The novel begins with Iris Chase reflecting on the car crash that killed her sister: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge" (1). The policeman who inform Iris of the death also note that the eyewitnesses to the crash claimed that Laura had turned the wheel "deliberately…with no more fuss than stepping off a curb," making the apparent accident a suicide (1). Iris herself strongly suspected that this was in fact the case, but lied to the police.

Privately, Iris wonders whether Laura, in the moments before her death, was thinking of the "stack of cheap school exercise books…in the bureau drawer" that Iris found later that same day (2). While reading the notebooks, Iris says she thought of Reenie—her old nursemaid—tending to her and Laura's childhood injuries: "Tell me where it hurts, she'd say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where" (2). According to Iris, however, "some people…can't ever stop howling" (2).

Next, we see a newspaper article dated from May 26, 1945, reporting that an inquest ruled Laura Chase's death an accident. It also informs us that Iris is the "wife of the prominent manufacturer" Richard Griffen, before concluding that the accident should prompt the Toronto government to address neglected city infrastructure (3).