“Jordan figured out that Andrea Darrel wrote the position of the comet in her diary the day before Gibson filed the discovery with Harvard,” Ethan said. “And the next day, she wrote how furious she was with Gibson.”
A murmur went around the table. Everyone looked at each other, then started talking, too loudly and quickly for me to keep track of what they were saying. A few people at neighboring tables glanced over.
Then, in a dose of excruciating bad luck, Charles Gibson’s speech ended to a rousing round of applause. We had to pause to join in, to wait as Gibson smiled and said goodbye several times and walked offstage. He shook a few hands as the applause continued, but did he keep looking at—us?
Oh no. He was coming toward us now, too.
“Hello, again.” Gibson couldn’t keep the curtness out of his tone, despite the smile plastered on his face. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. If he’d glanced over, he’d probably noticed we weren’t paying any attention, and we might even have caused a small disturbance. “What’s the excitement over here? More exciting than my speech, I could tell.” He forced a chuckle.
I should have made something up. I should have said we were playing a rousing game of, I don’t know, Scattergories. But I didn’t, and it turned out Ethan’s grandmother was an agent of chaos. Helen Barbanel nodded at me. “This young lady says your ancestor stole the comet discovery from a young woman.”
Wow. Damn. She really laid it out there.
Gibson froze, then slowly turned to me. “Excuse me?”
I wanted to sink into the floor. Oh no. Oh no, this is what Ihadn’twanted to do. I hadn’t wanted to call Frederick Gibson out, not yet, not until I had proof and the grants were settled and I could frame this exactly the way I wanted.
But also—
Frederick Gibsondidsteal Andrea Darrel’s discovery. And male scientists had gotten away with taking credit from their female colleagues for way too long.
“I’m not trying to insult anyone,” I said. “But I’ve been reading these old diaries and, well, yeah. It looks like this woman, Andrea Darrel, found the comet first.”
“She says so? In her diaries?”
“Well—she doesn’t exactly say it.” I swallowed. “Not explicitly. But she wrote down the comet’s position first.”
Gibson smiled pityingly. “Even if she did, part of being the first discoverer is filing the correct paperwork.”
“Right, I get that. But I don’t think they each independently discovered it. She was his girlfriend. I think he stole her work.”
“His girlfriend!” Charles Gibson laughed, as though this fact undermined the others. “Maybe she wanted him to get the credit.”
Oh my god. Who would ever think that?“Uh, no. She was really proud of women’s achievements. And she was really mad at him after.”
He raised his brows. “And she says she was mad because of this?”
“Well, no,” I admitted, frustrated. “But the timing works out.”
“Maybe she was mad because they broke up,” Gibson said. “After all, he didn’t marry an astronomer.”
“No!” I said. “Like I said, it was the same date as when he filed for the discovery. That’s when she was mad.”
But I could see the way he was looking at me, the way I was afraid Dad would be looking at me, and the rest of the table too, though I was too mortified to look at them. Like I was spinningmountains out of molehills. Coming to ridiculous conclusions.
“I can see you’re very passionate about this.” Gibson’s voice dripped with condescension. “But it seems like you have a theory, and you’re trying to find proof to fit into it.”
“I’m not.” I stared at my lap. “Or, at least, I think there’s enough evidence we should consider the possibility. I’m trying to figure out the truth.”
“I think the truth,” Gibson said firmly, “is what happened: my great-grandfather discovered a comet. We’d have heard about it in the past hundred years if he hadn’t. You’re spinning yourself a fairy tale.”
Heat burned in my cheeks and swelled up in my stomach and chest, like great bellows washed anger and embarrassment through me. I tried to swallow it down, but it was too much, too explosive, and it rushed out of me in a swell of loud, angry words. “You’re hearing about it now. I’m trying to tell you. And I don’t think it sounds like a fairy tale to think a guy might have taken credit for a woman’s discovery. I think it’s pretty fucking common.”
Oops. Shouldn’t have sworn.
Mr. Gibson stared at me, then smiled, and it dripped poison. “If you’re going to make accusations like this, young lady, you need evidence.” He glanced at my father. “And I have to say, it’s very poor manners to do this here.”
I pushed to my feet, my chair skittering loudly backward in the pool of silence that had spread around us. “Don’t make this about my dad.”
