Seven years earlier, Bedelia was rendered an unstable spinster as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which only got worse after he suffered a stroke and she was made to nurse him full time. The abuse culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart Peter Yarbro (Peter Messer) to keep her under his thumb. That Father's Day, Bedelia, having been driven into a murderous rage by his constant demanding for his cake, bludgeons her father to death with a marble ashtray (that is hidden throughout the other stories).