Eager to leave the West Indies, Lucy longs to leave her past behind. She does not feel nostalgic for her childhood and her homeland, where she felt oppressed by toxic colonial and family influences. However, on her arrival to North America, she reflects on the differences between the place that she had previously called home and where she now lives. She feels as if something is wrong because the sun is shining but the air is still cold. Additionally, she recalls fond memories of her grandmother along with her favorite foods from home that her grandmother would cook for her, both of which are no longer available to her. She moves to America to work as an au pair for a well-off family. Although she is initially enamored with their seemingly perfect life, she grows disillusioned with their lifestyle and feels alienated from the family. Despite this, she does grow close to the mother, Mariah, who reminds Lucy of both the good and bad in her own mother. The relationship between Lucy and her mother is a central theme. At one point in her relationship with Mariah, Lucy sees Mariah (her boss) and her mother as the same, because they both try to control Lucy. (At other times, Lucy feels like Mariah's friend.) Lucy also sees a resemblance when she sees Lewis, Mariah's husband, cheats on Mariah, because Lucy's own father cheated on her mother.
Throughout the book, Lucy's strained relationship with her mother drives her quest for independence and ability to create her own identity against that of her mother's. Lucy's mother was committed to her father, who had children by multiple other women. Angry that her mother valued proper, committed relationships (and taught Lucy to behave the same way) and still ended up hurt, Lucy attempts to identify herself against her mother through her multiple sexual encounters devoid of emotional attachment. This novel explores Lucy's sexuality as part of her identity search, illustrated through her various sexual encounters with men as well as her homoerotic relationship with her friend Peggy, whom Mariah dislikes for being a bad influence.
Lucy's father is not referred to as much as her mother is spoken about, so it is unclear what kind of relationship they have or if she feels as negatively towards him as she does towards her mother. Lucy's father was an older man when he married her mother, and she describes their arrangement as mutually beneficial. Her mother married someone who would not bother her too much, while she was still able to maintain appearances. Likewise, her father in his old age married someone in order to take care of him. Her father had several love affairs and children with other women before he married her mother. Some of these women tried to cause harm to both Lucy and her mother throughout their lives. Lucy's father was raised by his grandmother. His mother left him at the age of five and then at the age of seven his father left to work on the Panama Canal, and he never saw either of them again. His grandmother then died in the middle of the night one night and did not wake up the next morning.
Lucy's mother writes her many letters while she works as an au pair, but, feeling betrayed by her mother for funding her half-siblings' education over hers, she refuses to open them. When she receives notice that her father died, she hastily sends her mother money, along with a letter cutting off all communication from her. Further fueling her desire to move away from the disenchanting life of Mariah's family, she leaves on hostile terms with Mariah, moves in with Peggy and begins a relationship with a man named Paul. Despite her newfound independence, she still remains emotionally cut off from her relationships, not returning the love for Paul that he professes to her. Although by the end of the novel she reestablishes a relationship with Mariah, her independence that she sought from childhood has not been fulfilling-the novel ends with Lucy wishing she "could love someone so much that she would die from it." Though she attempts to escape her past and detach herself from her roots, she consequently detaches herself from all relationships, leaving her feeling alone.
