Arrested
Seventy-four year-old widower Jack Kennison drives to Portland to buy whiskey. He could buy some closer to home but he doesn't want to run into Olive because they have separated. He gets a speeding ticket when he is pulled over by the police.
Labor
Olive goes to a baby shower and ends up driving a heavily pregnant shower guest to the hospital when she begins to go into labor. They don't make it to the hospital and instead Olive has to deliver the baby in the back seat of her car.
Cleaning
Fourteen year old Kayley Callaghan's father died two years previously and after his death she finds a closeness to him through playing the piano just like he did. Kayley earns money by housecleaning in Crosby, and whilst cleaning for Mrs Ringrose she begins to feel very sexual. When she opens her eyes, she finds Mr Ringrose has been watching her fondle her own breasts. He asks her to continue and she agrees; she finds that he has left her money for the performance and this leads to an arrangement between them that is never mentioned, but every time she cleans the house he watches her touch herself.
Kayley hides the money in the piano but she comes home one day to find that the piano has been sold because she had stopped playing it. She also learns around the same time that she is no longer needed to clean the Ringrose home. Mr Ringrose has been committed to a facility due to his erratic behavior; Kayley rides her bicycle over to the nursing home and feels an odd pang of longing for him.
Motherless Child
Olive's son, Christopher, lives in New York and works as a podiatrist. She persuades him to finally come and visit her in Crosby with his family - wife, Ann, and four children. Olive tells Christopher that she intends to marry Jack but Christopher is furious about this. Jack comes to meet him the next day and receives short shrift from Christopher who is surprisingly put into his place by Ann. Christopher apologizes for his behavior but seems to shrink before Olive's eyes. Olive sees a horrible similarity between herself and Ann, as she herself used to berate her husband in public in the same way, but did not realize at the time how it must have looked or made him feel. She starts to believe she has failed as both a wife and a mother.
Helped
Suzanne Larkin's father recently died as a result of a fire in her childhood home. She talks to his lawyer, Bernie, and finds him a huge comfort to her. Their bond is very pure and completely platonic but both feels that they have found a perosn who truly understands them.
Light
Cindy Coombs is a former student whom Olive once taught and they run into each other at the grocerty store where Cindy eveals that she is very ill. Olive begins visiting her every day and Olive confides in her about her feelings regarding her mistreatment of her husband Henry. She feels sad that she has become a better person than she used to be, but Henry is not here to see it. The women bond about their shared love of February and its special light.
The Walk
Danny Pelletier is sixty nine years old and takes walks alone. He wonders if there is something wrong with his children. He is in a nostalgic mood, full of misty reminiscences that are interrupted when he finds a man bent over a bench and clearly unwell. He calls the police who inject the man with Naloxone but when Denny arrives home he realizes that there is nothing wrong with his children; he is the problem and he has been so busy mourning the passing of time that he has not stopped to appreciate the moment or to look forward to the considerable chunk of life he still has before him.
Pedicure
Hard to believe that Olive has never had a pedicure. She goes for her first one, whilst Jack cannot seem to get his first wife, Betsy, out of his head. He is also preoccupied with thoughts on an affair with Elaine Croft. He realizes that for much of his life he has had no understanding of himself as a person.
Exiles
The Burgess siblings, Susan, Jim and Bob, reunite in Shirley Falls, near Crosby. The boys married women who can't stand each other. Jim's wife, Helen, drinks too much and falls down the stairs, breaking several bones and prompting feelings of guilt in Bob's wife, Margaret, because she had made no secret of her dislike of his sister- in -law.
The Poet
Olive runs into Andrea L'Rieux, a former student, in a coffee shop in Crosby. Andrea has achieved more than most of Olive's students and was named United States Poet Laureate. Shortly afterwards Olive and Jack embark upon a cruise in Oslo, Norway, but it is their last trip together as Jack dies in his sleep later that Fall. In May, Olive receives a poem from Andrea based on their recent meeting and she is offended that Andrea portrays her as a lonely woman. When she thinks about it later, she realizes that Andrea was perhaps right.
The End of the Civil War Days
Fergus and Ethel MacPherson live on the outskirts of Crosby. They have been married for forty two years but only communicated with each other for the first seven years of their marriage. After Fergus' affair, Ethel divided the house in two with duct tape and each took a half. They communicate again thanks to a visit from their daughter Laurie, who tells them that she has become a successful dominatrix and that she is the subject of a documentary movie that draws a parallel between her thematic dominatrix persona and Fergus' re-enactment of the Civil War.
Heart
At the age of eighty-three Olive suffers a heart attack whilst in her hairdresser's driveway. She is given twenty four hour at-home nursing care and she becomes particularly good friends with two of her nurses, Betty and Halima, who have very different backgrounds and political beliefs. Christopher visits often and persuades her to go into an assisted living facility.
The Friend
At the Maple Tree Apartments, Olive becomes friends with Isabelle Daignault. They become close and reminisce frequently about their lives. Olvie is now eighty-six years old.
