Plot: How do children respond to tragedy? On an icy road near Chicago, Marianne dies in a crash, leaving Joe and their daughters, Kelly, about 16, and Mary, about 9. That summer, a friend from Joe's graduate student days, 20 years before, arranges a teaching job for him in Genoa. When they arrive in June, Joe starts teaching and the girls have the summer before school starts: Kelly quickly falls in with youths her age; their club and beach life leads to sexual awakening. Mary, burdened by guilt for her mother's death, is solitary. The girls take piano lessons, Mary draws, and she also sees and talks to her mother. Joe asks them, "Are you okay?", but is that enough?
Alternative Plot: Joe is a widowed teacher bereft at the death of his wife Marianne in an accident caused by their youngest daughter Mary. Offered a teaching job in Italy, he takes Mary and her older sibling Kelly to Genova. Initially loving the new lifestyle, Joe soon finds himself torn between memories of Marianne and the possibility of a new romance while the guilt-wracked Mary finds dangerous solace with role models who resemble her mother.
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