In the present, a middle-aged woman tries to sell the house in Alaska that has been her home through five husbands and one affair. She prepares for an open house which her agent arranged. However, the day of the open house, the man whom she had an affair with appears and asks her to take care of his dog while he gets critical medical treatment. She agrees, but the dog runs away. She enlists the help of a boy to find the dog, only to find that the dog has eaten everything she has grilled and thrown it up all over the lawn. Over the course of the open house, she also reveals that she is an orphan, that she married her first husband when she was nineteen and he was sixty-seven, that her first husband was romantically involved with his male hunting partner, and that the wolf room is full of pelts of wolves which she killed after her fifth miscarriage.