Anne Daly, a teacher at a high school in Yonkers, is glad when her son Corey comes home on an unexpected break from his assignment in El Salvador where he teaches poor children at a rural school. But she is upset by his announcement about what he plans to do with his life. She knows she should be happy about it because he will be doing something he loves, and because it's aligned with her own values, but she has deep feelings against his plan because of what happened years ago to her only brother. She has never told Corey about it because she never had a reason to tell him and she didn't want to inflict that burden on him. But now she has a reason to tell him, and in order to make him understand her feelings about his plan she must unearth the painful memories of how she lost her brother, she must examine her relationship with her parents whom she blames for what happened to him, and she must deal with her failure to alleviate his suffering and to save him. In her explanation to her son she relives her past from the time when she was growing up in South Boston, protecting her brother from a bully in the schoolyard, to the time when she learned the closely held secret about what happened to him, retaking a journey that led to a change in her own life plan.