Promise Me Sunshine

The only thing keeping Helen “Lenny” Bellamy afloat a few months after losing her best friend, Lou Merritt, to cancer is her short-term babysitting jobs. Lenny is between jobs and feels unable to do anything else, but the children she works with bring her some joy in her dark times. She goes to meet a family referred to her by another client: a single mother named Reese Hollis and her seven-year-old daughter, Ainsley. When Lenny meets Reese, she describes her as “perfection personified” and can instantly see how much she loves her daughter. A moment after Lenny gets to the apartment, there is another knock on the door, and a man named Miles Honey arrives. As Miles and Reese whisper fight, Lenny fantasizes about what her love life would be with Miles, something she has done with every attractive man she’s met since her grieving began.

Reese leaves Miles in the doorway to talk to Lenny about her father, a bluegrass legend named Carp Hollis, who died about a year ago and whose apartment Reese and Ainsley are staying in. Miles, still in the doorway, ignores Lenny as Reese tells her that he is Ainsley’s uncle and lives in the apartment directly upstairs.