Professor Hawthorn was the chair of the physics department at Columbia, so Winnie had expected him to have a nice home. But even years of friendship with Dora, who came from the kind of extreme wealth that left its imprint on every aspect of her life, hadn’t prepared Winnie for this.
Hawthorn lived in one of the “Millionaire Row” townhouses on Fifth Avenue. When they entered, a butler—wearing a tuxedo complete with white gloves!—took their coats at the door. Winnie smoothed her borrowed dress nervously and looked around in a daze. The parquet floors were polished to a high gleam, and every wall was covered with oil paintings in ornate gold-painted frames. She’d never been in a house with such high ceilings. It felt like a church.
She wondered what was worshipped here.
“Wow. I didn’t expect—all this,” Winnie said, gesturing around vaguely.
“Hawthorn’s family is in munitions. They did very well during the First World War.”
Winnie was glad that Dora had insisted on dressing her. She was wearing a peach brocade cocktail dress with cap sleeves and little jeweled buttons. It wasn’t really her color and was a bit too long as well, falling to mid-calf instead of right below the knee, but at least it was appropriately formal.
“You look lovely,” Scott said.
Were her nerves that obvious?
“Thank you,” Winnie said, then nervously added, “So do you. Um, handsome, I mean.”
Scott smiled. “Say, do you mind if we get the formalities out of the way?”
Winnie nodded, although she wasn’t sure what he meant.
Scott took her arm and began guiding her toward the center of the room. The purposefulness of his steps and the gentle pressure of his hand on her elbow gave Winnie a thrilling taste of what it would be like for the two of them to really be together. She felt a sudden pang of wanting so strong it almost frightened her. This was what it would be like to not be alone.
Scott led them toward a tall man with swan-white hair. He appeared to be holding court—was this Professor Hawthorn?
He noticed Scott and waved to him warmly.
If Winnie had been expecting a mustache-twirling, cinema-villain sort of man, she would have been sorely disappointed.
“Ah, Scott!” he exclaimed. “Glad you could make it. There are some people here I’d like to introduce you to. But first, who’s this?”
“Professor Hawthorn, this is Winnie Schulde. Winnie, Professor Hawthorn.”
Hawthorn gave Winnie a courteous handshake. His grip was strong, but not aggressively so, and his fingers were dry and warm. So why did his touch send a nervous ripple down her spine?
She had expected Professor Hawthorn to be old, both because of his white hair and because of his university position, but the more she studied him, the younger he seemed. His shoulders were wide and straight beneath his fine suit coat, and his pale blue eyes were sharp. He was maybe ten years older than Father, but no more than that.
As Winnie returned Hawthorn’s smile, she realized his own didn’t reach his eyes. It made him look quite calculating.
Winnie swallowed awkwardly. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
“You as well, my dear,” Hawthorn said, then raised his brows. “Ah—Schulde? Could this sweet little thing be our dour Heinrich’s daughter?”
The party was suddenly too loud, the lovely parlor too bright, as Winnie was pierced by anxiety: Would Hawthorn mention their meeting to Father?
No, no, no! If Father found out—
Winnie was hit by a lightning-quick flash of splinter.
“Heinrich?” splinter-Winnie asked innocently. “No. He’s no relation.”
Was the lie as obvious as it seemed to her?
It seemed unwise to lie to this shrewd man unless absolutely necessary. But how it went for her in that other world was a mystery. This splinter provided no glimpse of the outcome, unlike what she’d experienced the other night when she’d “met” James.
“Are you all right, Ms. Schulde?” Hawthorn asked, eyes narrowed with sharpened interest.
Winnie’s heart stuttered as it skipped a beat, then caught up with a quick-thudding crash.
No one could ever tell when she experienced a splinter. Not even Father, who knew they happened.
No one.
As far as she was aware, no matter how involved the splinters were for her, they passed in an instant for the outside world, and Winnie had a lifetime’s worth of practice making sure she never showed any surprise.
