When struggling artist Morgan Guidry dies of a heart defect, she leaves custody of her young son, Beau, to her friend Ellie Holt, along with half of her Biloxi house and a portrait of a woman. In Biloxi, Ellie makes contact with the Guidrys, who are interested in knowing how she came to own the portrait, as Morgan stole it from her grandmother, Aimee. The woman in the painting is Carolyn Guidry, Aimee's mother-in-law, and as Aimee tells her story, starting when she met the Guidrys in 1950, Ellie's questions to Morgan's past are slowly answered.