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Aptenodytes foresteri
—emperor penguins. She was there to gain background for her next book,
The Good Father,
based on the birds.
    She had sat, rapt, as Linus lectured on the largest species of penguin. Unable to fly, they spent their entire lives on pack ice in Antarctica, kept warm by their blubber and seventy-five feathers per square inch, more than any other bird.
    “They huddle together en masse,” Linus said, standing at the front of the dark auditorium as photographs he had taken on his last expedition flashed on the screen. Light from the screen behind illuminated craggy features: honey brown hair that needed cutting, high cheekbones, a long straight nose, a strong chin. Sitting in the front row, Stevie thought he looked like an Oxford don.
    Which he was.
    “They move in a sort of dance, choreographed by the cold. Constantly moving, circulating, they take turns standing at the center of the circle. March is the onset of winter—when nearly all other life has left the continent—but
Aptenodytes foresteri
stays to breed.”
    Stevie had shivered in her seat, in the air-conditioned hush of the small theater, thinking of the romance of penguins, their ice dance and mating ritual. Dr. Mars looked right at her—he really did, she was convinced to this day—and said, “They have quite a courtship. It lasts several weeks, which seems to be enough.”
    Could he see her blush in the dark? Impossible, Stevie thought, but he didn't look away. She was holding a notebook in her left hand, and she saw him look straight at her ring finger. She was married at the time—it must be admitted, there was no getting around it—to a man she had met in art school. Kevin Lassiter. Artist, musician, chef, alcoholic. Dr. Mars stared at her wedding band—designed by Kevin himself—and Stevie thought,
Good; let there be no mistake that I am a married woman.
    “After the courtship,” Dr. Mars said in his beautiful English accent, “the female lays an egg—one single egg. And then . . . she leaves. She is quite a feminist, to use the vernacular, and in that same spirit, although I normally fail my students for making any such humanistic equation, he, the father, is quite a liberated man.
    “While she traverses up to seventy kilometers to reach the open sea to feed, he stays with his fellows to tend the egg. Balanced on his feet—which shuffle constantly as the penguins take turns in the center of the crowd—the egg stays safe in his brood pouch. Liberated man indeed!”
    The scientists laughed. Stevie slouched down in her seat. Now that she had established her marital status—to the doctor, but more importantly, to herself—she felt a wave of emotion washing over her. This part of the lecture was why she had chosen the emperor penguin as her next project: because of the intense, protective love of a father for his only child.
    Stevie and her dad, Johnny Moore. Oh, she could hardly stand this next part, as Dr. Mars continued to lecture in his soft, cultured voice, to point out the pictures with his strong, tweed-clad arm. Stevie's father had been a professor, too—at Trinity College, in Hartford. He was Irish-born and -raised, a lover of the English language, a professor of Irish literature. He was best known for his papers on James Joyce and his schizophrenic daughter, Lucia. The helpless love a man could feel for the damaged girl he'd brought into this world . . .
    As Dr. Mars continued, Stevie sank lower in her seat. “There the father stands, in cruel weather, for seventy-two days. The storms are vicious, with winds blowing one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, driving snow and ice. The father eats nothing during this time, while feeding the chick with liquid—of milklike consistency—produced by a gland in his esophagus.”
    Thinking of the sacrifices her father had made raising her, Stevie stopped taking notes and just stared at the slides. The professor continued: “Finally the females return from two