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The book opens with a word from Marcellus, a shockingly intelligent giant Pacific octopus, who remarks on his own abilities and warns the reader that he only has 160 days left to live.

Protagonist Tova Sullivan, a seventy-year-old widow, is working as a night cleaner at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. At the end of her shift she finds the aquarium’s giant Pacific octopus entangled in power cords beneath a table, and frees him. He gently wraps a tentacle around her arm before returning to his tank. Tova leaves, dumbfounded, and later on tries to hide the sucker marks on her arm from her friends, the Knit-Wits. The Knit-Wits are a group of older ladies—Janice Kim, Mary Ann Minetti, and Barb Vanderhoof—who get together each week to have tea and chat. While the other three talk about their grown children, Tova slips off to the bathroom, thinking about her son Erik, who died thirty years ago when he was eighteen in a mysterious boating accident that was ruled a suicide by the authorities. After she leaves Mary Ann’s house she gets a call from the Charter Village Long-Term Care Center, informing her that her estranged brother, Lars, has died. 

The story’s other protagonist, Cameron Cassmore, goes to help his Aunt Jeanne prune her flowers. Aunt Jeanne is the sister of Cameron’s mother, who struggled with a drug addiction and left him with Aunt Jeanne when he was nine. As he is leaving Aunt Jeanne’s trailer park, she gives him a box of his mother’s things. Meanwhile, Tova goes to the local Shop-Way, where she talks to Ethan Mack, the gossipy owner of the store. Afterwards, at home, Tova befriends a stray cat that comes up onto her porch.

Cameron’s girlfriend, Katie, finds out that he has been fired once again from his new job. She dumps him, and Cameron crashes at his friend Brad’s place, only to learn that Brad is quitting their band, Moth Sausage. In Sowell Bay, Tova asks Ethan to drive her to Charter Village, where she picks up Lars’s belongings along with an application to move into the facility. 

Cameron has a chat with his friend Elizabeth, Brad’s wife, who encourages him to leave Modesto and do something else with his life. After she goes to sleep Cameron looks through the box of his mother’s things, finding a 1989 class ring and a photo of his mother with an unknown man. 

Tova is doing a crossword by the sea when she meets Adam Wright, who introduces himself as a former schoolmate of Erik’s. Still raw with grief, Tova goes to work at the aquarium and greets Marcellus. In the following passage of Marcellus’s, he says that he has seen Erik’s remains in the sea, and that he wishes to help her heal from her grief.

Cameron discovers that the man in his mother’s photo is a successful real estate broker from Sowell Bay named Simon Brinks. He assumes Brinks is his lost father, and decides to track him down to ask him for money. 

At work, Tova speaks to Marcellus about Erik’s death, feeling unable to relate to her friends. While she is talking, the stool she is standing on to reach the tank wobbles and she falls, injuring her ankle and forcing her to take off work. Wondering who will care for her in her old age, she applies to Charter Village.

Cameron flies to Washington only to lose his luggage. Moneyless, he uses a loan from Aunt Jeanne to buy a dilapidated camper van which he then drives to Sowell Bay. Once there, he meets Ethan, who offers to let Cameron stay in his driveway and helps him apply to a maintenance job at the aquarium, which he gets. Later that day Cameron receives Brinks’s home information from a realtor named Jessica Snell, and soon after meets Avery, the attractive woman who runs the town surf shop. 

At his job at the aquarium, Cameron is struggling to corral a stuck Marcellus back into his tank when Tova arrives and helps guide the octopus to safety. Afterwards she and Cameron introduce themselves, and Marcellus observes to himself that the two people are genetically related. 

Tova goes to Mary Ann’s farewell party, as Mary Ann has decided to move in with her daughter in Spokane. Adam Wright and his partner, Sandy Hewitt, are also in attendance, and Adam tells Tova that he remembers Erik going out with a girl the night of his death. Tova obsesses over the information, realizing that it likely rules Erik’s death an accident rather than a suicide. 

Cameron goes on a paddleboarding date with Avery, where he learns about and meets her fifteen-year-old son, Marco. They kiss, and Cameron arrives to work later on in a happy daze. Tova decides to help him bond with Marcellus, and he tells her about his mother. In the midst of all this, Marcellus plots to help them discover that they are related. 

Tova goes to Shop-Way while preparing to move to Charter Village and runs into Sandy, who tells her that Adam remembered the girl who was with Erik the night he died was named Daphne. Tova finds a picture of Daphne in Erik’s yearbook, and begins researching her to no avail. At the aquarium, Cameron leaves his driver’s license on Terry’s desk and Marcellus creeps out to steal it and put it under the sea lion statue where Tova will see it. 

Ethan overhears Tova’s conversation with Sandy and remembers Daphne Cassmore. Wanting to tell Tova that Daphne is Cameron’s mother, he invites her to dinner. Dinner goes well, but Cameron interrupts angrily, sure that Ethan is spreading gossip about him. While Cameron and Ethan are talking, Tova uses an old t-shirt to clean the kitchen; when Ethan returns he finds she has ruined a priceless Grateful Dead t-shirt, and Tova leaves before he can tell her what he knows. Tova spends $2,000 to replace the t-shirt.

Back at the aquarium, Tova cleans under the statue and discovers Cameron’s license. Realizing his last name is Cassmore, the same as Daphne’s, she tells him that she suspects she is his paternal grandmother. Later, Cameron gets a call from Brinks Development telling him to meet with Brinks in Seattle that night. At the meeting Cameron discovers that Brinks is not his father, but was his mother’s best friend. He drives back furious. Thinking that Avery is ghosting him and angry that Ethan won’t give him a job at Shop-Way, he decides to return to Modesto.

To Tova’s dismay, a new octopus has arrived at the aquarium, which she takes to mean Marcellus will soon die. While she is cleaning, Cameron storms in to pick up his things; he tells her he is leaving, dropping the class ring of his mother’s into the eel tank because its engraving reads ‘EELS.’ When they’ve both left, Marcellus retrieves the ring. The next night, on her last shift at the aquarium, Tova finds Marcellus on the floor with the class ring. She reads the engraving and realizes it is etched with her son’s initials—confirming that Cameron is her grandson. She brings Marcellus out to the pier and releases him into the sea, thanking him for saving her. 

Cameron turns the van around and heads back to Sowell Bay, having rethought his decision to leave. He appears at Tova’s door just as she is deciding not to move to Charter Village after all, and she tells him he is her grandson. A month later Tova is living in a new condo, Cameron has a new job, and they are spending a happy Thanksgiving with Ethan, Avery, and Marco.

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