Jacques Fortier is too busy with his high-powered job in Manhattan to spend time with his children at their estate in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Great Aunt Ida hears that her nephew, Jeffrey, is responsible for a car smashing into a tree across from his home. Jeff has displayed odd behavior since an early age. She knows there are guns on the premises and secrets among her family members. The memory of a neighbor being found dead nags at her. Feeling ill, Ida visits her physician and is given less than a year to live. She writes a letter she claims is from a friend. Ida tells Jeff's older sister, Ellie, who is helping to raise him, that she's lost her reading glasses and invites Ellie to read the letter for her. Middle-aged Auntie Weeze, oblivious to Jacques' failure to assert himself with his family, cares for Great Aunt Ida in her last days. Weeze forces herself to ask the one question she's terrified of, the one she resisted until now because Ida is failing, the one that if she doesn't ask could cost her gravely for eternity-the one that, because of what Aunt Ida did, she doesn't know where it will lead.