Lankford, a young fisherman, seemingly content with the solitude of his profession, receives word that his sick mother has reached the final days of her struggle. He is forced to confront Jim, his boss and the boat’s captain, whose alpha-male tendencies and extreme inability to express emotion spawns an awkwardly revealing conversation about Lankford’s past and his current life as a fisherman. After leaving Jim, Lankford travels home, and is immediately greeted in the most uncomfortable of fashions by his younger brother, Toby, an emotionally stunted young man with grandiose aspirations and a knack for the fantastical. It is clear that Toby is reacting negatively to the coupling of his mother’s illness and Lankford’s return, as he commits a series of immature, yet harmless acts against his brother to reveal that the family does not need him around anymore. Despite the obstacles of Jim and Toby, however, Lankford inevitably reaches his mother’s bedside, and, with Toby listening outside the door, shares with her a moment comfort that only a mother could offer her son. After mother beckons Toby into the bedroom, with both brother’s now at her side, her angelic presence soothes them into a state of complacency, and forces them to realize that her death should not symbolize the end of the family, but should in fact represent the re-growth of their relationship.