Mark Nolan's happy-go-lucky bachelorhood is interrupted by the death of his sister and his subsequent guardianship of her six-year-old daughter, Holly, who is traumatized into muteness and desperately seeking a maternal figure. Enter Maggie Collins, a toy shop owner who lost her own husband to cancer.

In the exquisite setting of Friday Harbor, Zoe Hoffman, an innkeeper who has all but given up on love, is attracted to Alex Nolan, a bitter and cynical man battling his demons with the help of a whiskey bottle, until he is visited by a mysterious ghost who is stuck in the Nolans' Victorian house. All the ghost knows is that he loved a girl once. And Alex and Zoe hold the key to unlocking the mystery that keeps him trapped there.