During her unhappy childhood, an unnamed Canadian writer muses, Alfrida was a constant presence in her rural household. Either she was over at the farmhouse for dinner with the extended family, where they talked about politics and made drama of their small talk, or she was in their local paper, for which she wrote a local-news column and anonymously contributed to a self-help column. The writer's parents are hardworking, poor, and puritanical, even cruel; only around the magnetic, devil-may-care Alfrida do they give their daughter room to breathe. But, one year, Alfrida stops coming. Her live-in boyfriend would never be welcome in that household, and the writer's mother is in awkwardly poor health anyway. After her mother dies, the writer goes to college on a scholarship in Alfrida's city, but she does not meet up with her until two years later, right before she leaves to become a writer. Their awkward dinner, which includes Alfrida's live-in boyfriend—who's married to someone else—reminds her why she wanted to leave her past life behind. But one part of the dinner, Alfrida's story of her own mother's death and her reaction to it, sticks with the writer, so much so that it inspires a short story. Alfrida sees this as a betrayal and never speaks to the writer again. At her father's funeral, the now-middle-aged writer meets Alfrida's long-lost daughter, who shows her two things: she did not know Alfrida quite as well as she thought, and Alfrida detested her. After her lunch at Alfrida's, the writer remembers, she walked all ten miles home. Relieved to be alone, she revels in her inner peace—with her life, with her writing, with herself.