The Unsinkable Greta James(49)

“I’ve got it,” Bear cries from the other end of the canoe, and she snaps back again. “I knew it. I knew you were someone.”

Behind her, she can hear Conrad let out a sigh, and there’s a rustling of coats as the others turn to look at each other, confused.

“You,” Bear says, his voice ringing triumphantly across the quiet water, “are Greta James.”

There’s a beat of silence.

And then another.

And then the woman with the compass says, “Who?”





Chapter Twenty


Theirs is the first canoe to reach the opposite shore, a barren stretch of windswept silt that leads right up to the base of the glacier. The minute they bump up against the sand, Conrad jumps out.

“Wait up,” Greta says, but he’s already charging across the beach, clumsy in the awkward life jacket and the stiff rain boots, his head down against the racing wind.

“It’s okay,” Bear says, hopping out to hold the canoe steady as the others step carefully over the side. “He probably wants to be first. It’s a thing. Being alone with the glacier.”

Greta suspects it has less to do with getting to the glacier than with getting away from her, but she doesn’t say so. Bear is still looking at her with slightly starry eyes.

“So are you playing one of the ships?” he asks as he drags the canoe up onto the firm ground. “I wouldn’t have thought—”

“No, I’m just…on a cruise.” She points. “With my dad.”

He straightens again, wiping his hands on his waterproof pants. “Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, one of my roommates is obsessed with you.” He takes out his phone and grins at her. “Would you mind if we…?”

With a sigh, she glances over at the receding figure of her father, then nods and brings her face close to Bear’s, flashing a quick, perfunctory smile. In her baseball cap, she looks less like someone famous than someone’s kid sister, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“So,” he says, slipping the phone back into one of his many pockets. “Are you, like, seeing anyone?”

“Yes,” she says flatly, her eyes once again on her dad, who is getting smaller in the distance, dwarfed by the huge wall of bluish ice.

Bear looks disappointed. “That producer guy?”

Greta’s surprised he even knows that, though just before they got together, Luke had dated a high-profile reality-TV star—famous more for her Instagram account than anything else—and between that and Greta’s own dramatic ascent while they were dating, they’d become frequent targets of party photographers and the occasional paparazzo.

She’s about to tell Bear that it’s really none of his business, but she can feel the woman with the compass hovering nearby, phone in hand.

“Sorry, but do you think I could get one too? To be honest, I don’t know who you are, but I figure my daughter might. She’s into…” She waves a hand around vaguely. “Pop culture.”

In spite of herself, Greta smiles. “I’m a musician.”

“She’s a rock star,” says Bear.

The woman snaps a photo, then studies it for a moment with benign interest. “Cool,” she says with a shrug, then walks off to join her husband, who is gazing out at the glacier through a pair of enormous binoculars.

The other two canoes are still faraway specks of orange on the water, so their group begins the hike in a small cluster, moving slowly across the hard-packed sand and scattered stones. The glacier is starting to feel like a mirage, like no matter how far they sail or row or walk, they’ll never actually reach it. But after a few minutes, it looks less blocky and more intricate, like some sort of confection, delicate as a meringue.

Conrad is nearly there, his shadow tiny against the sheer bulk of it. Everyone else peels off, following Bear over to the opposite end of the glacier’s broad face, where a small cave has formed in the ice. But Greta keeps walking straight ahead, her eyes on Conrad, who has stopped to take it in. His life jacket is still buckled tight, like he might have to hurry back to the canoe at any moment, and his hands are on his hips, and he looks somehow both irretrievably lost and entirely at home.

When she’s close enough, she clears her throat. “Dad,” she says, but the word is returned to her by the wind. She steps up beside him and tries again: “Hey.”

This time he turns to look at her, his expression inscrutable.

“It’s beautiful, huh?” she says, her eyes roving over the ice. From afar, it had looked clean and white, but now she can see that it’s streaked with dirt and sand. Underneath that, though, the bluish tint is even more brilliant up close, like the whole thing is glowing from the inside out. And the size of it is staggering; the column in front of them—so unremarkable from a distance—is as tall as a two-story house, glinting in the abundant sunshine.

It takes Conrad a second to answer. “I can’t decide,” he says, his head tipped back to take it all in, “whether it’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen, or the least.” He turns to her. “It’s obviously a natural wonder. But it’s also just a bunch of ice, you know?”

Greta smiles at this. Down by the water, the second canoe is coming ashore. Excited voices tumble across the barren stretch of beach, carried by a gust of wind. Farther along the glacier, the rest of their group is posing for pictures, which Bear dutifully takes for them, squatting to get the best angles.