The Winter Over(18)

Cass lowered her forehead and rested it on the thin muscle of her forearm, closing her eyes to preserve the searing afterimage. She liked that every detail appeared in perfect, monochromatic detail to her inner eye, fading like an old photo or a memory, so that she had to invent the missing pieces as they disappeared. When nothing of the memory-image remained, she raised her head and opened her eyes.

Without items, things , in it, the scene was empty, devoid of the meaning that objects and people would give it. And while it was comforting to stare into space for a time, to imagine unlimited potential, an empty canvas was a void if nothing was ever painted on it. At some point, potential had to be realized, or you simply ended where you began: a blank, empty, meaningless frame of white, waiting for effort to give it meaning.

She dropped her head to her forearm again. Each time she thought she’d found a place—a job, a relationship, a home—to begin the process of forgiving herself, some part of the memory would catch up with her and shove the past in her face. She’d move on to the next stop in the journey to rebuild herself, pushing out to more dangerous work in more remote locations, only to find her past had closed the gap after a few weeks, a month, a year.

Antarctica was different. She’d felt it the moment she’d touched down on that great snowy expanse. A place with no context, no limits, and with room to grow, to start over. She needed just a little more time. Time and a blank canvas, empty of the past, open to the future. A chance to start over. Again.

Cass savored the feeling a moment longer before quietly packing it away. One thing working at Shackleton was good for was keeping you too busy to make navel-gazing a habit. There was equipment to tend to in the VMF, tests to run, reports to file. She was pushing the chair away from the window when the door opened behind her. She turned to see Deb poking her head in and Cass’s heart sank. Maybe Sikes had been less impressed with his tour than she’d thought.

“Don’t tell me there’s another tour.”

“Not this season,” Deb said as she walked over. “Hanratty wants you to report to Keene’s office.”

Her stomach twisted. “Keene? Why?”

Deb hesitated. “Sorry, Cass. I didn’t ask.”

“Right now?”

“Afraid so. And I wouldn’t keep him waiting. I heard he puts that kind of thing in your profile.” She turned to go, then stopped. “Nice job this morning, by the way. Sikes couldn’t stop talking about you.”

Message delivered, Deb returned to the main hall and disappeared around a corner, off to ruin more of someone else’s day. Cass sat back down and put her forehead against the cool metal of the windowsill, the little bit of inner peace she’d achieved gone.




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?”