The story opens with a mother and daughter in a taxi on the way to the train station for the mother's departure, after a visit to her married daughter's family. The daughter, Catherine, is relieved that the tensions of the visit will soon end. She had nearly laughed aloud at her husband's discomfort when her mother made a general and insincere-sounding apology for her comments, which apparently mostly centered on the couple's "thin and highly strung" son. Tony, suffering from a cold, had hidden behind a cough rather than respond meaningfully to his mother-in-law. In the taxi ride, both women have the sense of something left unsaid, and they ask each other what they may have forgotten, but keep the conversation on the relatively safe topic of the child. Their composure is momentarily shaken when the taxi driver slams on the brakes and the two women...