This collection of short stories explores aspects of domestic life and the secrets we keep.

In “Fluffy,” the relationship between wife and husband, caretaker and invalid is tenderly evoked, albeit with an odd twist you might call reverse anthropomorphism.

Margaret struggles with Alzheimer’s. Traipsing in and out of lucidity, her thoughts bound from sweet memories that give glimpses of her youth, marriage, and family to confusion and the sense that she has become one of the stuffed animals she obsessively collects from her daily visits to the diner, where she plays the claw crane game.

In “It Doesn’t Pay to Be Good,” a middle-aged couple, Alan and Perry, struggle to redefine their relationship over time.

In “Salon Confessional,” Carolyn blabs on to her manicurist about herself, while mentally rehashing her most painful experiences. Meanwhile, Guinevere, performing the delicate job of manicurist and shrink, says little and thinks much. The session resolves to mutual benefit.

In "Appearances,” a young man meets up with a childhood friend and finds that what he’d taken for granted about his family was far from the truth.

In “Losing It,” Will, a young father, is bewildered by the demands of his familial role.

"Trouble's Always Just Around the Corner" introduces a happy-go-lucky Julie Barnes to the ways of the world, where she is faced with a demand to become cynical.

And, in “The Secret History of Abraham Freeman,” a pregnant woman insists that her in-laws delve deeper into the back story of their patriarch, whose rise from orphan to self-made man is a source of pride. Gail Freeman’s belief that everything can and should be known tugs at the family bonds. But as her father-in-law Franklin Freeman lays dying in a hospital room, he begins to see the meaning of legacy and provides his son and daughter-in-law a clue that helps them find out who Abraham Freeman was. In passing the torch, the family is strengthened in a way they’d never have suspected.