Runaway: Stories

“Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” are a triptych of stories based on the life of Juliet Henderson. “Chance” begins Juliet’s story, focusing on her younger years. The story is set in the 1960s and traces a formative episode in Juliet’s early adulthood, when she takes an impulsive journey that leads to a brief but intense romantic encounter with long-lasting consequences.

Juliet, a former classics student and teacher, boards a train from Toronto to Vancouver, British Columbia. She’s embarking on a “little detour” to see a man she barely knows. She explains to her friend Juanita that she refused to engage with this stranger, whom she met on a train, because his wife “was a total invalid” (48). Having recently received a letter from him, she decided to travel to Vancouver to seek him out. She focuses on a repeated line in his letter as she travels, in which he wrote that he often thinks about her. Juliet has no idea what she’ll do or say when she meets him.

The narrative flashes back to recount a similar train ride Juliet took at age 21. Having earned her BA and MA in classics, she was thinking of what to do with her life.