In Indianola, Mississippi, an eighteen-year-old girl named Dee Ann and her boyfriend, Chuckie, come home to find her mother dead in the kitchen, shot with one of her own guns. In the ensuing investigation, the girl's father, who left her mother to date a 21-year-old drug dealer, becomes the prime suspect. Earlier that night, he had come into the grocery store where she works as they were closing and gave her $20 for her and Chuckie to go out that night. He parked in the back, where she couldn't see the car. Moreover, her father's girlfriend has left the country, and he stands to earn half a million dollars in insurance payoff if her mother dies, through a policy he enrolled in six months prior. Joe Tierce, the lawyer who defends her father — who will years later be arrested for showing himself naked to a number of women and girls without their consent — comes to visit Dee Ann and persuade her to believe that her father didn't commit the crime. Dee Ann visits her father in prison, where she tells him that she knows he did it. However, at the trial, she changes her story. She decides that the shame of letting him go free "will still weigh a lot less than her father's life." After he's acquitted, he collects the insurance payment and leaves the country. Years later, Dee Ann and Chuckie are married with a daughter, Cynthia. Dee Ann wonders if they would've stayed together if Chuckie's parents hadn't placed her off limits. Chuckie starts coming home late and Dee Ann suspects him of cheating. Dee Ann sees Cynthia walking home and staring at the sidewalk, and suspects that Cynthia believes something is wrong with her. When Chuckie is gone and Cynthia is out with friends, or with boys, Dee Ann hopes she's having fun. Dee Ann goes on long walks, still haunted by the past.