When her first-love-turned-close-friend, Gabe, dies unexpectedly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London and into the murky realm of the past. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, a guarded, self-possessed florist and restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe's beloved guitar - one of the departed indie rock musician's dearest belongings - for reasons Julia can't understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon find themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation.