Cass stopped at the nameplate. GERALD KEENE. Just the name, no title, which was appropriate. Few people at Shackleton really had titles, at least none that could be tacked to a door frame. On the other hand, the station “morale officer” seemed to merit one if any of them did. Had he asked to have it removed, afraid a small thing like a title below his name would cause people to shy away? It wouldn’t have mattered. Everyone on base knew who the resident shrink was.
You’re stalling .
She reached out to open the door when the latch moved under her hand, startling her. Keene stood in the doorway, looking at her impassively.
He was a walking contradiction, she thought, both robust and professorial, like a fourth-generation lumberjack who’d stumbled into higher learning and kept going until he’d crashed through the other side with a PhD. A full, reddish-blond beard, a broad set of shoulders, and a pair of fleshy hands inherited from his grandfather meshed poorly with a wave of academic indifference.
“Cass? Come in.” Pale gray-green eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses sized her up from knees to chin before he turned back into his office, leaving it to her to catch the closing door and follow.
The room was something of a nonfunctional anomaly at the station. Bookshelves packed with manuals and academic journals lined the room wherever a soothing periwinkle-blue paint job didn’t peek through. Three of the only comfortable chairs on base were grouped in a chummy circle around a coffee table while prints of Antarctica’s landscape—Wilson’s watercolor of Cape Crozier, Hurley’s stark portraits of the Endurance trapped in pack ice—hung from the walls. And somehow, incredibly, Keene had smuggled in a small column aquarium that he’d placed on a narrow étagère. Cass watched as a flame-red Betta swam up and down its tiny cylindrical world.
Keene followed her gaze. “Not a bad metaphor for life here at Shackleton, is it? One-gallon personalities caught in a pint-sized environment.”
She smiled woodenly. Keene waved her to a seat, then rounded his desk to sink into an office chair. It squeaked like an old mattress as he leaned back. “Normally I’d say, I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you here.”
Cass nodded.
“But I think, under the circumstances, to do so would be insulting to both of us.”
Cass waited, but Keene didn’t say anything. He simply looked at her with an expectant expression.
She ducked her head. “Do you mean what happened to Sheryl?”
“Yes.” Keene nodded in encouragement. “And your role in it.”
“My role?” Cass blinked. “You mean helping Hanratty bring back her . . . body?”
“If that’s what you want to talk about.”
“I didn’t ask to talk,” she said, confused. “You did.”
“Certainly, but I’d think you’d want to talk out the circumstances.”
“I would?”
He shrugged. “It’s not a small thing, a dramatic death at the base, right before a winter-over. Reduced staff, increased tensions. We haven’t even shut the doors, officially, and we’re already off to a rocky start.”
“Rocky?” She stared at him. “Is that what you call Sheryl freezing to death?”
He waved a hand, like he was clearing smoke. “I apologize. A poor choice of words. Her accident has shaken the base to its core, is all I meant. Carrying on as if things were normal has been difficult for some people.”
“I thought Hanratty said it was to be kept under wraps?”
“Cass.” He gave her a look of profound disappointment. “Everyone on base knew about Sheryl before you were done taking your gloves off.”
“Oh.”
“Hanratty knew such a thing would be impossible to contain, so he told you to keep quiet in order to check a box, so to speak. Had he not done so, he could be accused of not maintaining decorum or enforcing protocol. But by making a show of telling you not to talk, he puts the onus on you and whoever knew about Sheryl when she was brought back.”
“I see.”
Keene nodded, apropos of nothing. “So, was it what you were expecting?”
“Was what what I was expecting?”
“How you felt? How the people you’ve spoken to about the accident felt?”
“I didn’t speak to anyone.”
The look of disappointment was back. “It’s statistically and intuitively impossible that you didn’t tell someone about Sheryl’s accident. Biddi, perhaps?”
Cass’s face flushed. She knew from experience that her color was especially noticeable around her hairline. Milk-white skin was nice except when it highlighted the slightest blush. “Well, if statistics say so, I guess I did.”
The wave again. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred people will unburden themselves to a friend or colleague after a traumatic event, especially in a confined stressor environment. It’s normal and, frankly, expected. You’re in the clear.”