The various ways that truth can alter a story

Who's to say
that her body never reached the surface
found loving arms?

Iona and McIvor find a boat to take them to the island. They settle into a patch of land, build a shack, plant a garden. No one pays much attention to them, or cares that they arrived overnight, unannounced, without claim. They paint their home a dark blue, the colour of water.

They move to Torotno where Iona works in the shoe department at Simpson's, McIvor takes a job with the city, paving roads. They live in a small apartment with poor plumbing above a store in Cabbagetown. They feel happiest in the summertime, windows open, voices from the street drifting in.

They land in the Prairies, find a home in a colony, make peace with God in a community that swallows them whole, hides them beneath the open sky.

They stick with the rails, hitch, crisscrossing the continent. They outlast the Depression and the Second World War, the return of the soldiers and suburbs creeping over fields. By the 1950's, they are in Las Vegas. McIvor has a job parking cars. He's much older than his co-workers. He listens, their stories of conquest rattling the desert air, while his own words, his tale of rebirth, stay hidden. Iona cleans rooms in the new hotels. She enjoys this life, watching men and women flock to the casinos, escape their daily routine, hoping for a quick way out.

Because the story
only ends for us.

She walks out of the bay during the early hours. Iona thinks about calling out to the fire trucks, the rescue boats pushing into the water but her voice won't break through. She watches in silence. She cuts across fields, slipping into the back of a farmhouse for a change of clothes, then walks along the shoreline toward Meaford. No one recognizes her. She is only a quiet girl looking for a ride to the next town. She climbs into the cab of a pickup, gently refusing some coffee, worried that her nervous hands will drop the cup, and rests her arm against the door. Iona watches the fields and forests, one small town after another, the entire day, pass by. She tries to see beyond the beam of the headlights, through the falling snow.