The Saskatchewan autumn was merciless in its beauty: endless fields of wheat bleached gold by frost, skies so wide they made the heart ache, and nights that arrived early, sharp with the promise of winter. In Regina, Isabelle Tremblay, twenty-eight, curated quiet lives inside the public library’s brick walls. Her raven hair fell in loose waves to her mid-back; her hazel eyes held the stillness of a northern lake. She wore cardigans and sensible shoes, but beneath the surface ran a current of unmet longing—books had taught her desire’s shape, yet never its heat.

In Saskatoon, Alexandre “Alex” Laurent, thirty-two, drew skylines that married glass and steel to prairie light. His Quebecois accent still softened certain vowels; his hands, broad and scarred from site work, moved with the precision of someone who measured passion in blueprints and angles. They collided—literally—at the Moose Jaw Literary Festival when Isabelle reached for the same copy of Surfacing he did. Their fingers brushed; apologies turned to laughter, then to an hour-long conversation about Atwood’s landscapes of isolation and hunger.

Afterward, silence stretched three days. Then his email arrived at 11:14 p.m.

*Subject: Still Thinking About That Copy of Surfacing* Isabelle, I keep replaying how your voice dropped when you quoted the line about the body remembering what the mind forgets. If you’re open to it, I’d like to keep talking. No pressure—just words across the 250 kilometres. Alex 306-555-0198 if you’d rather hear them spoken.

She read it twice, pulse loud in her ears, then poured a second glass of Malbec and typed in the lamplight.

*Subject: Re: Still Thinking About That Copy of Surfacing* Alex, The body does remember. Mine remembered your thumb grazing mine for the rest of the Day. I’m rereading Alias Grace now—the way she teases truth and lies feels dangerously close to how we flirt with wanting. Tell me one thing you’ve built that still surprises you when you see it. Isabelle

The correspondence became daily, then hourly. Emails lengthened into small essays; he sent grainy phone photos of half-finished lofts at dusk, light pooling on concrete like spilled gold. She described the hush of the library after closing, how the smell of old paper made her feel both safe and restless. Innuendo crept in like frost on windows.