Had it worked?
Winnie was home. It had worked for her.
But had it really worked for them?
There was no way to know. She just had to hope it had.
Winnie sat up, then stood. Her body felt heavy and slow. She had been scared for so long, striving for so long, propelled by fear—what now?
Winnie let out a long sigh. She could go to Dora’s. She was sure her friend would be over the moon to see her. Winnie could hide out there. Come up with some plan. Run away. If she was very clever and very lucky, maybe she would never have to face Father.
But running away—that was what she’d been doing when she left their world before. And look how that had turned out.
No. Winnie would go home. She would face Father’s wrath. Father’s questions. After everything she’d been through, surely she could do that. And then, she’d tell him “no more.”
She climbed the stairs up to the first floor of Pupin Hall—but before she could take even a dozen steps down the hallway, she heard the creak of a door opening.
Winnie looked frantically toward the sound, fearing Hawthorn—but the sound had come from farther down the corridor.
A figure stood there, perhaps ten feet away, hidden in shadow. A security guard? The custodian, come to open up the building?
“Winifred?”
It was Father.
“Oh my god. It is you. I heard a crash—it woke me up—mein Gott!”—he shook his head in disbelief—“you came home.”
He ran up to her. Winnie flinched reflexively, but all he did was pull her into a tight embrace. Tears were streaming down his face, but what really surprised her was that his breath didn’t smell of schnapps. What was he doing sleeping in his office if he hadn’t passed out there?
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I thought I might never see you again,” he whispered, tickling the top of her head with his breath. “I’ve been working nonstop,” he said, gesturing vaguely down the hall toward his office, “trying to figure out how to get you back.”
“How long have I been gone?” she asked urgently.
Father frowned in confusion, but he answered without questioning why she asked.
“Sixteen days.”
Oh, thank god! By her count, she’d been gone ten. If what Hawthorn said was true and their timelines were attached, her jump of six days into her own future would have taken them six days into the past, back to a time when Winnie and James were both alive.
Father held her out at arm’s length so he could look down at her, then smiled. “All my work, and I made no progress. But here you are. You came home yourself,” he said, then frowned. “I’m surprised you would want to, after I—”
“I can’t forgive you,” Winnie said abruptly.
This Father, speaking to her so warmly, just like she’d always wanted—this was a trap the universe had set for her. It tempted her to take the easy route, but she wouldn’t pretend like everything was okay any longer—not even if that meant provoking his anger.
If her sticking up for herself sent him into a rage, well, so be it.
“I know I have a lot to make up to you,” Father said softly. “I’ve had nothing but time to think about all that I’ve done wrong . . . that empty house . . . but I will make it up to you, somehow.” He swallowed nervously. “To you, and to Scott. I’ll do everything I can to earn both of your forgiveness.”
Father begging for forgiveness would have been enough to send her for a loop, but what he was implying about Scott—it was impossible.
Winnie had seen him die. Hadn’t she?
“Wait. Are you saying Scott’s okay?”
Father let out a heavy sigh. For the first time in her life, Winnie noticed there were lines around his eyes. “Oh, Winifred . . . the accident . . . he was seriously injured.” Father’s shoulders sagged. It was the guilt, Winnie realized, that made him look older. “The doctors are hopeful, though,” he said, straining to sound more upbeat. “He’s improving. Every day, he asks for you. He can’t seem to remember you’re gone.” Father frowned grimly. “It will do him good, I think, to see you.”
She couldn’t focus. All this time when she’d been off in another world, messing things up for another set of them, Scott had been here. Waiting. Asking for her.
His body on the floor though—she had been so sure.
And she had been so wrong.
But that didn’t matter now. Scott was here, alive!
“Can I see him?” Winnie asked. “Can we go see Scott right now?”
Heaven help any interloper who tried to take him from her.
“Yes,” Father said, “yes, of course.” He took her in his arms again and pulled her close. “I’ve been so foolish—so tied up in your mother’s loss for all these years that I let myself lose you too. Things will be different now, Winifred, I swear it.”
“You’re the only one who calls me that, you know.”
“What—Winifred? It’s the name she chose for you. You wear it well.”
“Maybe, but I prefer Winnie.”
“All right,” he said tentatively. “Whatever you like.”
Would things really be different now? She knew they could be. She’d met that milder him already, and he did seemed softened by Scott’s accident and her disappearance. Would that change last? Perhaps. But even if he changed back, she wouldn’t. She would never be pushed around by him again.
The hospital wouldn’t open up for visitors for another few hours, but the nurse on duty recognized Father.
“I promise we won’t disturb him,” Father assured her.
The nurse frowned, considering. She looked worn down by her job, but her eyes were kind.
“Please,” Winnie said, “I just need to see him.”
The nurse paused a moment, then nodded at Father. “All right, Dr. Schulde.”
She walked them over to Scott’s room, although Father surely knew the way, and opened the door.
“I don’t want you going in right now,” the nurse said. “He needs his rest. Come back later this morning, and you can talk to him.” The woman put a gentle hand on Winnie’s forearm. “You must be Winifred. It’s good to see you here. Your father missed you.”
