Rosie, an American au pair, comes to live with Nicole and Mark Tivot and their family on a houseboat in Paris. After one of the children witness something she shouldn't between Rosie and Marc, Rosie moves to the south of France to care for the Nicole's elderly aunt, where she soon learns she has much in common with the austere Nicole.

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Fleeing a devastating personal loss, Rosie takes a job as an au pair with a Parisian family and soon finds the comfort and intimacy she longs for with the children and their father, Marc. Only Nicole, the children's distant, impeccably polished mother, is unwilling to embrace the young American. But when Rosie and Marc move beyond friendship into much more dangerous territory, Rosie leaves for the south of France to care for Nicole's elderly aunt. There she learns about Nicole's own haunted past and the losses and transgressions that link the two women more closely than either could have imagined.