by Kate Norris
But then, it happened again. She was out in the yard with Father, trying to bring some order to the little vegetable garden—Mama’s garden—and failing. Winnie saw a fox chasing a thin, young hare and flinched away from the sight but still saw it captured, neck snapped and limp, behind her closed eyes.
“You can look,” Father said, with that hollowness his voice always held now, “she made it.”
Winnie opened her eyes. The fox stood at the far end of the field, long snout buried in the little hole the rabbit had escaped to. She picked up a stone and threw it at him, knowing she would fall short but get close enough to startle the fox into trotting off without his dinner.
“See?” Father said. “Nothing to fear after all.”
This was Father’s new habit—vague assurances, delivered with an insulting lack of conviction.
We’re going to be okay.
Mama is in a better place now.
As if foxes didn’t catch hares. Didn’t kill them. As if foxes wouldn’t die themselves if they didn’t.
As if Mama weren’t dead. As if anything could ever be all right again.
These assurances—these lies—mocked Winnie’s own grief and shut her off from her father’s.
“This rabbit lived, but another one died. I saw it.”
Father opened his mouth, about to say something dismissive, but then stopped, brow furrowed. He stared at her with narrowed eyes, and Winnie felt like he was looking at her—really looking at her—for the first time in weeks. It was a relief, even though he looked at her like she was a diagram in one of his scientific journals, not his daughter.
Finally, Father shook his head and scoffed.
“I don’t like this new imagination of yours, Winifred,” he said shortly.
“I didn’t imagine it,” Winnie said, jutting her chin out. “I didn’t imagine this, and I didn’t imagine what I saw the night—”
Winnie fell quiet at the sight of Father’s suddenly furious face. He threw his spade in the dirt and stalked off in silence.
But later that night, he shook Winnie awake. “You think she lived? In some other world, she lived?”
Winnie said nothing. She was half-asleep and scared. She couldn’t tell if Father was angry or excited.
“It’s absurd. Other worlds! But some scientists believe it—that there’s an infinity of different realities. Why should you be able to see them? And yet . . . perception is just the first step, you know. What if you could have prevented the crash that night, instead of . . .”
His voice trailed off, but she knew what he meant anyway: what if she could have stopped the crash, instead of causing it.
From then on, Father became obsessed with the idea of alternate realities. He read everything he could get his hands on. It seemed that Winnie had a miraculous gift. He had to understand it. Father made Winnie report every time she had a sense of an alternate reality breaking off from their own, and the details of what she saw in the split. For the most part, he was content to observe and record, but other times, late at night, drunk . . .
He began performing his experiments. What if Winnie’s visions were just the beginning? What if she could hone this gift until she could not only see but shape the possibilities? And what if he could harness that power?
And so, Father’s desire to create the splinter machine was born.
According to multiverse theory, anything that happened both happened and did not happen, and these different outcomes gave rise to different realities. The splinter device would allow Father to control which possibilities occurred in their own reality. It would let them live in the best of all possible worlds. The next time tragedy came for her and Father, they could just . . . turn it away.
Winnie certainly understood the appeal.
But she hated the experiments.
All those electrodes, Father shouting, the pain, the continued failure. Her early splinters were like peering at an altered landscape through a dusty window—real, but remote. As she and Father continued to experiment, the details became sharper, and the splinters occurred more frequently. But even as she honed this sixth sense, Winnie never could gain any control over how things played out in her own world.
At least she and Father had something they were working on together. But as Winnie became the focal point of all Father’s attention, she grew ever more distant from his affections. He hired Brunhilde, and all of Winnie’s daily care was outsourced to her dutiful hands. Winnie was everything to him in the lab—and nothing outside it. It had been that way for nearly seven years now.
Did he even love her anymore? Or had all Father’s love died when Mama did? If nothing else, at least he needed her. Winnie was essential to his work on the splinter device.
Several months after Mama’s death, Father was finally offered a job—in America. His work at Columbia kept him busy, and the splinter research faded into the background, except for those occasions when Father would feverishly pick it up again—times that seemed random until Winnie recognized their general pattern over the years. Mama’s birthday. Their anniversary. At least once sometime over the holidays. And always, always on the first day of the year that felt like spring.
Father raged during these “experiments,” but only once, years ago, did she think he might actually hit her: when Winnie had the gall to say, “I miss her too, but can’t we just stop this? She’s gone.”
Father had raised his hand to slap her, but after a few heaving breaths, dropped it without striking. He wouldn’t answer her question. Father wouldn’t talk about Mama anymore. Only the splinter device.
Winnie had lost more than just her mother in that terrible crash. She’d lost Father too. And even if they somehow, miraculously, designed a working splinter device, it could never bring either of them back.
CHAPTER FOUR
Winnie wiped away an errant tear and sighed. The past was never really the past, was it? It happened, and happened, and happened, rippling alongside the present. Inside, there would always be a part of her that was still seven years old, scared, and trying to learn how to live without her mother.
