A married woman, haunted by a vision of the Virgin Mary, has an affair. On vacation her husband dies in a freak boating accident and before an autopsy is performed his body disappears. The woman, her lover and the husband--who turns out to be alive--converge at a motel next to a monastery in Carmel, California, where the Virgin Mary first revealed herself to the woman, who slowly realizes that the pain her husband is in is directly related to whether she fulfills the request made to her by the Blessed Mother.