My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

By then Maple Creek had crossed some quiet emotional threshold and become, if not fully mine in feeling, then no longer merely secret. Snow transformed the property in a way that felt almost ceremonial. Fence lines sharpened. Roofs took on solemn geometry. The western hills looked older, sterner, more private. Smoke from the chimney drifted blue against the pale Alberta afternoon. The horses came in steaming from the paddocks, their backs dusted white at the edges.

It was beautiful in the kind of way that would have sounded exaggerated to anyone who had never stood alone on cold land and felt grief settle into something less raw, less frantic, more like weather than injury.

One month after I arrived, I entered the art studio with a cup of coffee in one hand and a trembling brush in the other.