If time exists, can culpability be transmitted, like some diseases, from one generation to another? How does a fault that wasn't atoned for affect the culprit, but also his and her descendants and their families? These questions are challenged when, shortly after Francois returns home to his family's beautiful estate in Bourdeaux--following four years of study in Chicago--an anonymous leaflet arrives at the house suggesting that his beloved Aunt Line may have caused the 1944 death of her father.