Zoë's husband Peter dies, and she takes off from Michigan to travel the world, not being able to stand remaining in the place where he passed away. She travels first to the Arctic where she sees the ghost of Peter. She leaves immediately and heads to Paris, then to a waitressing job on the Adriatic Sea. When she sees Peter there, as well, she packs up again and heads for Greece, where she starts selling landscape paintings to tourists and lives in a broken down inn by the sea. After Greece, Zoë heads to Venice, a place to which Peter had always wanted to travel. It is September and the city is flooded. Zoe wades through the streets in her jeans. She has very little money left. She sits down on a step overlooking a canal and contemplates what to do next. A tall man approaches her and asks if she's alright. He offers to buy her dinner, and they speak for awhile at the restaurant he takes her to. The man, Rafael, confesses that he approached her because she seemed like a girl who needed money, and he has a job he needs done. If she will deliver a small package to an address in Venice, he will pay her fifty euros up front and fifty when she returns. Zoë, out of options, agrees, and another man approaches them from the restaurant's bar. Rafael explains that this man will take Zoë to the address. They wander through the city in silence together, and once the man has brought Zoë to a stone building, he rings the doorbell and disappears. Zoë is shown in by an old man, who refuses to take the package but leads her into the house to a large study where they find two men. Zoë hands the younger of the men the box, saying it is from Rafael. When the man opens it, it contains a human ear, with a pink earring still attached to the earlobe. The older man collapses and begins weeping. The younger man suggests to Zoë that they go for a walk together. She follows him out of the house, and she realizes the man is carrying a gun. They walk along a canal, and the man explains that he told Rafael that if he did this, he would have to kill the messenger. They walk together under an awning hidden from view, and the man tells Zoë to step forwards, right up to the canal. Zoë hears the gunshot, sees childhood memories flashing through her mind, sees the doctor diagnosing Peter with cancer, and then Peter is standing before her, holding the place on the back of her head where the bullet entered. He tells her to stand up so that he can look at her.