There's a space between what was and what's next, where memory comforts and disheartens. The varied protagonists in these character-driven stories live in that undertow: the doctoral student stuck in the memory of a brief sexual experience; the woman recognizing her younger self in a photograph, but confused by the crone who stares back at her from a mirror; the widower, more comfortable among strangers than friends because he doesn't have to apologize for his loneliness — encounters that open the floodgates.