But Hawthorn seemed to suspect something was off. How?
“Thank you, sir, but I’m fine.”
She felt anything but.
She met his icy eyes, and wondered if the bruises she’d seen on James’s wrist came—or would come?—from him.
Something in her felt certain the answer was yes.
As the group surrounding Professor Hawthorn continued to chat, Winnie watched and took mental notes.
A waiter brought over a tray of champagne flutes. The fizz of tiny bubbles made each glass seem to sparkle enticingly.
Hawthorn must have noticed her looking. “Go ahead—take one,” he said. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t mind.”
Was this a sly reference to Father’s drinking? There was no way to be sure. Winnie grabbed one of the flutes by its delicate stem, although Father almost certainly would mind.
Father disliked Hawthorn, and this animosity was clearly mutual. Did they dislike each other because they were so alike?
Hawthorn was the only man she’d ever met who reminded her of her father. She had a lifetime of experience observing him. He was the original mystery in her life. She watched him closely. Anyone who lives with someone volatile must.
She’d realized long ago that Father was a powerful man. Authoritative, and deeply invested in logic and reason. But as she’d gotten older, Winnie discovered that was just a mask. Underneath, he was propelled by the chaos of grief. And Winnie had no problem understanding that.
But it would be a mistake to think this meant she understood Hawthorn.
Talk turned, as it always did, to the war effort. Every public conversation had to include a bit of war talk—penance they paid for being safe and warm while the New York Times shared grainy pictures of rain-soaked US soldiers besieged by night raids on the Solomon Islands, or headlines proclaiming that Congress would soon be lowering the draft age.
One man joked about his wife’s recent attempt at war cake: a milkless, eggless, butterless concoction which, by his telling, was about as edible as a brick.
“Did you know they’re rationing coffee now too?” another professor said with a heavy sigh. “Or word is they’re about to. Our cook said they were completely out of the stuff on her last grocery trip. I don’t know how we’re supposed to get any work done.”
A few of the men chuckled, but the sound died when they caught sight of Hawthorn’s face.
“Fighter pilots. Tank men. I suppose we should let them stay groggy so you can—what is it you’re even working on now?” Hawthorn asked, face utterly blank.
Father did that too. His mood turned on a dime. Things were fine and then, all of a sudden, they weren’t.
The professor who’d been speaking about rations visibly paled, and Winnie realized that these men didn’t just respect Hawthorn. They feared him.
“Ra-radio waves,” the professor stuttered, “how they—”
“And yet you haven’t published on the topic in three years.”
The man’s mouth hung open for a moment. He looked like a gutted fish.
“I’m happy to skip my morning cup if it helps the Allies,” a young professor—or perhaps another graduate student—cut in eagerly.
Hawthorn met this bootlicking with disdain.
“We should all be doing more than that. But I suppose that’s all some are capable of.”
He gave the coffee-loving professor one last disparaging look before turning his attention to Scott. Winnie had a feeling that man wouldn’t be a professor at Columbia University much longer.
Had that been James’s fate? Some small misstep, then dismissal from the university by Hawthorn?
“Now, Scott, I wanted to introduce you to Erwin—Erwin Schrödinger, that is. He’s visiting to give next week’s lecture. Where has that man gotten off to?” Hawthorn asked, scanning the room. “Ah, well, there’s Fermi. I bet he can help me track Erwin down.”
Even in the midst of Winnie’s concern about Hawthorn and about James, she couldn’t help but be starstruck. Fermi! Schrödinger! Both men were Nobel Prize winners. Father spoke about his colleagues only to complain about departmental politics, so Winnie hadn’t quite realized that the same people who were famous names to her were familiar faces to Father.
Hawthorn motioned to Fermi to invite him over, but the man pretended it was a wave, waved back, and kept walking.
Hawthorn’s eyes narrowed. “My god, he’s got a big head. We welcomed him after Italy became . . . inhospitable. You’d think he’d show more gratitude. If his bomb’s a success, he’s going to be insufferable.”
