Don McKay, Thomas Haden Church, is a lonely high school janitor whose quiet life is disrupted by a letter from his old flame, Sonny, Elisabeth Shue. In the letter, Sonny asks him to come back to their hometown because she is dying of an unnamed disease. Though he is wary—memory of an old murder investigation still lingers—the lure of closure and a chance to reconnect pulls him back.
A quirky, unwieldy journey begins the moment Don hitchhikes a ride with an offbeat cab driver named Samuel. Don meets Sonny and her cool, distant caregiver, Marie, Melissa Leo, whose chilly attitude signals immediate disapproval of Don’s presence. The reunion is intimate but uneasy: the night they share a bed rekindles old feelings, while the morning after brings a visit from Sonny’s doctor, Lance Pryce, a man whose presence unsettles Don.
When Pryce attacks Don during a moment of vulnerability, a struggle ends with Don killing the doctor and hiding his body in a bed of leaves behind the garden. The act is fueled by a reflexive fear and a surprising allergic reaction to a bee sting, which causes Don to black out just as the danger seems contained. He wakes up in a hospital, where Sonny—calm and convincing—proposes marriage and claims Pryce had recently spoken to her.
Don seeks the counsel of Otis, a longtime friend, who tries to help him dispose of the body. Yet the plan quickly spirals out of control: when Otis arrives, the body has vanished, and Sonny hurries out, incorrectly assuming intruders are to blame. After this tense fallout, Don receives another letter from Sonny inviting him back—a tempting thread to follow, even as doubt gnaws at him.
Samuel returns to pick Don up, and this time the ride ends in a kidnapping orchestrated by Mel. Mel, along with Marie, has plotted to lure Don into a trap that would secure a supposed inheritance Don would receive upon marriage. Don protests, insisting there is no inheritance and that he has no idea what they’re talking about, but Marie refuses to listen and threatens to go to the police about Pryce’s death if Don doesn’t cooperate. With Samuel trapped in Mel’s trunk, the quartet returns to Sonny’s house and forces Don to enter wearing a wire.
Back at the house, Don makes a hasty, emotionally driven declaration of love to Sonny. Just as the tension crescendos, the doorbell rings and Marie and Mel enter. A brutal confrontation follows: Sonny, in a desperate bid to control the situation, bludgeons Marie with a frozen ham, killing her. She then urges Don to call the police or to kill Mel; when he refuses, Sonny dispatches Mel with the same weapon and tries to wriggle out of culpability with a carefully constructed cover story.
The truth finally erupts: Sonny reveals that Pryce was her husband and that the supposed inheritance was never Don’s. More shockingly, Don reveals a dark secret from his own past—when he was eighteen, he killed Sonny and two friends in a fire. He had fled town in a haze of guilt and had been writing letters to Sonny as a form of atonement, not to reconnect as lovers. The revelation shatters Sonny’s façade, exposing her as Joanne, not Sonny.
Police arrive, Marie and Mel’s bodies are discovered, and Don appears to be arrested. Yet Samuel’s testimony and the presence of the wire Don wore on him work in his favor, and the authorities release him. Samuel offers a final, quiet gesture of friendship, telling Don to reach out if he needs anything, and Don leaves with the number in hand, boarding a bus back toward an uncertain homecoming.
Back at his own doorstep, the film closes with an eerie, unresolved image: a wasp lands on Don’s cheek, a small, lingering reminder that the past may sting again, and his future remains shrouded in ambiguity.
