FALL IS coming on and before the weather turns, Cali and I decide to visit Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, portal to the Antarctic. I need to put several hundred miles between Gianluca and me while I figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I Google all of the many reasons I might not be getting my period: stress, change in diet, the moon. My search leads me down a rabbit hole that begins with legitimate medical advice and quickly devolves into homeopathy, folklore, myth, and sheer batshit mommy blogger nonsense. I know I need to just take a pregnancy test, but I’ve never taken one and I’m terrified, as though the act of taking the test might make it so. Luke and I were always careful with birth control, back when my body was for something. I know I haven’t been as good about taking my pills; I’ve missed a day here and there, but is that really enough? Much of what I read is instructive on how to get pregnant, and makes it sound as complicated as a space shuttle launch. How could this happen to anyone by accident? I wonder.

The plane ride to Patagonia takes us over the vast alien landscape that lies between Buenos Aires and the tip of the continent. There are miles of arid, windswept plains with no sign of humanity. The Andes appear in their sudden glory. I’ve seen them before, but they always take my breath away; there is no mountain range that looks quite so steep and forbidding from above.

The mountains drop off precipitously into the sea as the tiny port city of Ushuaia comes into view. The landing strip is a short runway that ends right in the Drake Passage, which leads out into the southern Atlantic.

Cali and I rent a funky little condo near the water that’s covered in the tacky nautical decor of every seaside town everywhere. The town itself is an unlovely, utilitarian port with some touristy shops and mediocre restaurants haphazardly added for visitors. But the town is beside the point; it’s the location that matters. The steep Andean cliffs surrounding it and plunging into the ocean, the lush lakes and forests just outside the city, the bay with its perpetual, eerie fog, and beyond it, only Antarctica. The weather moves in and out swiftly, changing from sun to rain to clouds in the space of an hour, so that watching the sky here feels like looking at time-lapse photography. My body feels haywire: I’m in a giddy space between knowing and not knowing.