Mary takes biology lab at her university in Texas to fulfill her science credit. She is decent enough at the course and knows how to work a microscope. She adjusts it in lab one day, noting a rotifer, which is an evolutionary step above the protozoa. She sees the rotifer struggling, caught in algae, and attempts to help it by shifting the microscope. Instead, the rotifer is pushed from her sight, and she does not help.

Later, when Mary is doing graduate work, she is tasked with the odd job of going through a family's letters that have been donated to the university. The Bentons lived in the 1830s, and their son Robert Josiah is sent off to boarding school in the correspondence. Robert Josiah sends home a letter every two weeks, as instructed and supervised by the headmaster, and appears to like school just fine. One day, however, a cousin visits Robert Josiah and reports that he looks sickly and overworked. Robert Josiah's father thinks that the young male cousin does not understand life as he does and does nothing to check up on his son. Mary notes that Josiah Robert sends a few more letters, then is never mentioned in the family archives again.

Mary lives in a city and works there after graduate school. When she is twenty-seven-years-old, her cousin Leah, whom she does not know well, comes to live in the same city. They chat and see each other occasionally. One day, Leah calls the woman and tells her she is engaged, and she is getting married in a week before she goes home to see her sick father. Leah asks the woman to meet her fiancé on Saturday, the day before she gets married. When Mary arrives to meet Dick, she immediately recognizes him. Mary, in her own mind, never forgets a face, though she forgets names. She knows Dick was her cab driver earlier that week and that he had a blonde woman with him on the ride, with whom he was affectionate. Mary doubts herself and does not say anything.

Leah gets married the next day. Her father dies shortly after. Leah and Dick get a divorce a year later, and, through an aunt, Mary learns that he married a blonde shortly after the divorce. Leah is still a pretty woman, according to the aunt, but does not have the youthful sparkle in her eye which once characterized her.