Jones' wife suffers an attack while gardening. After a car ride with Jones she feels weak and checks into a hospital for tests. Meanwhile, their daughter, who has just had a baby, leaves her husband to travel in Mexico. Jones watches her child and dog while waiting for his wife's release. He finds finds a knit cap that was his daughter's when she was a baby. He sorts through records his daughter took from a professor she had an affair with. He finds his old German lessons. He reads to the baby from the Quran. He takes the baby for a ride in the country during the first snowfall. A rabbit that runs across the road is shot by a hunter. Jones is a preacher and on Sunday he baptizes the baby. Although insecure in his faith, he delivers a sermon and gives communion. Parishioners bring him food. Jones buys a Christmas tree but does not decorate it. He cleans the house. He takes the baby and the dog for a walk by an abandoned house by a river. The house had belonged to a doctor who was accused by a local girl of fathering her child. The doctor did not protest; he took and cared for the child. Shunned by the community, he lost his practice. One year later, the girl admitted that the true father was a college boy she intended to marry; she took the baby back. Jones' wife is released from the hospital and Jones drives her home.