After eight years as a housewife, Eleanor Caldwell finally lands a job just as her daughter Emma starts school. Then tragedy strikes: her mother, Martha Caldwell, is critically hospitalized. Eleanor misses her father's desperate calls due to a broken phone. That same night, Eleanor rushes an injured Emma to the hospital, narrowly missing her father. Unable to reach her, the father notifies Eleanor's husband, Gideon Stanton. Shockingly, Gideon and The Stanton Matriarch conspire to hide the news, robbing Eleanor of her final goodbye. Believing Eleanor deliberately ignored her dying mother, her furious father demands she face Clan rules and Clan discipline at his wife's funeral three days later.
