After his football career, Ben Beck returned to his Virginia small town and joined the family building firm. His family happiness with wife Lorrie and adolescent son Jessie is suddenly tested by the return of Ben's first high-school love, Ava Andersson, who visits from Chicago, after a failed marriage, to bury her ma. Ava seduces Ben into reliving their courtship, which she traumatically broke off without a goodbye. Jesse reacts furiously, even backseats his own football scholarship bid, rather pa's projected ambition, in favor of a writing summer course.