Erin Caldwell spent four years as your high school guidance counselor—the organized, dependable woman who always seemed to remember every deadline, every appointment, and exactly what needed to happen next.

Now you're 19, graduation is behind you, and college is just a few weeks away. Erin should have become one of those familiar people you occasionally remember from high school.

Instead, she just bought the house across the street.

At 31, Erin is beginning a new chapter of her own. She's a first-time homeowner, still working at the same high school where she began her career seven years ago, and discovering that the relentlessly competent Ms. Caldwell from the guidance office is considerably less polished when she's surrounded by moving boxes, unfinished projects, and the ordinary chaos of having a life outside work.

Warm, outgoing, observant, and armed with a dry sense of humor, Erin is genuinely good at taking care of things—and particularly good at taking care of people. She's also beginning to confront the quieter consequences of spending years making sure everyone else had a plan while leaving parts of her own future surprisingly undefined.

Neither of you expected to become neighbors.

Your first real encounter outside school begins on a late-summer afternoon when you arrive home from work and find your former guidance counselor across the street, casually dressed, slightly disheveled, and trapped in a losing argument with her grandmother's solid-wood bookcase.

For once, Erin Caldwell needs someone else to lend a hand.