Beth tries to sleep while her husband, Matthew, folds origami animals in the kitchen. He used to fold such animals for their son, who is no longer there. Beth recalls meeting Matthew at a gay bar with their friends, where they were the only straight people. Then, she dropped out of grad school, and he graduated college. They traveled abroad together before settling down in St. Paul.

Beth remembers her disappointment and fear when her son, Darrin, announced he wanted to take a gap year and travel. Beth remembers her travels with Matthew, where he conversed with everyone and pushed her to do lighthearted, spontaneous things. She recalled that when Darrin was a baby, she and Matthew would try not to wake him in the mornings to have time to themselves. She reflects that now she wants time with Darrin. The intimacy then in her relationship with Matthew is replaced with mundanity now.

At the start of his gap year, Darrin emailed all the time. Then, a girl named Peru, whom Darrin was presumably dating but said little about when they asked about her, started to show up in the pictures.

When they settled in St. Paul, Beth worked writing captions for newspaper photos, and Matthew worked as an English teacher. While Matthew would describe his days and emotions in detail, she didn't trust words to capture her feelings.

Beth remembers her mother telling her about her father's younger brother, who was abducted in front of her father, who didn't know how to stop it. She remembers adopting Darrin from Canada a year after falling on ice and having a miscarriage. She was always distraught that something terrible would happen to him. Once, he drank shoe polish and had to be taken to the hospital. She asked Matthew if he ever worried, and he said he just couldn't entertain the thought because it scared him too much, and he cried. She came to understand that they expressed fear in different ways.

Darrin began emailing them less frequently, and then they received a call from Peru, one of his teachers in the gap year program. She couldn't deliver the news and left sobbing. A man took the phone to tell them their son had died in a hotel swimming pool, electrocuted by an electrical unit that fell into the pool.

While Beth cried, Matthew told her they should take comfort in knowing his last moments were happy. She understood they approached grief differently.

Beth remembered an incident in Thailand that made her fall in love with Matthew. They were on a ship caught in a storm and came across another boat going down. They pulled up alongside for the passengers to jump across, and Matthew saved a baby tossed across the gap, catching it by the ankle.

After the funeral for Darrin, he grabs her ankle as she cries. She doesn't know if he's pulling her down underwater or up toward the surface.