As her mother dies, Anita runs headlong into her past — literally. Margot, her childhood best friend, crashes into her in the hospital. Since they have not seen each other in thirty years, Anita takes a day off from her nursing job to visit Margo her at home. Margot has a successful husband, a huge family, and an ornate house. Both women grew up on small Ontario farms. They shared abusive, difficult home lives as well as a daily walk to school through the blistering cold, during which they always stopped at a gas station run by two French immigrants, Teresa and Reuel Gault. Teresa manages the store, while Reuel also drives the girls' school bus. The couple is a constant, kind presence in the friends' lives. One night, Anita nearly dies of appendicitis, and she feels an odd sense of pride in the aftermath; it has made her a priority in the family. But, near the end of her hospital stay, her mother arrives and gives her a cruel I-told-you-so talk about Margot. She and Reuel, apparently, are involved, and Teresa has attempted suicide as a result. Strangely, this leaves Anita feeling like a failure. Why wasn't she the one swept out on a surge of drama, of life? This is when she decides to become a nurse. In the present, Anita tells Margot that after she became a nurse and married a doctor in the Yukon, she divorced him and earned a Ph.D. in anthropology. Margot, meanwhile, languidly talks about her family and banters with her kids. When Anita brings up Reuel, Margot explains that after she married him, she caught him cheating on her with their babysitter. They are still married, but Margot enjoys the clear upper hand. Anita, for her part, is single and largely at peace. The two women, after all this time, are not ready, yet, to stop talking. Inexplicably, they still make each other happy.