A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

After struggling to appeal to their state governor, a dysfunctional family anxiously awaits the public execution of a relative. As they wait at home new of the execution, tensions and strife erupt in a dispute over the relative's innocence.

A man meets his girlfriend’s mother. While at first she is cold to him, because of a secret his girlfriend won’t speak of, they grow close, begin to depend on each other.

A woman finally forms a relationship with her half-sister, but becomes concerned for her well-being; the half-sister and her husband each tell the woman a different story.

A couple with a rocky marriage argues over fetching a newspaper, which becomes a catalyst for their impending divorce. When they unexpectedly reunite over a decade later, the former couple witnesses how their lives disparately transformed thanks to the fateful newspaper.

A woman confronts her boyfriend about suspicious behavior involving another woman and discovers that she cannot trust anything he says.

A young woman makes a detour on her way home to visit a man she met on a train. Though the man is married, the woman hopes to rekindle the spark she felt during the train-ride.

When Harold's wife dies, seemingly by malicious cause, he becomes the prime suspect. As the public defender investigates her death, he finds that she may have held secrets herself.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A professor finds himself attracted to one of his students, allowing her to skip the final exams - but her resultant grade causes her to lash out at him and reveal harsh truths about his own life that he finds difficult to accept.