After four years, Claudia and David Naughton have settled into their life as farmers in Connecticut, although David still regularly commutes into the city in his work as an architect. The one issue of contention between the two of them is their individual parenting of their three-year-old son Bobby and how it relates to other aspects of their lives. While they both do love Bobby, David believes Claudia coddles him too much, worrying about every ache, pain, or cough, while Claudia believes David focuses too much attention on other things at Bobby's expense. Their parenting of Bobby causes issue in their marriage with someone else in each their lives who might pick up the pieces in the aftermath. David has been hired by young widow Elizabeth Van Doren to work on what David would consider his own dream project of a farm complex, and his excitement with the project could transfer to Elizabeth herself. And Claudia seems to have caught the attention of married Phil Dexter, whose marriage to Edith has suffered the strain of losing a child, after which Edith has become increasingly hysterical in trying to find meaning in her own life without her child.
—Huggo