When a family slowly immigrated to the US from Puerto Rico, they bring their grandmother with them but leave behind her first husband, their estranged grandfather. To extend an olive branch, they send a granddaughter to visit their grandpa over the summer.
During the summer, she bonds with her grandpa over music. He introduces her to traditional, Spanish singers and takes her around the area. As she grows closer to her grandpa, there is a rift, too: he isn't willing to talk about why he stopped calling their family or why he gave up on their grandmother. The girl learns that he won't cross some lines, and won't have any conversations about serious topics.
When she returns home, her grandpa calls sporadically, only to tell her when a beloved artist of his has passed away, because he thinks this is only line of connection to his granddaughter. When her grandma dies, the phone remains silent, and when he calls to tell her about some irrelevant dead musician, the girl is furious at him. The calls grow further and further apart, until one day when she is 25, she gets a call from an area code in Puerto Rico. Instead of her grandpa, it is another family member telling her that he has died. She sends away the hookup she had over to deal with the trauma that her grandpa's absence has left her with.