Davodeau excels at evoking the delicate fabric of relationships during a brief hiatus in his characters' lives.

Louis arrives at the house where he once lived with Agathe, only to find her gone. An pair of strangers now dwells there. Then Jalil appears—the man who replaced Louis in Agathe's life, and Suzanne, whom Jalil kind of knows... And then Nicolas, whom no one knows. And finally, Laure, Agathe's daughter, who grew up without knowing her biological father. Each member of this group brought together by chance has their own relationship with absence, the past, and death.