Scott blinked a few times in surprise. “I didn’t realize that project was common knowledge, sir,” Scott said, a hint of disapproval in his voice.
“What, the Manhattan Project? Oh, it’s terribly secret, of course! But surely there are no secrets here,” Hawthorn said, with a slyness that made Winnie worry. Did Hawthorn already know that Scott was suspicious of him?
Winnie finished her champagne in one anxious gulp, stifling a cough when the bubbles tickled her throat.
“The whole department has been abuzz about it, ‘top secret’ or not,” Hawthorn continued. He grabbed another delicate flute of champagne off the tray of a tuxedoed waiter. Hawthorn was obviously concerned with the war efforts, but apparently didn’t buy into the idea of loose lips sinking ships.
To Winnie’s surprise, Hawthorn silently handed the champagne to her, exchanging it for her empty glass. It was a courteous move—ah, what a considerate host—but Winnie wondered if the gesture masked another message: You’ve captured my interest. I’m watching you, girl—even when it seems like I’m not.
“Ms. Schulde, I’m sure your father must have said something about it to you, even,” Hawthorn said.
Winnie shook her head. “No, sir. He hasn’t mentioned anything.”
“Ah, well, the government has been recruiting the university’s finest minds, but perhaps Schulde wasn’t invited.”
“Professor Schulde’s own research keeps him busy enough,” Scott said briskly, and Winnie felt a flush of warmth at how quick he was to defend Father. “Besides, he would never work on a weapon.”
Hawthorn gave a slight raise of an eyebrow. “You’d think a German would be more eager to show he’s on the right side. Although the idea of an atomic bomb is rather crass. Like using a telescope to pound in a nail.”
Scott frowned. “But I thought your work was related?”
What was Scott doing? Hawthorn had just dressed down a professor for complaining about coffee. Surely he wouldn’t tolerate a student interrogating him!
Hawthorn smiled—a genuine-seeming one this time. Scott must know what he was doing. “Only tangentially. My own work is much more—” Hawthorn looked into the middle distance and scratched his chin, pretending to think. “Esoteric,” he concluded smugly.
Scott waited a moment, an expectant look on his face, but if he was hoping Hawthorn would say more about Project Nightingale, he was disappointed. Hawthorn was happy to chitchat about other classified projects, but it seemed he was tight-lipped about his own.
“I hope to learn more about your work someday,” Scott said finally, smiling faintly.
“I’m sure you will,” Hawthorn said.
Winnie couldn’t tell if she was imagining the edge in his voice.
“So, what do you make of him?” Scott asked, once the two of them had left Hawthorn to “go mingle.”
“He seems clever—and very impressed by his own cleverness. I don’t trust him.”
“You sound like Professor Schulde,” Scott said with a grin. “Your father can’t stand Hawthorn, and—as I’m sure you’ve guessed—the feeling is mutual.”
Winnie remembered—Father had called him a “vulture.”
“Hawthorn seems pretty keen on you, though.”
Scott shrugged. “He’s always seemed to like me well enough—probably because liking me annoys your father.”
“You have a theory about what he’s working on?”
Scott nodded. “I’ll tell you my suspicions after the party—although you’ll probably think I’m crazy,” he said with a smile. “I don’t want to bias your observations now, though.”
“Scott!” a student called, waving at them from across the room. “Come settle a debate for us!”
Scott waved back. “In a minute.”
“You go ahead and talk to them,” Winnie said. “It’ll give me a chance to eavesdrop.”
“You’ll be okay on your own?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “It’s what I’m here for, right?”
He took her hand and pressed it.
“Not just that.”
The intensity in his gaze made Winnie’s heart quicken, but before she could respond, he kissed her hand lightly, then dropped it and walked off to join his friends. Winnie was absolutely dizzy with glee—and more determined than ever to prove herself worthy of the faith he’d put in her.
What did the risk of Father’s anger matter, when this feeling was the reward?