As soon as the police detectives and Hawthorn left, Scott collapsed into one of the waiting room chairs.
“I just need a minute,” he said. “It was James—it was definitely James—but also, it didn’t look anything like him.”
Winnie remembered that particular dissonance from her mother’s death, seeing the corpse that both was and was not Mama. She could only imagine what James might look like now, and tried to shut the gruesome image out of her mind. She should have tried harder to make James understand the danger. She should have done more. Done something.
“I’m so sorry,” Winnie said. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
The silence stretched, and Winnie felt a growing itch to fill it even though she knew that wasn’t a helpful thing to do.
“I saw Dora and Winnie on the street earlier.”
This seemed to snap Scott back into himself. “What? Where?”
“Outside your apartment. They saw us getting into the detectives’ car.”
He nodded, then stood and walked over to the receptionist’s desk.
“Pardon me—would it be possible to make a call? Local, of course. I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t have a telephone at home and there’s somebody who’s been worrying. I’d like to let them know.”
The receptionist regarded him stonily for a moment, but something in his expression—perhaps the sad slump of his shoulders, which was breaking Winnie’s heart—softened her. She nodded and handed Scott the receiver.
“What’s the telephone number?”
Scott looked at Winnie. “What’s Dora’s number?”
Winnie gave the receptionist the digits that she hoped would connect to Dora in this world, and watched as the woman dialed.
“Hello, this is Scott Hamilton. Could I speak to Dora, please?”
Not five seconds later, Dora was on the line; she must have been desperately waiting for the call.
“Hi, Dora, it’s Scott. Yes. I know you’ve been worried. No—Winnie and I are fine. But I’m at the morgue,” he said, speaking that last word with a hint of question, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was a word he had to say, or a place he had to be. “It’s James. They pulled his body from the Hudson . . . No. They aren’t sure yet how. They don’t know if it was an accident, or . . .” Scott trailed off.
She knew—James’s death was no accident. Hawthorn was to blame.
Scott passed Winnie the receiver. “She wants to talk to you.”
“Hello?”
“What’s going on?” It was Beta on the line now, not Dora.
“We really don’t know yet. Just that James is dead.”
Her double was silent a few moments, then she said, “Well, I guess you were right,” in a tight voice. “About Nightingale. About the danger.”
“I didn’t want to be right.”
“I know,” Beta said. She sighed. “Poor James. And poor Scott—James was his best friend.”
“He seemed like a really wonderful person,” Winnie said, and although she meant it, the sentiment felt trite and completely inadequate.
It was strange to witness people she knew intimately grieving for someone she had only just met. She felt the horror of James’s death keenly, but knew her own feelings couldn’t possibly compare to their own—just another way in which she was an outsider in that world.
“I’m staying at Dora’s tonight,” Beta said. “You’ll have to stay at Scott’s.”
“Oh.”
Winnie hadn’t thought that far ahead. She’d been so jealous that Beta would be spending the night with Scott before, but she hadn’t wanted to take that from her. Or at least, not like this.
“Put him on the line, please.”
Winnie passed the phone to Scott. She didn’t know what her double had to say to him, but apparently there was a lot—Scott was mostly quiet except for an “mmh hmm” here and there.
“I think you’re right,” he said finally. “I’ll let her know. We’ll see you tomorrow night.” He sighed. “I love you.” A pause. “Yeah. Me too.”
When they walked out the revolving lobby door the first thing Scott did, much to Winnie’s confusion, was take out his wallet and count the bills inside.
“You don’t have any money, do you?”
Winnie shook her head.
“Of course not,” he said with a bone-weary sigh. “Well, I think this will be enough for a cab. Assuming we can catch one.”
“Scott, I’m so sorry,” Winnie said. “James—”
“Not at sorry as I am,” he interrupted fiercely, startling her. “You warned us! Not even about Nightingale or Hawthorn generally—you warned us that James was missing, and said it was Hawthorn’s fault! I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have.”
It hurt her heart to listen to Scott blame himself. “There are enough differences between this world and mine,” Winnie said. “We couldn’t have known something would happen to him here too.”
Winnie probably didn’t sound very convincing, because she didn’t really believe this herself. Even if they weren’t exactly to blame, it still felt like they should have been able to prevent this.
Scott opened his mouth as if to argue but then his face crumpled. He took a shaky breath. “We saw him yesterday. The cops, they showed me these marks on his arms. Needle marks, from the serum injections, I guess. New, old. They think he was a dope fiend! It’s just—how could it have been going on for so long, and I didn’t even know? What kind of friend am I?”
Maybe that was why Hawthorn was upset that Scott was the one to identify the body. Hawthorn would want the police to think James was a drug user. There were all sorts of reasons an addict might wind up in the river, and none of them involved Hawthorn. But Scott must have sworn up and down that James wasn’t involved with drugs at all, and Hawthorn would have realized that claim could blow his cover—if the police investigated further of course.
“James couldn’t have been okay with what Hawthorn was doing to him,” Scott said. “So why did he let him?”
Scott was looking at her so intensely that Winnie suddenly realized he didn’t mean the question rhetorically.
She had the answer, but it wasn’t packaged up all pretty. There were no words she could share with Scott that would actually help him understand.
James let Hawthorn do his work for the same reasons she allowed Father.
It was that look on Father’s face when he offered up some new suffering for Winnie to endure—brandishing it like a dare—and she accepted without hesitation. Just a little flash of pride. It didn’t matter that he didn’t say “that’s my girl.” Because in those moments, Winnie knew he felt it.
It was looking at her classmates, and knowing that she might never be shiny and smiley and normal like they were, but she had this deeper purpose, this secret, and that made her life fuller and more mysterious than they could ever imagine.
It was feeling important, being important. And if you’re vital to someone, isn’t that love? How do you give all that up once you’ve tasted it? You don’t. Even if it comes with a side of abuse. Not if you’re so hungry for approval it feels like you’ll never be full.
Her Scott, he would understand why James endured Hawthorn. She didn’t know if this Scott could. It had been naïve of her to think the two of them were identical. It’s amazing, the things we’ll believe when we’re desperate for them to be true.
She looked away and shrugged.
“Does it really matter why?”
Scott looked like he was going to argue, but then he pressed his lips together in a tight line and nodded twice.
“I want to make Hawthorn pay.”
He barely sounded like himself.
“I do too,” Winnie said. “But I don’t think we can.”