The Prescott siblings - sister Leslie, brother Alan and sister Connie - have survived a miserable five years when their intelligent and loving parents fall into dementia and had to be cared for by their children. Now the parents have died and all three children have separately left New York and moved to San Francisco to re-start their careers and find happy lives. Why shouldn't they achieve that? They are all attractive, energetic and well-educated. There is only one flaw in their new upward progress and that is Annette, Alan's recently divorced wife, who is none of the above. The three meet frequently and argue at length, but Annette seems to make no progress until she gets in the way of an evil man.