During a meeting of Young Offenders — juveniles caught up in the criminal justice system — at Jinny’s house, the kids and Neal, Jinny’s husband, eat her gingerbread cake without asking her. So Jinny leaves the house and lives for a few days at a bus stop. She feels connected to the people who write things on the walls of the bus shelter — their anger, their petty outrage, their need to write it down.

Jinny is sick. Her cancer is not getting better. Her head is bald from treatment. To help take care of her, Neal hires a former member of the Young Offenders group, Helen. Neal is a teacher at the Correctional Institute for Young Offenders. He is constantly working with youth, organizing, participating in campaigns for wildlife protection and against big business development.

Neal picks Jinny up at the hospital with Helen in the car. Neal had told Jinny that Helen came from a rough household – a widowed father who is deranged, incestuous, and tyrannical. Jinny is cold to Helen, who has to run inside the hospital to fetch shoes from her sister Muriel, who is a nurse. Her sister doesn’t have the shoes, so Neal drives them to where Helen’s sister lives.

A couple, Matt and June, own the trailer in which Muriel lives. Jinny is cold to them when they invite her and Neal in for a glass of water. Neal agrees to go while Jinny stays in the car, fanning herself under the hot Ontario summer sun. After a little, Jinny gets up and walks into the cornfield and gets lost. Matt comes out to check on her and leads her back to the car. She is repulsed by the sight of him, his bulging belly under a too-small purple shirt.

Then, she is back at the doctor’s office. The oncologist warns her to not get too optimistic, but he tells her that her tumor is shrinking surprisingly quickly.

Back at the trailer again, Ricky – Matt and Junes’ 18 year old son – offers to drive her home. It is getting dark and Neal is still inside. Ricky is a cocky teenager, and Jinny flirts with him. He drives her back as night falls. He takes his own route back instead of travelling on the main road. He wants to show Jinny something. He drives with the headlights off. He wants to wait until dark to turn them on. He tells her they are driving on a narrow bridge, a swamp stretching out on either side. Finally, he turns the car off, and they get out to look around. He tells her they are on a floating bridge. Indeed, the bridge hovers over the swamp water. He kisses her, and for the first time in her life, the kiss feels like an event in and of itself — a prologue, action, and ending all in one.

They walk back to the car. Ricky thinks of his future, all the women he will get to kiss. And Jinny thinks of Neal and his future. She sees the image of a women with hair looking back at Neal, and she laughs.