Casey tells her landlord Adam she has hundreds of pages of her novel but has little time to write.

Casey falls for a poet named Luke at the Red Barn residency and writes nothing all summer while he produces celebrated poetry.

Muriel brings Casey to Oscar Kolton's book release party where Casey meets Silas and they bond by mocking the author photos.

After six years of work, Casey finally writes the last sentence of her novel.

Oscar's young sons John and Jasper try to prepay for their father's birthday brunch at Iris, and Casey meets Oscar.

Casey dates both Oscar and Silas at the same time without telling either man about the other.

Muriel reads Casey's full manuscript and leaves a voicemail screaming about how much she loves it.

Casey goes to the post office and mails her manuscript to literary agents, beginning to accumulate rejection letters.

Adam informs Casey he is selling his property and she must vacate her potting shed in three weeks.

After eleven rejections, Jennifer Lin calls Casey and offers to represent her novel as her first and only client.

Casey gets fired from Iris after publicly yelling at the head chef Clark to stop grabbing her during a chaotic shift.

With Caleb's help, Casey begins seeing therapist Malcolm Sitz, who tells her that her problems are genuinely serious and not nothing.

Muriel connects Casey with a job interview at a progressive private school, and Casey is offered a full-time English teaching position.

At the school's writing festival, Casey's novel goes to a publisher auction and sells for enough to cover her debt.

Casey runs after Silas in the school parking lot, confesses her feelings, and they kiss and reconcile.

Casey Kasem is a 31-year-old server and aspiring novelist living in a Boston potting shed, grieving her mother's sudden death while trying to finish the book she has been writing for six years. After meeting two potential love interests — the charismatic writer Silas and the successful widowed author Oscar — she allows both relationships to complicate her already unstable life. A breakthrough finally comes when she completes her novel and sends it to literary agents, only to face a cascade of rejections alongside the loss of both her job and her home. Just when hope seems exhausted, a passionate young agent named Jennifer Lin calls with an offer to represent her, and a teaching job at a progressive private school brings the stability Casey has never had. With her novel sold at auction and her finances finally cleared, Casey ends the year in a place of genuine happiness, reuniting with Silas and beginning to make peace with the loss of her mother.

Casey's long road from struggling server to published author.

After crying at the bank over her debt, Casey comforts herself browsing the shelves of Salvatore's Foreign Books.

Family friends of Casey's late mother, the Doyles, request her section at Iris and express their sympathy for her loss.

After visiting his friends Matt and Jen, Luke grows distant and confides that his infant daughter Charlotte died at four months old.

Silas calls Casey to ask her on a date, and the conversation turns unexpectedly to the loved ones they have each lost.

Silas cancels his date with Casey by voicemail and leaves town for an undisclosed period without further explanation.

The restaurant staff huddles around a newspaper to read that Princess Diana has just died in a car accident.

Casey's childhood friend Tara calls about her Italian wedding and they argue when Casey says she cannot afford to attend.

Casey goes to the public library to research Cuba for her novel but ends up reading about famous writers and their dead mothers.

Casey stops in the park late at night and sings to the geese, trying to reach her recently deceased mother.

Casey walks into an oncoming car while lost in thought about her novel and realizes she has no health insurance.

Casey borrows professional clothes from Muriel to interview at a charity office called Families in Need, then flees after 45 minutes.

Casey and Silas go to the Museum of Fine Arts, discuss their grief, and linger together in front of a Sargent painting.

Casey's father Rob and stepmother Ann visit her section at Iris and pressure her to hand over her mother's ring.

Casey babysits John and Jasper for the weekend and tells Jasper that the love his dead mother had for him never goes away.

Casey, Caleb, and Adam go to the beach where Caleb releases his half of their mother's ashes into the Atlantic.

Woven through Casey's year are dozens of smaller but emotionally charged moments that reveal the full weight of her loneliness and loss. She searches for her mother in bookstores, public libraries, and the geese she sings to at night, grasping at any connection to the woman she has lost. Old friends remind her how far her life has diverged from theirs, while strangers and coworkers at Iris form a makeshift family that is by turns comforting and cruel. Her complicated history with her father surfaces when he appears at the restaurant, and her growing feelings for both Silas and Oscar are tested against the reality of who each man truly is. From the death of Princess Diana to a failed charity office interview to a tender weekend babysitting two motherless boys, these events accumulate into the emotional landscape that ultimately pushes Casey toward change. Together they show that Casey's year of crisis is not only about writing and love, but about the slow, painful work of learning to live after profound loss.

The daily textures of Casey's grief, friendships, and quiet setbacks.

A fellow resident at Red Barn tells Casey that Luke is still married, long after he has given her a disconnected phone number.

Luke drives Casey to Walden Pond to try to rekindle their relationship, but she says her final goodbye at a Sunoco station.

Casey recalls that she first began writing fiction during the year her mother left the family to stay with a dying lover in Phoenix.

Casey discovers her father has drilled spy holes into the school girls' locker room, reports him to the athletic director, and gives up her Duke golf scholarship.

Casey gets health insurance and visits a doctor for the first time in five years, receiving alarming diagnoses including a form of skin cancer.

A gynecologist tells Casey she has severe cervical dysplasia and possibly endometriosis that could prevent her from getting pregnant.

Casey and Silas share their first kiss, pressed against the wall of a footbridge during their third informal date together.

Stung by Silas's cold goodbye at the T station, Casey decides to stop calling him back and commit to Oscar exclusively.

After Casey has committed to seeing Oscar exclusively, he tells her over lunch that he loves her.

Casey suffers a severe panic attack after her shift, cannot sleep or read, and discovers a memoir about madness that resonates deeply.

Casey and Oscar have their first passionless sexual encounter, and afterward she finds Silas's story unread in Oscar's recycling bin.

After being fired, Casey runs into Silas at a café; they play chess and he reveals he already knows about her and Oscar.

Muriel and Harry accompany Casey to the oncologist, where the doctor tells her the armpit lump is a normal lymph node.

After dinner with Caleb and Adam, Casey tells Oscar she wants to stop seeing him and confesses there might be someone else.

Caleb tells Casey he slept with Adam and cries in her bed, and Casey feels like her mother watching him leave for the airport.

Beneath the surface of Casey's year lie a series of painful revelations that dismantle the stories she has told herself about her life and the people in it. She discovers that her lover Luke was lying about being separated, that her father was a sexual predator, and that her own body is sending her urgent, frightening signals she has ignored for years. As she chooses Oscar over Silas in search of stability, she slowly realizes that Oscar mirrors the same ego and entitlement she has spent her life escaping, while Silas represents a deeper and more honest connection she has been too afraid to trust. Her panic attacks force her into therapy, where a stranger finally validates that her problems are real and that she is right to feel overwhelmed. These turning points strip away the life Casey was trying to hold together and force her to choose, with clear eyes, the version of herself she wants to become.