The Door in the Floor is a 2004 American drama film written and directed by Tod Williams. The screenplay is based on the first third of the 1998 novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving. Plot Set in an exclusive beach community on Long Island, where children's book author and artist Ted Cole lives with his wife Marion and their young daughter Ruth, usually supervised by her nanny Alice. Their walls are covered with photographs of the couple's teenage sons, who were killed in an automobile accident, which left Marion deeply depressed and the marriage in a shambles. The one shared experience that holds them together is Ruth's ritualistic daily viewing of a home gallery of the deceased sons. Ted and Marion temporarily separate, each alternately living in the house and in a rented apartment in town. Ted hires Eddie O'Hare to work as his summer assistant and driver, since his own license was suspended for drunk driving. An aspiring writer, Eddie admires Ted, but he soon finds the older man to be a self-absorbed womanizer with an erratic work schedule, leaving the young assistant to fill his time as best he can. Eddie and Marion soon get involved, which seems not to bother Ted, who enjoys trysts of his own with local resident Evelyn Vaughn (Mimi Rogers) while sketching her. When Ruth catches Eddie and her mother having sex, Ted becomes upset and advises Eddie he may have to testify about the incident if Ted needs to fight for custody. Marion eventually leaves Ted and their daughter, taking with her all the photographs and negatives of their dead sons, except for the one being reframed after it was broken, injuring Ruth. Eddie takes the initiative to retrieve the picture so that Ruth can have at least one partial image of her brothers. Ted tells Eddie the story of the car accident that killed his sons. He suggests his and Marion's drunkenness and Ted's failure to remove snow from the tail and turn signal lights likely contributed to their sons' deaths. He gives vivid detail, to help Eddie understand Marion's intense despair. Ted does not fully comprehend why Marion left, repeating, "What kind of mother leaves her daughter?" At the end of the story, while playing squash alone on his court, Ted stops, looks into the camera with resignation, then lifts the door in the floor and descends.