Gabriel Byrne stars as Gene, a widower high school teacher trying to establish a firm connection again with his two sons, Conrad and Jonah, over two years after the death of his award-winning war photojournalist wife's death in a fatal car accident. A museum gallery wants to show some of her previously unpublished work she may have left behind, and her former colleague Richard at the New York Times would like to run a piece about the exhibit, as well as about her life, including the tidbit that the accident may have actually been a suicide. Gene knows he must tell his younger son, the troubled and mostly withdrawn teen Conrad, before it becomes public knowledge, while eldest Jonah,, who ends up visiting following the birth of his own son to sift through the photographs to hand over to the museum, thinks his dad should stop them from mentioning that part of the story altogether, which he denies the validity of.