The man carefully slips into his mother’s house. Already, he can hear someone arguing. In the kitchen, he sees his sister arguing with his mother. They’re arguing about wills, how his mother won’t write out her will, because she stubbornly thinks her life insurance alone will do the trick after her soon death. On the stove, a pot of chili is simmering, and his sister fixes him a bowl. She asks for his perspective on their argument, but he doesn’t say much. As folks disperse, the sister asks him how much she owes him for buying a new furniture set for them, but he says he’ll take care of it.

The man’s sister asks the man if he’ll go talk to their brother. He isn’t pleased by the idea, as their brother has had a decade of arrests, incarcerations, drugs, and crime. Only recently has he moved back in with their mother. Similarly, the sister has children who are acting up in school and causing trouble too. The man struggles to know how to bring his family together, as he’s only an accountant. He thinks back to a moment with his pastor from before, who tells him that a special calling will soon come to him. He remembers his father, a reverend who used to say similar things.

The man’s sister goes upstairs to her room, while the man sits in the living room with his mother. There, she runs an oxygen tube up to her nose as she sits on her sofa with a beer. He asks her again about the will, to which she says that she doesn’t care what happens to her things after her death. Downstairs, a loud sound erupts, presumably from the man’s brother. He then asks his mother why she even bothered letting him back into her life. She says it brings her to ease to have him around. Silently, he flicks through television shows, worried about what will become of his brother.

The man’s mother falls asleep. Seeing her like that, the man thinks back to when she divorced his father because of his strictness and adherence to religion. He watches and falls asleep to a television show about national parks and conservation efforts. He then has a bad dream where his mother and sister have devil horns and tails. When he wakes up, he sees his mother asleep, with a lit cigarette in her hand, which burns against her sofa. He puts it out and scolds her, but she pays it no mind. He then looks for the smoke alarm only to see that it’s not in the living room anymore.

Knowing his brother took the smoke alarm, the man heads downstairs to the basement. He sees his brother at the card table, with all his drug paraphernalia. The man accuses his brother of constant theft, but his brother shifts blame to his sister’s children instead, after which he mocks god and the man’s faith to him, which causes them to argue even further. The man insults his brother for having an absent father, to which the brother accuses the man’s father of inappropriately touching young kids like himself when he was younger. The man calls him a liar, but the brother says that their mother knows and that such acts were why she divorced him at all.

Deep down inside, the man knows his brother is telling the truth about his father. His brother then pulls out a gun with a silencer, briefly mentioning the thought of suicide for them both. The man has an intrusive thought about shooting his brother dead, though he calmly tells him to lower it instead. He then heads back upstairs to the living room, where he sees his mother with another lit cigarette in her hand, fast asleep. He grabs it and briefly thinks about all that has just happened. He tucks his mother’s blanket for her and heads outside. He smokes the lit cigarette and begs for the lord’s forgiveness.