An omniscient, third-person narrator recounts the story in the past tense. Charlotte Cleve Dufresnes, mother to the 12-year-old protagonist, Harriet, and her 16-year-old sister, Allison, still worries that her son Robin’s untimely death 12 years ago, was her fault. Robin died at age nine on Mother’s Day during a party Charlotte threw for the whole family. She changed the traditional time of the meal and wonders if Robin wouldn’t have died had she kept it earlier. Robin was found hanging from a tree, dead in his own yard with family nearby, but nobody saw anything suspicious, and his murder remains a mystery. Although the Cleves/Dufresneses are a family of storytellers, they avoid the topic of Robin’s death because it is so upsetting. This avoidance of the subject makes things harder for Charlotte, though, because she hasn’t processed his death and feels stuck and alone in the moment of its occurrence.

Not being able to make sense of the story with others, Charlotte assumes it must be her fault because she altered the family tradition. She also believes she should have had an adult outside the whole time watching Harriet, who was a baby; however, nothing happened to Harriet, but Robin was killed.