For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship, despite the demands of two all-consuming careers. Meredith is a top investment banker, Steve a gifted physician - the only thing missing in their life is children. Steve longs for them. But Meredith keeps putting off motherhood, and now she has been offered an extraordinary job opportunity in San Francisco, three thousand miles away. Steve urges her to accept, saying that he's more than happy to uproot himself and will join her as soon as he can find a new job himself. Perhaps in California, he hopes, they can begin a family at last.

Neither Steve nor Meredith had reckoned on a prolonged separation, but Steve's job keeps him in New York for months longer than planned. Weekends together fall prey to their hectic schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith is spending long hours at the office with her boss, charismatic entrepreneur Callan Dow. Steve is working late shifts at the hospital, grabbing an occasional dinner with a new female colleague. Almost unnoticed, Steve and Meredith have begun living separate lives, and irresistible forces start to tear their lives and hearts apart.