An unexpected inheritance from her grandmother leads a young woman to Toronto, against her parents' wishes, to learn more about this relative she had long since thought dead. Aban is her name. She comes from a small Ontario town, the only child of two still-together parents who own a crystal and kitschy shop and expect her to work there under them. She's obedient to their wishes until the day she receives a letter from a city lawyer telling her that her grandmother has left her a house and money too. The only condition is that she must keep a man called "El" as her tenant for one year. Aban didn't even know her grandmother was alive.

Reeling from shock, she considers complying with her mother and refusing the inheritance. Her life, after all is in the small town, in her parents' home, not the big unknown of Toronto. It is familiar; it is comfortable. But something inside Aban rejects the comfortable, and within days, she finds herself alone, friendless, and motherless staring at the door of her new house in the sweltering summer heat. As she wonders what to do, the door is flung open, the mysterious man called "El" welcomes her in, and he insists they have a wedding to go to. She wants to run back to her town but enters the open door instead and an awakening she never expected.