Conundrum

A happily married man with three small children decides one day he no longer wants to live. He gives himself leukemia and nine months later is dead.

This is the conundrum LISA SITTEROFF is determined to solve - the tale her mother, RUTH, told Lisa and her two brothers, RAFFERTY and NEAL, throughout their childhood. But Lisa, now thirty years old and watching Raff suffer from the ravages of bipolar illness, believes that if she can solve this puzzle, she might somehow save her brother. For, Raff's pain is intrinsically tied up with his feelings of parental abandonment.

Lisa visits Raff at the hospital, helpless to reason away her brother's suicidal wish. His anger drives her to research the bizarre circumstances around NATHAN SITTEROFF's death twenty-five years earlier. Lisa returns home, only to find her husband, JEREMY, moving out. Jeremy cannot take his mother-in-law's meddling any longer, and tells Lisa she has to choose between him and Ruth. After Jeremy drives away, Lisa miscarries - for the third time in three years. She hangs on to the hope that maybe by uncovering the truth of her father's death she can knit her family back together.

But, what starts as a noble goal for Lisa soon grows into a vicious family war, wreaking destruction on Lisa's marriage to JEREMY. Lisa discovers details of her parents' marriage that Ruth has long hidden. Shocking clues appear as Lisa reads a letter her father wrote before he died, prompting her to visit her father's former boss, ED HUTCHINSON. From Ed, Lisa learns that her father, formerly an aerospace engineer, helped design a generator run by radioactive materials. Although Ed denies any connection, he lets slip that Nathan participated in a dangerous secret experiment. Ruth admits that Nathan had volunteered for the experiment, chalking it up to Nathan's own death wish. She claims some of Nathan's co-workers also died from blood poisoning.

But, how much of this is true? Lisa sifts through layers of lies on all fronts. Meanwhile, her mother's furious response to Lisa's probing is to evict Lisa and Jeremy from their home - which she owns. Jeremy, horrified by Ruth's heartless attack, drives his truck off the road in a suicide attempt.

As Lisa and Jeremy sever all ties with Ruth, JULIE HUTCHINSON, Ed's daughter, calls Lisa. She reveals that Nathan had an affair with Julie's mother, but he did it in retaliation to Ruth's own affair with Ed. Nathan learned Ruth was pregnant with Ed's child - Neal, Lisa's brother. Lisa, shocked, locates DAVE LERNER, her father's best friend, who completes the story - denying the claim of a dangerous experiment. His understanding is Nathan committed suicide by exposing himself to the radioactive parts inside the RTG generator, unable to bear the thought of his wife having another man's child - or so he gathered from Nathan's nearly incoherent death-bed mumblings in the hospital.

Lisa and Jeremy, determined to rebuild their lives, move away, cutting all ties with Lisa's family. Although she hurts from her family's betrayal, she knows she must try to forget the wrongs done, and perhaps, in time, forgive her mother and brothers. Her search for truth did not save her brother, but it led her to a different salvation - one that freed her from her oppressive and judgmental mother.

Long-buried memories of her father surface, and Lisa finally feels a connection with this man she never knew. But she is in for one more shock. Julie Hutchinson discovers a letter Ed left her when he died months earlier. In it, he confesses to the bitter confrontation he had with Nathan. In a haze of dementia, Hutchinson spills a confession that leaves Lisa reeling. But, is this really the truth, or merely the ramblings of a man demented by illness and simmering in guilt? Lisa realizes that finding truth is no simple task, and is often a matter of perspective. Sometimes a search for truth uncovers no clear, provable answers - only more questions, leaving Lisa begging the question: maybe it's better not to seek truth - the cost might prove too high.