A light knock at the study door startled Winnie away from her gloomy thoughts and out of Father’s seat. He couldn’t find her like that, sitting at his desk, crying over Mama’s notes!
“Winnie?” a voice called softly.
Scott.
Of course—Father wouldn’t have bothered to knock. Winnie felt a moment’s relief, then a different sort of discomfort. She didn’t want Scott seeing her upset like that either. She should have just brought Young’s article to Father as soon as she found it. But then she wouldn’t have stumbled across this reminder of her mother. Winnie quickly tucked her mother’s copy of Annalen der Physik into the waistband of her skirt, took a few more swipes at her cheeks, then told Scott to come in.
“Professor Schulde sent me to help you,” he said, shutting the study door behind him.
Scott glanced around the office, and Winnie saw him spot the copy of the journal Father had asked her to find, lying right there on the desk. He gave her a gentle look. Winnie was sure he could tell she’d been crying.
When Father had first hired Scott, Winnie dreaded working with him. He was too young. Too handsome. The last thing she needed in that lab was another thing to be on edge about.
But then she got to know him. He wasn’t the brash, do-no-wrong star pupil she’d expected. And that was worse, in a way. She could find no reason to dislike him, no flaw to inoculate herself against falling for him. Winnie wouldn’t have chosen to have these feelings if she could’ve helped it. Scott was spectacular, and Winnie was—well, her. What could he possibly want with his boss’s mousy daughter? He was unattainable.
But Scott saw her. He was smart and he was kind and his eyes were the color of honey fresh off the comb, and he saw her. That made him irresistible.
“He’s ju
st as hard on his students, you know,” Scott said. “If that helps.”
Father’s treatment wasn’t really what she was upset about, but also, in a way it was. It made not having a mother harder, having a father like him.
“He isn’t my professor, though,” Winnie said. “He’s my dad.”
“I just mean that it isn’t your fault that he’s this way,” Scott said with a helpless shrug. “It’s just the way he is.”
“I don’t know,” Winnie said, shaking her head slowly. “If I were different, maybe he would be too.”
“Different how?”
“Just more—” Winnie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But she did.
If she were more lovable, maybe Father would love her more. She knew he was capable of it. He had loved Mama, after all.
But there was something wrong with her. It wasn’t just the splinters that set her apart. There was something in her that was closed off, something that left her always on the sidelines, listening, observing, but never fully part of things, never all the way in the moment and out of her head. It made her seem standoffish at school, she’d been told. Winnie was just grateful Dora didn’t seem to mind—if anything, it delighted her, since it was so different from Dora’s own chatterbox nature, Winnie supposed. I never know what you’re thinking! Dora had told her soon after they met, seeming thrilled by the novelty. But if Winnie were jolly or warm, maybe Father wouldn’t find it so much easier to relate to her as the subject of his experiments—or at best, as a lab assistant—instead of treating her like a daughter.
“Sometimes I don’t think he even likes me,” Winnie said. “Much less loves me.”
“Winnie, of course he loves you.”
Winnie frowned and met Scott’s eyes. “What makes you so sure?”
Scott adjusted his glasses nervously, and Winnie immediately realized she was staring at him too intensely. God, he must think she was certifiable! Perhaps she should interrogate him about her scrawny frame and lack of friends too, since apparently she’d decided to put every anxiety on display.
“I’m sorry—” Winnie began, but Scott was already speaking himself.
“Look, I wanted to—” he said, then stopped. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”
“No, no,” Winnie said, cringing. “I’ve said enough already.”
“Not at all!” he said earnestly.
The two of them smiled at each other, and for once Winnie didn’t break his gaze. It was a moment straight out of her fantasies. His smile seemed to say all he wanted was to listen to her blather about her silly insecurities all day.
But then Scott frowned. “Your father didn’t really send me,” he admitted abruptly. “I volunteered. He was getting agitated about how long it was taking—”
“Oh god, we’d better go,” Winnie said, swiftly brought back down to reality. She took a step toward the study door, but Scott stopped her by placing a hand on her naked forearm. His touch sent thrills radiating up and down her skin.
“Wait—I said I’d come get you because I wanted the chance to ask you something. There’s a physics department mixer tomorrow night. Will you come with me?”
“Yes,” Winnie said quickly, “of course!”
She could feel a goofy, child-at-a-birthday-party grin on her face—not exactly a hallmark of the sophistication she wanted Scott to see in her, but she couldn’t help it. And anyway, he didn’t seem to mind.
Scott smiled back in a way that made her enthusiasm feel less silly. “Great!” he said. “Now all we have to do is ask your father.” He gave her a raised-eyebrow grin. “Should be easy, right?”
Winnie had been so excited about the invitation that she hadn’t even thought about the logistics.
“Oh,” she said, deflating. “But he’ll never say yes.”
“Then we’ll just have to convince him,” Scott said firmly.
How he could understand Father so little even after working with him these past two years?
