Ushuaia is the Argentine port where Soo-Lin Lee-Segal and Elgin Branch go to meet Bernadette Fox as her Antarctic cruise returns, and where the search for her takes a more alarming turn. The town first appears as a remote point of arrival, reached after a credit-card charge exposes Bernadette’s solo voyage; it becomes the setting for the failed reunion that leaves her whereabouts unknown.

Setting and Arrival

The journey to Ushuaia begins with a $1,300 charge from the Antarctic cruise company on Elgin Branch’s Visa card. A travel agent confirms that Bernadette went to Antarctica without her family and explains that the charge for incidentals has appeared as the voyage ends. The ship is expected in Ushuaia in twenty-four hours, after crossing the Drake Passage. Elgin calls Soo-Lin, and the two travel south to meet it.

Soo-Lin’s first account of the trip is an agitated email to Audrey Griffin, written in an Internet café on a malfunctioning, sticky keyboard. She says she is in Ushuaia and insists that she must be beside Elgin when Bernadette gets off the ship. Her panic is sharpened by news she has not previously shared with Audrey: she is pregnant with Elgin’s child. She fears what Bernadette’s return will mean for her place in Elgin’s life and for the house he is buying. The location is therefore not just a destination in the search; it is where Soo-Lin’s private uncertainty becomes entangled with the search for Bernadette.

Waiting for the Ship

In a later email, Soo-Lin revises the account’s tone, describing the previous message as incoherent and offering a more levelheaded update. She and Elgin arrive in the middle of the night and wake in a small, dreary, wet town. Although it is summer, the fog is thick and persistent, and Soo-Lin finds the air unusually damp. With time to spare before the ship arrives, they ask at their hotel for local attractions. The best-known attraction, they are told, is a former prison now used as an art gallery; they decline to visit and walk directly to the dock.

On the way, Soo-Lin notices Icelandic poppies, lupine, and foxgloves, plants that remind her of home. She takes photographs. At the waterfront, however, her attention shifts to the fishing boats and dockworkers. Her description measures Ushuaia against Seattle, where cruise ships are kept apart from fishing vessels. The comparison reveals Soo-Lin’s outlook as much as the port: she arrives with familiar expectations about how a cruise harbor should be arranged, and finds a working dock that does not meet them.

The Failed Reunion

The H&H Allegra eventually enters port. Soo-Lin sees it as smaller than the cruise ships she knows from Seattle, but freshly painted and well kept. Dockhands bring up a set of stairs, and passengers begin filing off the ship and passing through immigration. Elgin has sent word that they are waiting for Bernadette Fox. As one passenger after another comes ashore, he repeatedly thinks he recognizes her, then realizes he is mistaken. The flow of passengers dwindles, but Bernadette does not appear.

After a long interval with no passengers coming off the ship, the captain and several officers approach together, talking seriously. The captain tells Elgin that there is a problem: they cannot find his wife. The port, which had seemed to offer a definite appointment and a clear next step, becomes the scene of a disappearance. The captain says that the cruise line’s president has been informed and that a thorough investigation is promised. Even this urgent discovery takes place alongside the ordinary work of the harbor: the captain excuses himself because another group of passengers is due and the ship must be prepared.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

A purser later runs after the couple with a notepad found on a desk. It has no visible writing, but the pen has pressed into the paper. Elgin examines the indentations and proposes that the page be sent to a forensic specialist. The pad is subsequently sent to a laboratory in Delaware for testing. This small object carries the search beyond the dock: in a place where Bernadette is absent, even marks left on paper may become evidence.

Soo-Lin’s account turns from the hope of seeing Bernadette disembark to fear that she may have been left behind on an Antarctic iceberg, where there is no shelter and temperatures are among the coldest on the planet. The couple return to Seattle shocked, without knowing what happened aboard the ship. Elgin then receives calls from the headmaster at Choate and flies east to see Bee Branch, while Soo-Lin remains focused on her pregnancy and on furnishing the new house. She says that Bee knows neither about the pregnancy nor about the trip to Ushuaia; Elgin wants to wait for the captain’s report before explaining the situation to her. Ushuaia thus marks a hinge in the account: the expected homecoming fails, the search becomes more uncertain, and the family’s separate crises continue beyond the port.