As kids in a small West Texas town, Henry and Ella meet for the first time in a tree in his front yard. They grow up together, but drift apart after high school when she marries and he heads off to be a journalist. Two decades later, they meet again in the lobby of the Burk Burnett building in Fort Worth’s Sundance Square. Divorced, she has taken a job as in-house lawyer for the architecture firm where he’s working in public relations. Their friendship blossoms, and she talks him into sharing her new hobby: going to storage unit auctions. When, on impulse, she buys a unit, her legal mind and his journalistic curiosity are challenged by what they find – and who they can’t find. Running alongside their current-day story is the story of Evelyn, who in 1951 is the unwed, pregnant teenage daughter of a cruel alcoholic father. After his violent demise, she learns he’d won a building in a poker game. Evelyn inherits the three-story building, moves in, and raises her son there as the town dries up. Through motherhood, friendship, grief and loss, she becomes a tough, self-educated and successful entrepreneur while he grows into a hulking, troubled teenager. Years later, looking to forget the painful past, she stashes a trove of items in a storage unit in Fort Worth, hoping they will remain there forever. But Henry and Ella’s probe into those secrets puts them on a collision course; their two storylines merge in a shattering conclusion.