Scott’s expression turned serious. “You see, I don’t just need your company—although I’ll be happy to have it,” he added quickly. “My friend James is missing.” Scott frowned. “Or—maybe he’s not. They say he dropped out, but he would have told me if he was planning on leaving Columbia. At least, I think he would have . . . Anyway, the department mixer is at his mentor Professor Hawthorn’s house. James was working with Hawthorn on this government project of his. Project Nightingale. Everyone is talking about it, but no one seems to actually know what it is. Something seems off to me, but I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve lost perspective. But you, Winnie—you see things, right?” he asked, a bit breathless.
Winnie’s stomach did a nervous flip. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve noticed it in the lab. You’re incredibly observant, and your instincts—they’re amazing. I could really use that now.”
Winnie let out a breath. She realized with relief that Scott didn’t suspect the truth about her ability.
But he wasn’t actually asking her on a date. He needed—well, an assistant. Naturally he would think of her. Assistant in the laboratory, assistant in life.
Of course, that didn’t change her answer.
“I’m happy to help,” Winnie said, struggling to keep at least the ghost of a smile on her face despite her disappointment. “If I can.”
Even though Winnie was crestfallen, she was eager to help Scott solve this puzzle.
Why would a promising young student drop out of Columbia and not tell his friends?
One possibility immediately jumped to mind. Winnie walked past the East River Navy recruitment office on her way home from school sometimes, and lately she had been seeing more and more young men—some barely older than her and her classmates—walking out its doors, enlistment papers in hand and faces flushed with excitement. James could have been one of them, spurred to action by the Nazis’ sinking the civilian SS Caribou off Nova Scotia, or the latest news from the Pacific theater or Stalingrad.
“Would James be afraid to tell you if he enlisted?” she asked.
Scott considered a moment.
“I hope not, but it’s possible. It’s something we students talk about—how scientists are more useful to the war effort at home than on a battlefield.”
Winnie must have raised her eyebrows. It was rare to hear anyone say something like that amid a sea of posters and radio ads decreeing that all able-bodied young men should be eager to join the fight.
He sighed and said, “I know, I know—it’s half genuine, and half the sort of thing we have to say to feel less guilty for staying home. So, it’s true that if James had brought up enlisting, I would have tried to talk him out of it. I’ll check in with some recruitment offices.”
Winnie nodded.
“See?” said Scott. “You’re helping already.”
Winnie was happy to help—but it wasn’t pure altruism. She wanted Scott to see the girl behind the physics aptitude.
Winnie could feel the crisp, dry paper of her mother’s old notes cool against her skin. She shared her mother’s scientific interest and aptitude, but as far as Winnie could tell, that was all they shared. Mama had been as blonde and robust as Winnie was dark and slight, and although her mother’s face wasn’t always clear in her memory, Winnie remembered enough to know it was a singularly beautiful one. Even as a child, she had understood that the reason Father totally erased any trace of Mama from their lives after her death was because of how much it hurt to remember her. Winnie longed to inspire that sort of passion herself.
And the mystery of James’s disappearance—it was like an equation just itching to be solved.
What would it mean to Scott if she could be the one to solve it?
* * *
• • •
“No,” Father said briskly. “Winifred is too young to date.”
Winni
e knew that plenty of other sixteen-year-olds went out with boys, but she also knew that in this case, Father wouldn’t be swayed by statistics.
“There couldn’t be a safer place for her, sir,” Scott said. “The event is at Professor Hawthorn’s townhouse. We’ll be surrounded by colleagues, and you could even—”
Father scoffed. He attended the department lectures sometimes, but never the parties, which he considered “a shameful misallocation of university resources.”
“No,” he said again. “Consider the subject closed.”
But as he said this, something opened inside Winnie: a peek through the door his answer had cracked. She caught a glimpse into an alternate reality where Father said yes. Sometimes, a splinter would escape her grasp before she got a chance to see it properly. Not this time, she vowed. This she had to see—despite how physically uncomfortable it would make her feel to do so.
Blood throbbed at her temples, and her mouth flooded with saliva. She felt sick with the effort. But there was a crack, and Winnie knew she could push it open if she just gave in to the feeling. Even so, it wasn’t easy. It was like grasping a sparrow: hold too tight and the vision was destroyed, slacken her grip too much and it would fly away.
So Winnie focused her mind. A vise squeezed her temples; nausea yanked at her stomach.
This feels awful.
And that’s okay.
She was intent on experiencing this splinter in its entirety.
Winnie’s internal vision was watery at first, the colors all whispers of themselves. Then it clicked into focus. She saw the three of them clearly—her, Father, and Scott—all together in the laboratory basement, just like they were at this very moment in her own reality. She saw Father agree to their date.
“You may go to the mixer only,” he said, giving them each a firm look in turn. “And have her home by ten o’clock.”
Winnie was shocked that there was actually a world where Father said yes. What went into that choice? Was it, just maybe, the thought that saying yes would make Winnie happy?