The story opens with Grace, the narrator and protagonist of the story, driving through the remote lake-filled region of Ottawa Valley, Canada. Grace searches for the Traverses' summer house, a place she has not visited in more than forty years. The entire area has changed since then. There are more roads and houses, and she almost turns back before she finally spots it. Grace notices that it used to be possible to run from the large, wrap-around porch into the lake, but the path is now blocked by a newly built home. Now that she’s found the house, she questions what made her go looking for it. Grace realizes it would have been strange to find the place unchanged. She wonders if she might have been upset or relieved had it been completely gone.

Grace recalls that Mr. Travers built the house as a wedding present for his wife. Before marrying Mr. Travers, Mrs. Travers was a widow who lived in an apartment with her only son, Neil. Mr. and Mrs. Travers later had two children together, Gretchen and Maury. While Mr. Travers refers to Mrs. Travers' previous living situation as being akin to prison, Mrs. Travers recalls the interesting tenants that she and her son lived beside. Grace continues to reminisce about the summer she got to know the Traverses, when she worked as a waitress at a nearby hotel where she also was living for the summer. One evening while the Travers family is there for dinner, Maury asks Grace on a date. Grace is unsure about Maury’s intentions but agrees to go to the movies with him. They see Father of the Bride, and Grace hates it because of the way the female lead is presented. Grace chafes against the idea that girls should be pretty and brainless to get men to fall in love with them and that motherhood is painted as an inevitability. Grace struggles to articulate these feelings. As Maury listens to Grace, he begins to fall in love with her. He finds her unique and romanticizes her poor upbringing. He tells Grace she is different from other girls. Later, he gushes to his mother about Grace. Mrs. Travers tells Maury to invite her to dinner.

Grace is instantly enamored with Mrs. Travers when they meet. She is fascinated by the Travers family because their lives are so different from her own. Grace’s mother died when she was very young, and her father could not care for her. She was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, who are kind but quiet people. Her great-uncle makes his living caning chairs and hopes Grace will take over the business one day. Grace has recently finished high school, a bit late at twenty years old. It takes her longer to graduate because she chose to study extra subjects. No one understands why she does this since she is a girl and cannot afford to attend college, but Grace wanted to get as much education as possible for free before her future was decided for her. Mrs. Travers shares Grace’s passion for learning. She tells Grace that she wishes she had crammed her mind with so-called useless knowledge before going to business college to make herself useful. 

Grace trades her shifts so that she can see Maury’s family more, at the expense of spending time with just Maury. As a result, Grace’s memories of Sunday dinners with the Traverses are clearer than her memories of spending time with Maury alone. They often played word games after dinner. Grace enjoys these games, and they are usually joyful, with the exception of the time Neil’s wife, Mavis, joins them without him or their two small children. Mavis is generally unpleasant and argues about the rules before sitting the next game out. When she leaves for the evening she makes a passive-aggressive remark about the earlier argument. Mrs. Travers excuses Mavis’s behavior because she is stressed by motherhood. Besides Sunday dinners, Grace also spends her Wednesday afternoons off in the Traverses' living room, reading books and talking about them with Mrs. Travers. By the middle of the summer, Maury starts to talk about getting married. The idea of marrying Maury doesn’t feel real to Grace, although she likes the idea of joining Maury as he travels for work as an engineer. 

While Maury saves money to buy Grace a ring, she saves to visit him when he returns to school, even though these plans do not feel any more real than her future taking over her great-uncle’s business. What does feel real are her expectations about the physical intimacy that comes from dating, but Maury is reticent. Maury and Grace have different expectations about sex that lead them to never consummate the relationship, to Grace’s disappointment. Nonetheless, she stays at the lake after the summer season and into the fall. The family stays at the lake house intermittently. One day, Mrs. Travers confides to Grace that she worries about her son Neil more than her other children. Not long after, Mrs. Travers is hospitalized for her nerves. Maury reveals that her first husband died by suicide and it sometimes still affects her, but she is always better after a stay at the hospital. When Grace attends the Travers’ Thanksgiving celebration in October, Mrs. Travers is not her usual witty self and seems scattered. 

As the family prepares dinner, Grace plays with the grandchildren by the lake where she cuts her foot badly on a shell. Moments later, Neil, whom Grace has never actually met, arrives. Neil is a doctor, and he quickly patches her up but insists on driving her to the hospital for a tetanus shot. Grace can smell alcohol on his breath, and Mrs. Travers tells Grace to keep him from drinking. Neil drives Grace to the hospital and gives her the tetanus shot. While there, Maury arrives to pick Grace up, but Neil asks her if she wants to go back yet, and Graces says no. The nurse lies to Maury that Neil and Grace have already left and they sneak out the back and drive off. Grace does not think about how Maury or Mavis would feel about the situation.

Grace notes that she recalls this afternoon in clear detail for a long time. Her memories are all tangled up with the sexual fantasies she had as a young woman. She remembers thinking guiltily of Mrs. Travers’ words about keeping Neil from drinking and how loud it is in Neil’s convertible. Neil takes her to a dark hotel bar and has a whiskey while Grace has a Coke. Neil introduces her to the bartender as his future sister-in-law. After, they head north up the highway and Neil lightly licks Grace’s hand before telling her she’s safe with him. Grace says she isn’t his future sister-in-law, and Neil says he’s not surprised. Neil stops the car and asks if Grace knows how to drive. When she says no he insists on teaching her, and Grace drives for a while despite her nerves. When Neil takes over driving again, he makes a pitstop at a rundown house that Grace assumes belongs to a bootlegger. 

Grace waits for Neil in the car, lost in contemplation. She realizes the idea of marrying Maury would be a betrayal to herself. She thinks about how Neil understands some things about life that Grace does because he, unlike his brother, has experienced misfortune. Eventually, Grace falls asleep. She dreams she sees her great-uncle in the doorway of the house, and when she wakes they are back on the road again, and Neil is drinking. As Neil and Grace talk and Neil becomes more drunk, Grace realizes she is trying to impress him and becomes uncomfortable. She realizes that Neil drinks because he is full of bottomless despair. Soon after, Neil pulls over at a park on the river to take a nap. Grace wanders the park while he sleeps and swings on a swing set while contemplating how their sexual tension has fizzled because she now realizes Neil drinks to distract himself from inner sorrow and turmoil.

Grace goes back to the car because the sun is setting but she is unable to wake Neil. Eventually, she gets behind the wheel herself and drives slowly back to the hotel where she works. When they arrive, Neil reveals he was awake for a while but didn’t want to startle her. Grace still thinks about the goodbye hug they shared that seemed to communicate contradictory things. The next morning, Grace learns that a car crashed into a bridge and completely burned up. The driver will have to be identified with dental records, but Grace knows it was Neil. Her manager implies the crash was a suicide. Maury writes her a letter asking her to say Neil made her go with him. She writes back that she wanted to go. A few days later, Mr. Travers visits Grace at work. He is kind and aloof, and tells Grace that the family is sad but alcoholism is a terrible thing. He says he plans to take Mrs. Travers on vacation when she feels up to it, then gives Grace a check for a thousand dollars.  Grace recalls that she thought of not accepting the money and sometimes wonders if she should not have, but in the end she kept the check because it was enough to ensure her a start in life.