Upon receiving a worrying letter from his estranged sister, a man named Larry learns that she has died by suicide after throwing herself from a tall building. In the immediacy of his grief, he recalls an afternoon from their past that was always significant to him.

Larry and his sister Kitty grow up in Hemingford Home in Omaha. Whenever their parents leave them unattended, they sneak out to their barn, climb to the rafters, and leap into a huge pile of hay. The rafters are very high, and the ladder up to them is rickety—factors that only add to the excitement. One day as Larry is climbing the ladder, he notices that it is on the point of detaching from the rafter, but he doesn’t alert Kitty. He means to warn her once he lands safely in the hay, but by then she is already climbing the ladder. As Kitty reaches the last rung, the ladder breaks, leaving her dangling over a fall that is sure to kill her. Larry calls out encouragement to her as he piles hay underneath her. When Larry tells her to let go, Kitty falls into the hay, suffering only a broken ankle. Kitty shocks Larry when she tells him she didn’t look down before letting go, simply trusting her brother to save her.