“My mother said no,” Dr. Trowbridge said thoughtfully. “Angry, sometimes. But not always.”
“Why didn’t she fight for credit, later on? The world had changed. People might have believed her. And in her diaries, from college—she sounded like she wanted, badly, to make a major discovery. A contribution to science.”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “She said the people who mattered knew, and that was enough. And she did contribute. She published articles and spent thirty years as a professor. And I think—a comet discovery would have opened a lot of doors for her, but it wasn’t the same level of work as what she did later on. I think she enjoyed her later work more.”
I was glad to hear it; I wanted Andrea Darrel to have lived a long, fulfilling life. But at the same time, I also wanted to get her recognition for this. “Did she leave anything with your family in writing?”
“She kept journals.”
“I thought so!” I yelped, then managed to control myself. “I mean, since she kept early journals, at Vassar and Harvard, I thought she might continue writing. But I couldn’t find any more.”
Dr. Trowbridge nodded. “Ah, yes—after she got married, she kept all of them.”
“Who did she marry?” I asked.
“Another of the computers, actually.”
“Really?” I wondered who—if she’d written about him in passing, if she’d known him before Gibson or met him after. “Do the journals mention her discovery?”
“Not directly. She alludes to it, occasionally. But she didn’t like to dwell on it.”
“And what—what happened?” I asked. “Did she ever write why he stole it?”
She smiled, half amused, half sad. “That’s the oddest part. He didn’t think he did.”
According to Dr. Trowbridge, Andrea Darrel had been sweeping the sky from her childhood rooftop while visiting her parents. She caught sight of an out-of-place star blazing across the familiar map of the sky and realized immediately it was a comet. She noted the position, and a few minutes past midnight she had calculated the orbit.
Thrilled beyond belief, she told Frederick. Maybe he was also staying at her parents’ house. According to my scant knowledge from reading Edith Wharton in school, they probably hadn’t been staying in the same bed, but I certainly knew how easy it was to slip from room to room when staying at the same house.
Andrea went to bed and, despite her excitement, slept late. In the morning—perhaps at the breakfast table in her parents’ house, where they’d so recently celebrated their engagement, perhaps, even, at her bedside as she awoke, if he’d snuck in to see her—Frederick proudly told her he’d taken care of filing for the comet. Furious, she told him to take it back, but he refused. Andwhen Andrea reached out to the observatory herself, they said—politely, but firmly—what was done was done.
“She stopped working for them for several years,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “But she went back to it eventually. She loved working there.”
“Are you two planning to do something?” her daughter asked. “We always thought about writing an article, but it never seemed particularly urgent. Or like we had enough proof.”
“I’m not sure what anyone else will think, butIthink we have proof,” I said. “And if you’re interested in helping, I think we have a pretty good case.”
Twenty-Five
Mr. Gibson met with us the next day.
Dad arranged the meeting. “Send him everything in advance. People hate to be surprised. He’ll want a chance to prepare his response.”
“But aren’t we giving him more time to think about how to shut us down?” I’d asked.
“Maybe,” Dad had said. “But he might decide—as I think he will—that you have too much evidence in Miss Darrel’s favor. If you throw everything at him in the moment, his hackles might go up and he might get defensive. If you give him time to process—and bring him along on the journey of your discovery, and ask him his opinion—he’ll feel like he has a say in what happens and more likely be agreeable.”
I’d stared at my father, impressed. “Dad. You’re kinda diabolical.”
“Thank you?”
“Did you ever play mind games on me as a child?”
He’d looked harassed. “All the time. Do you know how hard it was to get you to eat your vegetables?”
Rude. “Ilovevegetables,” I’d said, and flounced off.
Ethan and I headed back to the hotel where the conference had been, where Mr. Gibson was staying. The August afternoon was strangely crisp, as though fall lingered at the gate, waiting to come in whether invited or not. I spent the morning smelling things more strongly than usual, as though the cool air carried scents more clearly: the honey in my oatmeal, the scent of dead, scorched grass.
