Liz is called back to her home town with her daughter when her estranged father, Dennis, has hurt his arm. Since Liz mother died he's become more reclusive and don't want to celebrate Christmas any more. When Liz finds out that he's also threatened by eviction as he's fallen behind with his mortgage payments she gets the idea to fix up their old boat (which her father has not come around to sell yet) and participate in this years Christmas boat lights parade. This year the parade donates a cash prize to the winner which could help save her fathers house. It was Liz moms big thing every year to shine in the lights parade and Dennis does not want participate. Instead Liz gets help from Luke, her childhood best friend who still lives in town. Old feelings are put in motion and it is more than just Dennis that gets his spark back.

It's the Christmas season. Vanessa Hall is a New York based social worker working for a non-profit foster child placement service, she doing so to pay it forward in being brought up in the foster care system herself. She never knew her father, and her single mother passed away when Vanessa was nine, before Vanessa could ask her anything about her father. In taking an ancestry test, Vanessa not only learns her ethnic makeup, but that there is a positive paternal test in the company's system, her biological father being Richard Hendricks, who lives an hour's drive away in Barrington, CT complete with wife Pauline and three teen to adolescent aged children, Caitlin, Aidan and Emilia. Discussing it on both sides and the two eventually meeting, Vanessa accepts Richard's offer for her to come spend a few days with him and his family in Barrington to get to know them before she meets the extended family who will descend on the house on Christmas Eve. The only other person who has been invited for that extended stay at the same time is family friend, New York corporate lawyer Kris who would be able to give Vanessa a lift. Much like Vanessa, Kris is no longer with any biological family after his parents - his father Richard's best friend - passed away when Kris was in college, he having since spent such time with the Hendricks in they being his surrogate family. Getting over some initial jitters and apprehensions on both sides, Vanessa and the Hendricks end up making an emotional connection as family. That connection is threatened by the different experiences Vanessa and Richard had with Vanessa's mother, those unanswered questions which may in turn threaten the burgeoning romantic connection between Vanessa and Kris.

In the age of social media, teenagers tell the story that they want people to see, with each video more daring than the next. But in this small town, a series of staged "murder" videos are turning very real.