Following the death of her mother, a daughter recalls her mother gossiping about a small family in the Ottowa valley where a man shamelessly robs two sisters of their inheritance through marriage.

One Mother's Day, two old women reflect on their relationships with their children--present and absent--and with the same adulterous man. When their paths cross at a crucial moment, one woman's refusal to accept the help of her husband's secret lover leads to her death.

Four women–a retired dancer enacting an old dance, a grandmother preparing a birthday dinner for her family, her granddaughter participating in a genetics study, and a researcher quantifying the burden of old memories–all unite under the combined weight of their war-burdened pasts in the contemporary United States.

Two women, once the closest of childhood friends, chart diametrically opposite courses through life when scandal drives them apart. Thirty years later, a chance reunion prompts one of them to question everything.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.

An elderly woman finally reaches out to her estranged nephews to settle the matter of her will, but her unexpected decision leaves them shocked.

The lives of a teenage girl in an abusive relationship, an elderly mother looking to make amends, and an unfaithful wife converge on an unexpected evening.

In an alternate universe of white suburban America, one nine-year-old girl's childhood is cut short when her parents find her a marital match: a socially-awkward businessman with a ridiculous mustache. Although she surrenders to her mother's housewife training, when the day of the wedding arrives, she tries to escape, endangering her and others in the process.

An old woman visits the small town where she was once a waitress and remembers how she dated a wealthy college student and built a strong relationship with his intelligent mother. After realizing she didn't want to marry him, she shared a spontaneous, emotionally-intimate drive with his troubled older half-brother, who died by suicide just after.

Two elderly women, one a white woman and the other her former slave, spend their time sewing and reflecting on their lives together.