A young Black woman has moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula for two years to pursue a post-doctorate at the Michigan Institute of Technology. Everyone on the faculty assumes she's from Detroit and wants to know if she's single (they're all men). On a cruise with her colleagues, she meets a large, handsome man who initiates a futile conversation and gives her his name - Magnus.

Everything is easier in the lab, where the woman is assured in her work. At home she refuses to unpack completely, not wanting to settle in. She meets Magnus at a grocery store and, to her surprise, says yes to a date. She winds up drinking far too much and wakes up in Magnus' trailer. She demands to be taken home.

The woman was with an engineer for six year and bore a stillborn baby by him. She found him having sex with the lab assistant and left for Michigan, detached at that point. She thinks of her baby all the time. She does well in work and is offered a tenure-track position.

She and Magnus have another date. She wants something casual, but says things make sense with her the same way things make sense for him when he's logging out in the virgin wood. They begin seeing each other every night. Magnus kills a buck for her. When a colleague makes sexual advances, he comes to her work every night to walk her to her car. He builds her an igloo and asks her to tell him something true, saying he still doesn't much about her. She tells him about her baby, who she would have named Emma. His kiss fills her hollow spaces.