Marnie Hibbs is working in her yard when Law Kincaid arrives. He continues to accuse her of attempting to blackmail him, and she continues to argue that she knows nothing about the five letters he's received from her address. He says that the letters are a demand for money and a public acknowledgement of his son or that the fact that he fathered a child will be released to the public. Marnie has just said again that she hasn't written the letters and that she doesn't have a child when a teenage boy rushes into the room and calls her "mom."

In actuality, Law Kincaid is the teenager's father. David was the product of a summer romance between Law and Marnie's sister, Sharon. Sharon, only sixteen at the time, convinces Law that it's all right to have sex even though he doesn't have a condom as she is on the pill. That's a lie and one that will come back to haunt Sharon. Her father, a preacher, forbids an abortion and they won't allow Sharon to give up the child for adoption. Sharon is indifferent about David and it's up to Marnie to care for the child, which she does. When Sharon is killed in a car wreck, Marnie, only eighteen herself, assumes custody and David's care.

Marnie has always loved Law though she was only fourteen that summer David was conceived. She follows Law's career and she and David watch as Law's spaceship, the Victory, is launched. Law's memories of the summer romance are eventually stirred and it takes some time for him to accept that he is David's father. Marnie's mother has put it together - the timing of Sharon's pregnancy matched to the time the sixteen-year-old spent on the beach with Law Kincaid. From her room in the rest home, Marnie's mother drafts letters demanding money and threatening to publicly humiliate Law by making it know that he has an illegitimate son. The letters have Marnie's return address and he confronts her believing that she's written the letters. When he decides that she's telling the truth and had no part in that, the two begin having problems on two fronts - who will have custody of David and what will come of the intense sexual awareness of each other? Law finally realizes that he's the "dumb son of a bitch" who broke Marnie's heart and she admits that she's loved him since that summer, seventeen years earlier. Law asks if he can change David's name and if he can change Marnie's name. He says that it simply took him longer to catch up but that he has arrived at the point of loving her.