The woman sometimes dreams of running through Palo Alto like old times, toward the pool house. She thinks back to her college graduation and how none of her family came to see her, as they were much too busy. She goes back to her dorm room and doesn’t say goodbye to anyone; she simply packs up in New England and heads toward the West Coast, taking her grandfather’s inherited Buick all the way to San Francisco. There, she sells it for a thousand dollars and stays in a hostel in Chinatown for a month.

The woman is offered a job in Redwood City. In the library, she scrolls for a place to stay and finds an old lady’s ad for a pool house in Mountain View where the rent is low on the condition that the renter does chores. When she goes there, she greets a big dog at the pool house’s gate. The old lady then appears, to which the woman tells her that she wants to stay. The old lady takes a liking to her, and they agree that she can move in tonight. The woman then goes back to her hostel, packs her things, and takes them to the pool house. In the pool, she sees no water, just gravel.

The woman’s chores have to do with routine upkeep of the pool house but also handling the big dog. The old lady then tells her a story about how she grew up as an industrialist’s daughter in Germany and got whatever she wanted for Christmas. The woman, taken by her stories, wonders if they’re real. After the first day, the old lady gives her a jar of honey from the trash.

By Monday, the woman starts her job in Redwood City, helping digitize social worker files for the Department of Human Services. She steals bagels during the orientation meeting and sees a coworker who does the same. By afternoon, they start practicing data entry on fictional case files so that they can be ready for the real thing. She sits beside the coworker who stole the bagels before, and eventually, the coworker leans over and tells her that the woman is getting too emotionally attached to the case files, that she should be simple and detached instead. Moved by her coworker’s tenderness, the woman cries. From then on, they work though real case files about children who’ve lived terrible lives, and the woman often goes to the bathroom to cry more. When she comes back, she sees her coworker swallowing pure turmeric, which makes the woman feel strange.

After work, the woman goes for a run through Mountain View. When she returns, she gets an armchair as a gift from the old lady. The months then go by, with the woman working beside her coworker, and the old lady telling her various stories. Once, the old lady tells her a story about how she used to be a model in the sixties. At work, the coworker puts up a picture of her daughter at her desk, and the woman struggles to believe that she was a mother all along. When they get their first paychecks, the woman buys fruit and offers it to her coworker one day, which she thanks her for.

From then on, the woman and the coworker grow comfortable together. She finds out that her coworker listens to an evangelical minister in her headphones and uses the company phone to call a mechanic who’s working on her Volkswagen. The coworker then says that the Volkswagen is for her and her daughter to stay in. The woman wonders what she’s running from, but eventually, she catches her coworker calling the evangelical minister and pledging a thousand dollars to him. That day, the office is having a pizza party for successfully completing six months of data entry, during which the coworker gets incredibly drunk. Soon enough, the woman takes her into the bathroom so that she can vomit. In the bathroom, the coworker reveals that her daughter’s father almost killed her, which makes the woman understand why she’s living on the run. For the next few months, the coworker is much more distant than ever before.

The woman thinks about her coworker and her daughter, whether they’re okay in their Volkswagen. The old lady tells her, one day, about a story from the eighties, when she had a rich lover. On a yacht, the rich lover drugs her, after which she wakes up on a raft in the middle of the sea; she drifts out there for a week before a family rescues her. One day, after work, the woman follows the coworker through Redwood City and sees her picking up her daughter at a daycare, after which she follows them to their Volkswagen. Ashamed of what she has done, she walks back home.

The woman, anxious about her coworker, tells another coworker about the whole story and wonders what should be done. By the weekend, the woman sits outside of the pool house with the old lady and spots a bee, after which the old lady says she can no longer be outside, as bees caused a legal incident with the former tenant. On Monday, the woman sees that the coworker is no longer at work. After her shift, she goes to the daycare and asks about them, though she is told by the people there that she’s gone and should not be followed, as the state has been tracking her down.

By night, the woman gets into her running clothes and runs around Redwood City, trying to find the Volkswagen. Months go by, and the coworker is nowhere to be found. One night, after running, the woman returns to the pool house to see that the old lady has fallen and has blood pouring from her scalp. She calls for an ambulance and checks her into the hospital. There, her daughters come, and they chastise the woman for not being there for her, though they quickly apologize for their heated emotions.

The old lady’s daughters stay around for a month to stay with their mother at the hospital. Meanwhile, the pool house is emptied of its furniture and belongings. One day, the woman tells the daughters about the stories that the old lady used to tell her, and the daughters tell her that they’re all true, though they wonder why she confided in her and not them. Eventually, the old lady dies, and the woman stays in the pool house until it’s sold.

Two months after the old lady’s death, the woman’s mother shows up at her new job at Stanford. They spend the weekend together, but they eventually part at the airport after the woman resolves to survive on her own. Years later, the woman moves away, has her own family, and still wonders about the coworker and her daughter. She reminisces about how her life has grown dark after California and how she is still recovering. Now, she is living on another continent and trying to find the light again. She is surrounded by churches.