My Last Continent: A Novel(23)

After another moment of static, I hear his voice—clear and familiar.

“Keller, it’s me.”

“Deb?” He sounds concerned. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“You’re asking me what’s the matter?” The worry, the skip in my heart upon hearing his voice, unexpectedly translates to anger, and I can’t mask my irritation.

He sighs but says nothing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought Glenn might change his—”

“I know, I talked to Glenn,” I interrupted.

“I was hoping to see you in Ushuaia, but we set off earlier, and since then it’s been so busy I haven’t had a moment to think. I’ve been trying to figure out how to contact you.”

“Why the Australis? That ship is a bull in a china shop. You know that.”

“I needed a job; they needed extra crew. And it gets me closer to you.”

I picture his face, in an expression of the innocent, misguided hope that we might actually see each other, and this softens me a bit. “But what are you planning to do, jump ship and steal a Zodiac? I want to see you, too, but how in the world is that going to happen?”

“I’m still working on that part. We’re in the same hemisphere, at least.”

“I just wish you’d told me,” I say. “Back in Eugene. Maybe we both should’ve stayed home.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. You need to be here, just like I do. I’ll patch things up with Glenn eventually. I actually think he would’ve taken me back, if he hadn’t been able to find anyone.”

“Thom. He found Thom.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut?” I’m thinking back to last season, the moment that got him on Glenn’s blacklist—our shipboard lecture, the defiant passenger, Keller’s short temper—and I wish I could go back and seize the mic from Keller’s hands.

“Like you wouldn’t have said the same things?” he says.

“But I didn’t. That’s the difference.”

“Well, I can’t do anything about it now. I’m here. That’s what matters.”

“Why does it matter so much if we can’t be together?”

“You’ll see.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll know when I see you.”

Thoughts sweep through my mind—whether we might actually see each other, whether Keller does have a future with this program—and a moment later he says, “Look, we’ll figure it out. Let’s talk later, all right?”

I’m not ready to let him go; I want to ask, When? How? But before I can get the words out, the line goes dead. I’m not sure whether we’ve been disconnected or Keller has simply hung up.



AS I HEAD toward the dining room to pick up a quick bite before our scheduled landing, I’m still arguing with Keller in my head, changing words and sentences, hoping for a different outcome. Our voices rising. The line going silent.

Then I stop—the voices are real, and they’re apparently coming from a couple just inside one of the hatches to the outer decks. I don’t want to listen, but I can’t pass without interrupting, so I wait, hoping they’ll move on, or at least reconcile quickly.

After a moment, I recognize the voices—Kate and Richard Archer.

“If you don’t want to do the landing, why on earth did we come down here?” she’s saying. “Why come all this way if you don’t even care?”

“For you,” he says. “You wanted this trip.”

“I wanted something for us. To get reacquainted, Richard. Not just to be on a boat with a hundred other people. To go for a walk, to see the penguins, to see their chicks, to—I don’t know, share a moment together.”

“Do you remember how we met?” he asks.

“What are you talking about?” She sounds exasperated. “Of course I do.”

“That day in the café, when your computer crashed. You had a memory leak.”

“Richard, can we talk about this later?”

“Let me finish,” he says, his voice louder.

“Okay, okay.” She speaks in a whisper, as if she might be able to quiet him by example.

“The software was eating up your laptop’s memory,” he continues. “That’s why it crashed. It was an easy fix, but you didn’t know that. I wanted you to think I was a hero.”

“What are you saying? You don’t think I value you enough?”

“No, I’m saying that this trip, this sudden obsession with the penguins and the melting ice, it’s like a memory leak,” he says. “It’s consuming your mind, our plans—”

“Richard—”

“To retire early. To start a family.”

“No,” she says. “You wanted to retire, not me. And you’ve earned it. About the baby—I never said never. I just wanted to talk about it some more, that’s all.”

There’s a pause, and then Richard says, “I thought we’d already made the decision.”

“We aren’t like your computers, Richard. Our life is not a software program. We’re allowed to change our minds, to change our plans.”