A schizophrenic romantic tracks down her college sweetheart to help her find their son she gave up for adoption sixteen years ago to the dismay of his new wife.

Ben (Patrick Swayze) and Lulu (Melanie Griffith) were one-time college sweethearts who shared an intense passionate affair that circled around Lulu's untreated mental health condition, a condition which eventually leads to her hospitalization and their separation. Now Ben is a successful professional television writer in Hollywood in a personally distant relationship with his psychiatrist wife Claire (Penelope Ann Miller). Lulu leaves her treatment facility, a group home, and seeks out a reluctant Ben to reveal that 15 years ago they had a son whom she placed in adoption. Determined to meet him on his 16th birthday, Lulu asks Ben to join her on a cross-country road trip to find their son. Bound at first by his need to protect Lulu from herself, Ben's uncertainty about the free-spirited Lulu is replaced with tender memories of their love affair and her vulnerable health. As they journey, Ben's current life is shared through Claire, who has flown out to intercept the pair. Tensions between the three culminate with Claire telling Lulu about Ben and Claire's son who died from leukemia the year before. A shaken Lulu calls to Ben, with Claire present, to open up about his son who died and the son Martin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) they are about to meet. All three characters connect, and in the process, Ben rediscovers his heart.

Lulu McAfee lives in a San Francisco home for mentally-ill adults. In June 1999, she bolts for Los Angeles and contacts Ben Clifton, an old flame, now unhappily writing for television and unhappily married to a psychiatrist, Claire. Ben is ready to call Lulu's doctor when she tells him they have a son, born after she became ill and their affair ended. He calls Claire to tell her he's driving Lulu to Wisconsin to meet the boy on his sixteenth birthday, a visit Lulu claims is arranged. On the drive, Lulu tries to rekindle the affair and restart Ben's idealism. Meanwhile, Claire boards a plane to Madison to watch her marriage collapse. Is there really a son? What emotional landmines will the trip set off?—<[email protected]>