Bob Rueland (Duchovny) has led a blessedly ordinary life as an architectural engineer and loving husband until one nightmarish night takes the life of his driven zoologist wife Elizabeth (Joely Richardson). Haunted by her memory and still desperately in love, Bob buries himself in work, hoping to complete the project that meant more to Elizabeth than anything else: building an expansive new gorilla habitat for the primates she was working with at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Nearly a year after Elizabeth’s death, despite the match-making efforts of his veterinarian friend Dr. Charlie Johnson (David Alan Grier), Bob is still not quite ready to start all over again.

Meanwhile, across town, a waitress who has been waiting her entire life to start all over again has finally gotten her chance. Grace Briggs (Driver) has just received a long-awaited heart transplant that will save her from the medical fate that took her own mother’s life while she was still a child. A recluse until now, Grace is exhilarated and frightened by a whole new world in front of her. Into Grace’s weird and wonderful world stumbles Bob, whose brief and random encounter with Grace at O’Reilly’s leaves him flummoxed but feeling something for the first time in a long time. Yet even as events and the many denizens of O’Reilly’s push Bob and Grace inexorably towards one another, love takes on a whole new meaning as the truth emerges, resulting in a funny and touching tale of hard-won union.