As one of the last inhabitants of the dying North Dakota town Pluto, a middle aged woman who is president of the historical society recalls the major events that defined the town’s past in a newsletter to the remaining people of Pluto. With her old friend Neve Harper, she discusses the time that Neve’s uncle Octave, the town’s banker, attempted to run away to Brazil with most of the town’s money. His brother brought him and the money back, but Octave committed suicide soon after. For years the motive of his death was unknown, but Neve recently discovered her uncle’s extensive, valuable stamp collection cultivated from letters taken out of disasters – wars, bombings, the Titanic. She realized that his attempted escape to Brazil was in pursuit of an especially rare stamp from Pompeii, and that his death was in finding out it had been destroyed.  After Neve’s revelation, the woman also recalls her own personal tragedy. Years before, her entire family had been murdered, and she was spared because her crib was hidden. The town assumed her older sister’s lover had done it because he fled at the same time, and his name was stricken from the town’s war memorial. His aunt took in the child and raised her with a happy childhood, and she eventually went to school, became a doctor, and returned to town to open her own practice. After she hears of Neve’s uncle, the middle-aged woman takes out her family’s clothes and finds a valentine in her sister’s pocket from the lover. She knows that he was innocent. She then recalls a time that she saved the life of a man on a farm whose demeanor changed whenever he saw her, and who eventually left her all his money folded in patterns she remembered from her childhood. She realizes she had saved her family’s murderer. She closes her story by signing off the newsletter and declaring the historical society defunct now that she and Neve have nothing more to say of the town’s history. She thinks eventually Neve will move away with the money from her uncle's stamp collection, but until then she walks to her friend’s house so they can both rest better with their revelations.