In a small town in present-day America, a young woman is allowed to attend to her affairs in the aftermath of her husband's death. Soon, though, the Placement Team—a seemingly all-powerful organization which controls the lives of women without husbands—takes the keys to the woman's house and car, as well as all of her belongings. The Team takes her to a women's shelter. Life in the shelter consists of bettering oneself through activities like gardening class, knitting class, child-rearing class, and a mandatory 'Moving On' seminar focused on forgetting one's deceased husband. The women at the shelter are given an hour outside each day in a pen with barbed wire fences and female guards who watch over them. The young woman makes friends with the other women on her floor of the shelter, bakes various desserts with them, and talks with them about their futures. Sometimes, one of her friends gets chosen by a man and leaves the shelter to go begin her life with him. The man gets his chosen wife-to-be as well as her dowry, which consists of all of her valuables from her past life. One night, a window blinks on in the men's shelter across the road—where men who are poor and whose wives have died stay—and the young woman sees a man silhouetted in one of the rooms. They wave to each other. Later, the young woman meets her window man at a bingo night with the men's prison. They talk and laugh together, and the guards watch disapprovingly. The young woman is moved to another floor of the shelter; a man in the male prison saw and reported her undressing in her lit room and waving across to the man whom she met at bingo. Nightly, the shelter alarm sounds, signifying that a woman is trying to escape. Floodlights sweep the young woman's room each time the alarm sounds, and she privately hopes the woman makes it away. She imagines running herself, and then writes and stashes a letter to the window man jokingly asking if he will run away with her. She learns that her window man is gone, chosen by a wealthy woman. The young woman's letter is found and she is reprimanded. Her Case Manager tells her it is time to move on from her deceased husband—the Case Manager and the woman are both aware that the window man simply served as a proxy for the woman's dead husband, and that her letter was a way of trying to desperately reconnect with him. Eight months into her stay, she is chosen by a man named Charlie. She meets him at a diner and he asks if she wants children. The young woman says she does; he smiles. The young woman has heard that someday there will be a future in which she does not remember her first husband. Nevertheless, she looks towards the future that she has—it is the only one she has been given.