After being sent abroad at the tender age of eight Virginia returns to Quito her birthplace twentyfive years later She is finally reunited with her widowed father and her fraternal twin sister Manuela Her sister lives in their parents house with her husband and two sons while her father vegetates in a retirement home She confides to her sister that living in New York and the separation from her family has caused her to find affection in troubled love affairs but Manuela has secrets of her own