A young caseworker becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of adoptive and birth parents, with devastating results. It all begins with a fantasy: the caseworker in her "signing paperwork" charcoal suit, standing alongside beaming parents cradling their adopted newborn. It's this blissful picture that keeps Chloe Pinter, director of the Chosen Child's domestic-adoption program, happy while juggling the high demands of her boss and the incessant needs of both adoptive and biological parents. But the very job that offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and Portland's winter rains soon becomes a battleground involving three very different couples. When a child goes missing, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is forced to examine what he or she really wants and where it all went wrong.