Summary

A narrator tells “Windfalls” from a second person perspective by addressing the story's central character, an unnamed teenage girl. The girl’s father had died in a gruesome work accident when she was a toddler (80-81). This accident led to the girl’s mother receiving a large legal payout, which she used to purchase a large mansion. However, within a few years the mother had lost both the house and the rest of the money to dishonest boyfriends.

The mother wants to continue earning money by receiving large legal payouts for fraudulent accidents. She does this by staging horrific-looking slips and falls in grocery stores, some of which seriously injure her young daughter. As the daughter grows into a teenager, there is an unspoken expectation that she is to begin performing sexual favors for lawyers. The purpose of the sexual favors is to convince...