Scott Torres lives with his wife, Maureen Torres-Thompson, and their three children in a gated community in Orange County, California. Two weeks prior to the beginning of the novel, the family fired two of the three members of their staff: Pepe the gardener and Guadalupe the nanny. Araceli, the maid, is the only staff member who remains.

At that start of Chapter 1, Scott struggles to take over the yard work in Pepe’s absence, but finds it incredibly frustrating. Araceli watches him try to figure out the lawnmower and decides against trying to help him as punishment for letting Pepe go. She is slightly bitter because her employers did not tell her that they were firing other staff and leaving her with more work but no increase in pay.

She is a person who “enjoyed her solitude, her apartness from the world, and she liked to think of working for the Torres-Thompson family as a kind of self-imposed exile from her previous, directionless life in Mexico City” (4). Nevertheless, she is still a young woman in her 20s who daydreams about romance and a different future for herself. She misses the friendly banter and companionship of the other workers.