Having grown up in the foster care system after the death of her mother at the age of 9, New York City social worker Vanessa Hall (Aimee Teegarden) has no living relatives, or so she believed, but then she receives the results from her Family Tree DNA test.
Vanessa learns that there is a positive paternity test and that her
biological father is Richard Hendricks (James Tupper), who is alive and well
living only an hour's drive away in Barrington, Connecticut with his wife
Pauline Kendall Cross and their three adolescent children, Caitlin Ava Telek,
Aidan (Colby McClendon), and Emilia (Georgia Mae Orchard).
After the two meet and talk, she is invited to spend a few days with
them, to get to know them before she meets the extended family on Christmas
Eve, so she accepts and Richard arranges for family friend, Kris (Andrew
W. Walker), to give her a lift.
After some initial unease on both sides, Vanessa and the family make
an emotional connection, and she and Kris make a different kind of connection.