When a struggling single mom loses it all, she reluctantly joins her estranged brother on a trip across the southwest to face their dying, abusive father after he offers them $100,000 to show up. With her prescient teenage daughter in tow, the trio unearth shocking family secrets and hurtle toward a confrontation that will alter their lives forever.

SYNOPSIS:

Stuck

Eviction notices? Dead-end jobs? No sweat to “cool mom” underachiever FRANKIE SEGAL (42), who insists again and again to her brilliant, skeptical daughter MEL (16) that she really is going back to school one day and put the crummy apartments and Dollar Store hot dog dinners behind them.

But inside, Frankie’s damaged from her alcoholic father MARTIN arranging for his 16-year-old daughter to sleep with his bookie out of desperation to pay off an insurmountable debt. She shelters Mel from her past, though, insists both her parents, not just her mother, died in a car crash, and no living relatives remain. It’s just Frankie and Mel against the world

But the past breaks through anyway when a letter from Martin – out of her life for decades, now on his deathbed in Scottsdale -- offers Frankie $100,000. The terms? Frankie and her estranged brother BOBBY (40) both show up and spend an hour with the old man.

One hundred grand? Enough to get Frankie out of debt and save their apartment! Enough to send hardworking Mel to her dream honors orchestra camp! Enough to turn their lives around! And yet…not enough to keep Frankie from tossing the letter in the sink and setting it on fire. Despite this chance at forward progress – money in her pocket, fears faced – she insists that when it comes to her family, progress simply isn’t possible…

Meet Uncle Bobby

…until Bobby himself shows up at Frankie’s convenience store job, fresh from New York City, and begs her to reconsider. Married with a son, he still reels from his own secret trauma -- Martin paying off bullies to beat the hell out of his 15-year-old son when he suspected Bobby was gay and shoving Bobby into the closet ever since. Bobby, too, left Martin behind decades ago, but he explains he’s desperate, buried in debt to the wrong kind of people.

Frankie refuses, tells Mel nothing, anxious to keep her family buried. But when she’s wrongly accused to stealing money at work and loses her jobs, she changes her tune, tells me she got an advance from work, and they head off to Phoenix under the guise of driving Mel to the orchestra camp, her “friend” and “coworker” Bobby at the wheel, their planned stop in Scottsdale a secret, along with everything else…

Road Trip To The Past

…yet it doesn’t take long before the truths begin to out, an astonished Mel learning that Bobby’s her uncle, her grandfather’s alive, and her mother’s past was packed with some kind of trauma! They make an emotional stop in Sedona for Frankie and Bobby to finally spread their mother’s ashes on the land she’d always wanted to visit. And that night, Frankie pulls back one final curtain and performs at a hotel open mic, Mel amazed to learn her mother was a musician as well, and had dreamed of being a singer until she fled from home. Emotions pour forth, Frankie finally feels some strength to face Martin…

Facing The Music

…when Bobby bails in the early hours, leaving Frankie a check for 100 grand and a note explaining he lied -- not only is he financially sound, but he’d actually written the letter, a ploy to convince Frankie to join him so he wouldn’t have to be alone to confront his father and finally have the strength to come out. Enraged, Frankie plans to leave, but wise Mel convinces her the only way to get their lives unstuck is to stay and face her demon.

So they visit Martin in a ritzy senior home -- decrepit, bedridden, unable to speak. Empowered, Frankie shares three versions of her life story -- she’s a music star who writes about her awful father, or she’s a powerful lawyer for abused kids, or she’s a struggling mother desperately trying to raise her kid right. Oh, and Bobby is happily married…to a man. Frankie's elated, empowered, ready to finally move forward until a young woman shows up in the room, alarmed at this stranger upsetting “Dad.” The woman shares that Martin had cleaned up, re-married, and helped raise her, and never spoke of having left a whole other family in the dust. Shaken, Frankie and Mel flee, Mel so proud of her mother for the first time.

A New Reality

Six months later, with the help of Bobby’s money, Frankie has a new apartment, has started school, and interns as a paralegal. Mel and Frankie visit Bobby in New York where Bobby, now fully out and divorced, lives with his boyfriend, Frankie’s confrontation with Martin having freed him as well. They visit the motel of Frankie’s trauma, now a CVS. And the cabin in the woods where Bobby had been beaten up, now townhouses. The siblings agree, maybe even in their lives, progress is possible after all.

FUNNY, SAD, AND BEAUTIFUL