Angelina is good at faking happiness, but she feels completely hollow inside. She dreams constantly of her stillborn son and dead mother, imagining her mother's eyes flickering as she's lowered in the grave. She dreams of having a pain in her breast and wakes up, pleased to find a lump there that might do her in. She begins drinking and stops eating.

One Sunday mass (Angelina hates Sunday mass), she leaves the sanctuary and tumbles down the church steps. The doctors do a biopsy on the lump while she's in the hospital, which to Angelina's disappointment is benign. She leaves determined to lead a better life, and floats on a brief spell of happiness until her car breaks down and she fights bitterly with her husband Chick over how she should have handled it. He refuses to pay for the fix and Angelina throws his car keys on the roof in retaliation. Angelina works the elections, canvasses, realizes how lonely she'd feel without her husband. But all this trying for fulfillment still feels superficial.

Angelina's beloved dog JoJo goes missing, and after weeks of impassioned searching, which her husband and daughter Bonnie beg her to give up, she finds him dead by the side of the road. Around Easter, Angela makes up her mind. She washes her husband's best suit, performs the day's errands, drives off to an empty field, and shoots herself in the heart. She is found that night and wakes up the following day in the hospital, where she desperately attempts to rip the IVs away from her. The nurses hold her down, her husband's heart breaks watching, and he turns back to affirm his daughter when she asks if her mother has a second chance.