"Rose Nelson is a middle-aged woman with a broken past, harboring a sorrow from which she thinks she will never recover. Five years after her teenaged son's death, she is still sealed off from life, enveloped by grief and remorse. Then Opal Gates and her five-year-old son, Zack, move in next door. Determined to start anew, twenty-year-old Opal has left her family and Zack's father in North Carolina. Initially, Rose cannot bear the sight of the young mother and son."--Jacket.