Several inches of fresh powder cover the ice, and Thom, Nigel, and I walk out onto the frozen sea, testing its stability with ski poles, posting flags to mark boundaries the tourists won’t be allowed to walk beyond. Within half an hour, we are escorting passengers directly from the boat onto the ice.
Ice landings are my favorite types of excursions—no Zodiacs, no penguins, just three feet of solid ice that, because they’re walking on the ocean, the passengers celebrate. A man flops down to make a snow angel. Snowball fights erupt.
I scan the area, and when I glimpse a figure about a hundred yards away, past one of the boundary flags, I think I’m seeing things again. Who would venture past what we’ve determined to be safe?
I know the answer even before I raise my binoculars to my eyes.
She’s several yards past the flag by now, and no one else seems to have noticed. I walk briskly toward her, trying to seem as casual as possible. I’m hoping she’s just overlooked the flag and will realize her mistake and turn back. But Kate keeps going.
Once I’m past the flag, I shout her name. If she hears me over the wind, she doesn’t respond.
I pick up my pace, and my boots slide on the ice that’s just below the thin layer of snow. In front of me, the pearly surface of the ice and the blanched sky meet and blur into one. Don’t fall, I tell myself. Don’t fall.
I’m sweating under my parka and all the layers beneath, and I’m breathless from the cold and from calling out to Kate. Finally, about twenty feet away from her, I start to run. I catch up and grab her by the wrist.
She turns, the expression on her face unreadable. I hold fast to her wrist as I try to catch my breath.
“What’s with the disappearing act?” I sputter out.
“I just wanted a few minutes away from everyone. I don’t like being around people all the time.”
“Then you shouldn’t have taken a cruise. Let’s go.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“This is not up to you, Kate. We haven’t checked this ice for safety. Come on.”
Before I know what’s happening, she yanks her arm away and starts running—away from me and the Cormorant—and I glance back toward the ship. The naturalists are busy with other passengers, and so I turn and follow Kate. I don’t know what sort of suicidal mission she’s on, but I do know I can’t let her go any farther. She is slipping and stumbling, and when I get close enough to catch her again, I reach out—and this time both of us lose our balance and tumble to the ice.
I break my fall, landing hard on all fours, feeling the searing bend of my wrists, the sharp pain in my knees. My sunglasses fall off, and I turn over and lower myself to the ice, lying there faceup, closing my eyes for a moment against the blinding white of the sky.
When I open them again, Kate is sitting next to me, wincing and brushing snow off her parka.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I ask her.
I’m surprised to see tears in her eyes when she faces me. “I’m pregnant,” she whispers.
I nod but say nothing.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about it,” she says. “How to be happy, how to be ready. I just can’t.”
“You will,” I assure her.
“How can you say that?”
An enormous pop fills the air around us, and she looks at me in dismay. “What’s that?”
“The ice,” I say.
“It’s breaking?”
“More like breathing,” I say. “It makes a lot of noise. Doesn’t mean we’re falling in just yet. Still, we need to go.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, though she’s making no move to get up. “I wasn’t trying to—” She sighs. “I just needed a little space to think, that’s all.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
For a moment it almost seems natural to tell her, to have someone to talk to about this. But all I can say is: “Yes. I do.”
She shakes her head. “Everyone thinks when you get married, you have kids. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t want them.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
She gives me a wry smile. “You may think that, but, with all due respect, you’re more of a freak of nature than I am. No partner, no kids, living in Antarctica half the year.”
I can’t help but like her a little bit more. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”
I hear agitated garble from my radio, and I pause to listen. It’s Glenn, calling us back to the ship.
“Ice conditions are deteriorating,” he snaps. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
I’ve hardly noticed that the wind has picked up, that the snow covering this sheet of ice is blowing past us, revealing slick, fickle ice underneath.
I look up and see that, in the distance, the other naturalists are just beyond the boundary flags and spaced evenly apart. I don’t see any of the other passengers; Glenn must have called everyone back to the ship.
I scramble to my feet and hold out a hand to Kate. “Come on, let’s go,” I say, trying to keep my voice even, patient.