Nicholas Lebrun, a ten-year-old boy, has just killed his friend, Alfred Coburn, with a penknife while playacting a spy movie. He sprints back to his home, which has been in his family since his grandfather Ernest, an upstanding, honorable, good-humored French Protestant, moved in forty years earlier. The latter died just a year after Nicholas was born, ostensibly to be sure the family name would continue. Robert, his father and a good AFL-CIO man, is shocked, but when Nicholas mentions that he saw Toni Scott, a gay man, accidentally drove over the body, he sees an opportunity. He compels the boy to repeat his story to be sure nothing could disprove what he then tells the police and Alfred's father -- Scott molested Nicholas and Alfred in the parking lot, after which Nicholas broke away and left his friend there. Everyone who lies does so effectively, and everyone who lies without knowing it does so believably. Everyone who tells the truth tells it very badly. The case becomes a national one, and Toni Scott ends up in prison for life. Robert, however, has misgivings -- not because of Scott's fate, but because Nicholas has moved so completely from the truth to his father's lie. He imagines himself in his son's shoes, and the fear at which he arrives staggers him. Maybe, then, Robert lied to save himself, not his son. His own father, though, would never have even had this thought. He raised Robert with absolute truth and falsity, so Robert raised Nicholas with relative truth and falsity. So who's really responsible for the lie?