STANSTEAD, Quebec — The message arrived overnight, brief and specific: a date in early May, a question about room availability, and not much else.

Colette Aubin-Roy, a staff member at the Stanstead Public Library, found it Thursday morning and forwarded it to the board chair without comment. "I'm passing it along, not deciding anything," she said.

The note came from Stanstead residents who have been organizing a proposed in-person gathering with their counterparts across the border in Richford, Vermont — one of the paired communities split by a line that has carried more weight since 2036. The question is whether the Richford library's reading room will be available on the proposed date. That depends on the Richford library board, which has yet to weigh in.

No officials are involved. No cultural funding has been sought or offered. The Ronan Arts Council has not been consulted. The organizing has happened on library time and through handwritten notes — correspondence that does not appear in inboxes or generate notifications.

The Stanstead group named a specific date only after enough groundwork was laid to make the question reasonable. Aubin-Roy's restraint — her insistence that she is simply a conduit — reflects a cautious approach to keeping tentative arrangements alive.

The board will decide. Until then, the date sits in someone's calendar, waiting to become something more than a proposal.