Jesse, is on the other line; he disappeared in a helicopter crash years ago and was presumed dead. He tells Emma that he is alive and coming home. Emma realizes that the moment that split her life into a “before” and an “after” is not Jesse dying, as she once believed, but this one.

The story begins with a teenage Emma living in Acton, Massachusetts with her parents, Colin and Ashley Blair, and her older sister, Marie. Emma’s parents run Blair Books, started by Colin’s uncle in the 1960s. Ever since she was old enough to legally hold a job, she has been working at Blair Books on weekdays and Saturday mornings.