In a state of near panic because of the night-time activities of her teenage son Sam, Lily Davis decides to uproot him and herself from Manhattan to a small town on the coast of Long Island. She becomes a reporter for the weekly paper, Sam enrolls in high school, and for a while life proceeds as expected.
But then through unexpected and unnerving circumstances, with a cop, in a house where she's not supposed to be, Lily spies a naked woman asleep on a bed. This is a murder. Or is it? And the cop is married, and Lily is guilt-ridden about her own divorce. Friendship and love relationships unravel or threaten to. But are people and events really as they seem, or is Lily just perceiving her small town through big city eyes?