Mrs. Pritchett begins her story by describing a day in her comfortable, modern home as she prepares a dinner for her husband’s clients. She has lunch in a café, where she sees an older couple, very much in love. The man helps the woman out of her coat, and Mrs. Pritchett realizes this kind of love is missing from her own life. Although she lacks for nothing, her life is essentially empty. After dinner with her husband and his clients, she goes to the guest room to lie down and takes an entire bottle of sleeping pills. But instead of dying, she vomits up the pills and is brought to the hospital.

In the hospital, Mrs. Pritchett is depressed. An Indian nurse visits her, and soon Mrs. Pritchett is questioning her own actions. She returns to the scene she has been remembering throughout the book, of being an eighteen-year-old sitting at a table with her friend, Debbie. Mrs. Pritchett gave up her chance to run the bakery and instead moved to Tulsa with Mr. Pritchett. As she finishes telling this story, the nurse encourages her to stop blaming her husband and herself but instead to accept the circumstances of her life and change from the inside out.