Road Trip

In 1926, at Tarrymore House in County Wicklow, Ireland, Lady Delia Rossington executes a desperate plan to protect her eighteen-year-old ward, Kathleen Connor. With Delia's brother Lord Edward recently dead and his scheming widow Fiona about to evict Delia from the estate, Delia fears for Kathleen's safety around Fiona's predatory sons. She reveals to Kathleen that the woman in a portrait in the gallery, Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh Rossington, is Kathleen's grandmother and urges her to remember her noble heritage. Delia slices the portrait from its frame, packs it with family jewelry and money, and tells Kathleen to flee to America, where Father McInerney at St. Mary's Church in New York has a letter explaining everything. When the family returns unexpectedly, Delia confronts Fiona while Kathleen escapes to the stables. Kathleen hears a violent struggle and a terrible scream but keeps her promise to run, stopping to say goodbye to her nine-year-old brother Tommy before departing for the port at Cobh.

Nearly a century later, in Savannah, Georgia, Maeve Dunagin, a creative writing professor, attends the funeral of her mother, Mary Helen Sullivan Dunagin, after fourteen months as her sole caregiver during a decline from dementia and cancer. Her older sister Therese, a struggling actress mostly absent during their mother's illness, arrives late and dressed inappropriately, reigniting the tension between them.

Their uncle Keith Dunagin, the estate's executor, delivers devastating news: Mary Helen had been sending enormous sums to a televangelist named Brother Jerome, draining her savings and taking out a $325,000 mortgage on the previously paid-off family home. He also presents a surprise: a coffee can holding over $9,000 that Mary Helen saved, with the stipulation that it fund a trip to Ireland for both daughters to visit their ancestors' County Wicklow and reconcile. Keith offers to match the amount, but both sisters initially refuse.

Events compound quickly. Maeve learns her teaching contract will not be renewed, a retaliatory firing after she failed a star athlete for submitting an AI-generated paper. Therese discovers that a portrait identical to their mother's, by celebrated 19th-century painter Valerian DeJongh, recently sold at auction for $1.2 million. She consults Wyllona Jackson, an art expert and fellow alumna, who finds the painting promising but warns that without documented provenance, a verified chain of ownership, it cannot be authenticated. With both sisters at rock bottom, they accept the trip.

A parallel narrative thread follows Kathleen's 1926 voyage aboard the S.S. Cedric, where she befriends Maggy Perkins, a young mother who nurses her through severe seasickness. Upon arrival at the Hudson River Pier, steerage passengers are ferried to Ellis Island for processing. When Maggy's husband fails to appear, an Irish-American policeman arranges a taxi to St. Mary's Church, where Father McInerney awaits.

Before leaving for Ireland, Maeve consults lawyer Scott "Scotty" Childress about pursuing elder abuse claims against Brother Jerome and the bank's failure to protect Mary Helen. In Ireland, the sisters tour Tarrymore Manor, now managed by the National Trust, a heritage-preservation organization. In the portrait gallery, dark rectangles mark where paintings once hung, stolen in a 1970s robbery by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary organization. Their guide claims all works were recovered, but Maeve's research contradicts this. Maeve connects with Liam Grogan, the estate's head distiller, and a mutual attraction develops over evenings of traditional music and conversation. Therese, meanwhile, meets Lady Esme Rossington, the last of the Rossington line, an eccentric older woman living in reduced circumstances in the estate's former gardener's cottage with her cocker spaniel, Sinead. Esme shares details about the robbery but grows hostile when Therese asks about the Lady Geraldine portrait.

The sisters visit Isabel Woods, the elderly daughter of Kathleen's brother Tommy, at a nursing home. Isabel confirms that Lord Edward Rossington fathered Kathleen after seducing her teenaged mother, that Lady Delia raised the child at Tarrymore, and that Delia was killed the very night Kathleen fled. Isabel gives them a box of letters Kathleen wrote to Tommy over the decades. The letters trace Kathleen's American life: factory work, two marriages, and selling the diamond bracelet to buy a tavern while secretly keeping a sapphire brooch as a memento of Delia. In one crucial letter, Kathleen states that Delia gave her the portrait and jewelry, calling them rightfully hers as Lady Geraldine's descendant. Therese's research further reveals that DeJongh routinely painted preliminary studies before completing commissioned portraits, leading the sisters to conclude their family's portrait is the finished work, potentially worth far more than the study that sold at auction.

Therese confronts Esme with the theory that Esme was the inside source for the robbery. Esme confirms everything: She provided the gang with detailed knowledge of the collection and house layout. After the gang's arrest, her lover gave her the Lady Geraldine portrait, the only painting not recovered. Esme hid it for 50 years and recently had a friend's son arrange its sale at auction when she needed money for repairs.

Ominous incidents shadow the sisters' stay: slashed tires and a near hit-and-run that a local officer dismisses. On their last morning, Esme warns them about her estranged brother Geoffrey, who has appeared asking questions about the portrait and the Americans. At Dublin airport, Maeve's passport vanishes, and Therese flies home alone. Maeve returns to Tarrymore, reconnects with Liam, and the next morning stops at Esme's cottage. She finds the door ajar and surprises Reggie, Esme's former handyman, looting the house. He attacks her with a knife, slashing her arm, but Maeve knocks him unconscious with a candlestick. Police discover Esme's body in the toolshed, strangled, with rat poison in her system. Maeve takes custody of Sinead.

Reggie confesses to the poisoning, tire slashing, and hit-and-run but denies the murder. When Geoffrey visits to threaten a lawsuit over Esme's will, Maeve notices his hand is covered in scratches consistent with a strangulation victim's defensive wounds. She finds a button from his jacket at the crime scene, and Geoffrey is arrested days later pawning his sister's jewelry in Dublin, destitute and living in his Rolls-Royce.

In Savannah, Therese and Scotty locate Arletha Carter, a former bank teller who had documented warnings about Mary Helen's declining capacity that supervisors dismissed. Scotty uses the emails as leverage, and the bank writes off the mortgage entirely. Esme's solicitor informs Maeve that Esme rewrote her will, leaving her estate in trust for Sinead with the sisters as guardians and eventual heirs, on the condition that one live at the cottage. Maeve visits the churchyard at St. Bonaventure, finds the headstone of Kathleen's family, and decides to stay in Ireland. Therese then confesses she hid Maeve's passport to prevent her from leaving.

The sisters receive an offer of $750,000 for their portrait from an anonymous donor who intends to return Lady Geraldine to Tarrymore's gallery, and Maeve proposes countering at $800,000. Among Mary Helen's belongings, Therese discovers the sapphire brooch Kathleen secretly kept. Six months later, Maeve marries Liam at St. Bonaventure Church wearing her grandmother's wedding gown and her mother's veil, with the brooch pinned to her collar as something blue. Uncle Keith walks her down the aisle in their late father's green tweed Hibernian Society fedora, and the Grogan brothers lead the congregation in cheering for another kiss.