It's Jordi Gordon's 55th birthday and she receives, as she has for every birthday for the last fifteen years, a message from Nico. While her husband, Hal, cooks her a birthday breakfast, she cries over her message from Nico – because Jordi is a woman with a secret. During the course of the day, the reader follows Jordi around: to the traditional family breakfast and the handing out of gifts, then to a visit with her (now French-speaking and senile) elderly mother, to Thrupps for some groceries, to lunch with her best friend, the irrepressible Sally, and then home where she makes the final preparations for a business dinner party that evening (an unfortunate miscalculation of dates that has robbed her of a special night with Hal). As she goes about her preparations, we meet Jordi's friends and family – and we get to see how her life is carefully constructed to screen all of them from her secret