In a town so small it seems to consist of a house, a church, a road, a lake, and another house, all in a vortex of trenchant loss, four people come together to worry the strains of inexplicable love that tether them all together. A young woman named Shannon works her way through a long list of half-baked suicide plans which, however draconian, can't seem to keep her dead. The Father of the local church returns after decades of unexplained absence to quietly divorce his wife, who, in his absence, has taken in Shannon instead. The Coroner comes to town each week to manage Shannon's latest attempt and secretly tend to the Father as well. Now, in the summer of her eighteenth birthday, Shannon spends her time haranguing locals, including the Father, who is troubled by the sense that their connection goes beyond the tenuousness of small-town fate.