"Other people's passions are as hard to fathom as their dreams," Karen muses. A mother yearning for security and happiness in a second marriage, she has no idea that her loving husband, a successful scientist working on climate change, is molesting the pre-teen girls on the swim team he coaches. Spencer's feelings for "his girls" develop into an obsession as he is increasingly provoked by Karen's son Sammy, a college student defending himself against a charge of date rape. Karen's denial, fed by her own childhood anxieties and her passion for her husband, finally gives way before the revelation of truth, and she begins to feel her way to a new realization of the meaning of love. Meanwhile, Karen's older brother, a man either too spiritual or too scared for an intimate relationship of his own, finds that coming to Sammy's aid forces him to leave his monkish isolation and find his place in the real world.