Catherine James has a brain tumor. To the surprise, and sometimes disgust, of others, she has accepted her fate, but there is still something lurking that will not let her mind rest. A widowed mother, Catherine has just returned to her expatriate painter's life in Paris. Unbidden flashbacks appear, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her life: solitary adventures, falling in love, the undulations of family relationships, the entrapment on the Naples military base. She tries to tell herself she had not secretly wished for the tragedy in the dangerous, snowy Alps.