Over the course of a day in a California hospice, three terminally ill patients are observed with their families reflecting on life and death.

Angela Delvecchio, from a poor family, moves into the rich town Montevista. She admires Stacy, leader of the most prestigious clique of her high school, and seeks Stacy's friendship. But when she defends outsider Monica against Stacy, she becomes Stacy's target herself.

The members of a San Diego Wednesday night womens' mah jongg club are five survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. They recognize the owner of a local restaurant, Walter Grossman, as a doctor from the camp who performed experiments on them as young girls. To their horror they learn that he has already been tried as a war criminal and has served but a few years for his crimes. They decide that they will "execute" him, drawing lots to determine which one will perform the act, without letting the others know who it is.

Jeff and Mari Thompson are contently married, but they are stunned to see many of their friends and neighbors going through separations and divorces. Seemingly surrounded by people with domestic problems, Jeff and Mari begin to question their own relationship.

In an effort to get away from the city and all its crime, Chuck Yoman and his family move to a big old house in a peaceful lakeside town. The discovery of a mutilated corpse in the lake and another body in the woods, however, suggests that the Yomans would have been safer if they had stayed put...