Winnie was startled to hear that Father had talked about her, but before she could really register her surprise, the nurse stepped out of the doorway and Winnie could see past her to Scott, lying there in a hospital bed. Every other thought fled.
His head had been shaved, and one arm and leg were heavily bandaged. Winnie leaned against the doorjamb to keep herself from falling over. Father reached an arm toward her and gave her support on the other side.
“Why did they shave his head?”
“There was swelling around his brain,” Father said quietly. “They had to drill to relieve the pressure.”
“And the bandages?”
“The entry point of the current, and the exit.”
“Is he really going to be okay?” Winnie asked, her voice cracking. Father had already told her he should be, but seeing him like that, thin and pale and alone there in the dark, she needed to hear it again.
“Yes. The doctors feel optimistic about his recovery,” Father assured her, but his expression was pained. “He can speak. He’ll be able to walk, once his leg is healed.” Father sighed heavily. “Will he ever be the successful physicist he was once certain to be? That, only time will tell.”
“I don’t care about that!” Winnie said fiercely. Scott stirred at the sound, but thankfully did not wake. “All that matters is that he gets well,” she whispered.
“Of course,” Father agreed quickly.
But they both knew it wasn’t true. It would matter to Scott, and it mattered to Winnie too. She would help him. Help with research, help with school—whatever he needed. The two of them would be a team, like Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, like Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire, like—
Like she and Scott’s double had been.
She let herself think of that other Scott now.
She hated not knowing what had happened after she left, not knowing what was happening to him at that very moment, a world away. Not knowing, for sure, that what she had done had taken their world back to before James or Winnie died.
Should she go back, she wondered? Not forever—just long enough to figure out some way to make sure that they were okay, and stayed that way?
Winnie now knew how to transport herself, but the way alternate realities connected, the complex interweaving of space and time . . . she couldn’t begin to pretend she understood it all.
Even with all that risk and uncertainty, she thought that if their roles were reversed, Scott would try to check on her.
Winnie pondered all this guiltily, wondering if she was being cautious or cowardly, but at the same time, watching the steady rise and fall of Scott’s sleeping breath eased the ache of grief that had been so constant and familiar, she had almost forgotten it was there.
The nurse had told her to stay out of his room, but she simply couldn’t. He was so close! It had been so long! Her heart felt almost painfully flooded. It had to discharge.
Winnie took a few ginger steps forward. The door swung shut behind her with a gentle shush; Father must have known better than to follow. She crept up to the edge of the bed and took Scott’s hand in her own, stroking the back of it gently with her thumb.
She hadn’t meant to wake him, but when his eyes fluttered open, she felt a surge of joy.
“Winnie?” he asked hoarsely.
She didn’t feel the tears coming, but suddenly they were there.
“Hi, Scott. I’m sorry I haven’t—I’m so sorry.”
Scott frowned. He looked confused, and Winnie wondered how much of this was because she had just woken him, and how much was a lingering effect of his injuries.
“You were gone?”
Winnie nodded and quickly brushed away her tears. “Yes.”
“But you’re back now?”
“Yes.”
He blinked up at her, sleepy-eyed as a child. “You’ll stay?”
As soon as he asked, Winnie knew there was only one possible answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll stay. Always.”
And she knew she would never leave.
As Winnie got ready for bed that night in her own home—weary as she was, and desperately worried about the one Scott, while elated about the survival of the other—there was a certain delight to her every action. Slipping into her pajamas. Washing up in her bathroom sink. Pulling back the covers of her bed. And for the first time in forever, she knew that the next day held something predictable and good: going back to the hospital to spend more time with Scott, who was alive.
Winnie was surprised to hear Father’s footsteps on the creaky attic stairs. She knew he couldn’t possibly be coming to drag her down to the lab for one of his experiments, but the sound still set her heart thumping.
Once he reached the top of the stairs, he paused. “May I tuck you in?” he asked.
It was something he hadn’t done since she was a small child.
Winnie nodded. She was already under her own beloved plain blankets, but Father pulled them up snugly under her chin, then perched on the edge of her bed. He reached out an uncertain hand, and when she didn’t flinch, stroked Winnie’s hair, tucking it behind her ear.
“It’s so short.”
“I like it,” Winnie said.
“Well, it is the style of the time.”
Father sighed and looked down at his clasped hands. He was nervous, and he was trying. That meant something to Winnie. It would take time to relearn how to accept affection from him, but Father finally seemed like he wanted to build a relationship with her, his daughter—not his subject. Winnie wanted that too.
He looked up suddenly, fixing her in his gaze.
“Winifred—” Father began. Winnie took a breath to correct him, but he quickly did it himself. “I’m sorry,” he amended, “Winnie—where were you? When you disappeared, where did you go?”
The hungry look in his eyes frightened her.
How would Father react if he knew she’d visited a world where Mama was alive?
She would never tell him. She couldn’t risk him thinking there was a way to regain what he’d lost. Winnie knew that folly all too well.
But she would tell Scott everything, when he was well enough to hear it. She wouldn’t be like her double—she would never keep any part of herself from him again.
In response to Father’s question, she just shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly.
And it didn’t.
This was where she belonged.