Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for a white woman after severing ties to her past - even hiding the truth from her racist husband. Clare finds herself drawn to Irene's sense of ease and longs for the community she lost. Irene is both riveted and repulsed by Clare and her secret, as Clare begins to insert herself into Irene's stable existence.