On a gloomy February afternoon, Jim, an Irish immigrant, sends his wife Annie out to do the shopping before dark falls. He seals their meagre apartment, unhooks the gas tube inside the oven, and inhales. Sister St. Saviour, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, catches the scent of fire doused with water and hurries to the scene: a gathered crowd, firemen, and a distraught young widow. Moved by the woman's plight, and her unborn child, the ageing nun finds Annie work in the convent's laundry - where, in turn, her daughter will grow up amidst the crank of the wringer and the hiss of the iron. As the decades pass, Jim's suicide reverberates through many lives - testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness.