relationship with a really good man—and to me that’s more important.”
“Skipper, trust me on this. You’re an easy mark. You’ve been infatuated before—”
Adam objected. “This is not—”
Hartnell turned on him with ferocity. “I’ve had quite enough of your insolence,
boy.
Now I’m giving you exactly thirty seconds to about-face and march the hell out of my house.”
“No, Dad,” Toni overruled him. “We’d need at least an hour.”
“W-What?” her father stammered furiously.
She nodded and said softly, “I’d have to pack. Because if he goes, I go with him.”
Two months later Toni and Adam were married in St. John’s Lafayette Square, the so-called “Church of the Presidents,” directly across the park from the White House. The incumbent in the Oval Office was among the guests, no doubt a gesture of respect for the man who had done so much to help put him there.
And Thomas Hartnell managed to smile while giving away his only daughter.
At the reception, the Attorney General proposed the toast.
11
ADAM
Dr. and Mrs. Adam Coopersmith rented an apartment on the top floor of a Beacon Hill brownstone. Toni then dug in to cram for the Massachusetts bar exam.
Both were passionate about their careers, as well as each other. They would look back on this time as the happiest of their married life.
They worked till eleven, then joined the crowds of yuppies filling the many pubs and restaurants on Charles Street, transforming the whole area into a huge nightly block party.
When Toni began to hunt for jobs, there was no lack of Boston law firms eager to add a former Assistant Attorney General—for she had been promoted just beforeshe gave notice—to their roster. Osterreicher and DeVane outbid them all in salary as well as prestige.
Meanwhile, Adam was making progress on the work for which Max had so magisterially paved the way. His new director had finally taken the time to examine the official protocol for his study on idiopathic multiple miscarriages.
Cavanagh was no fool, especially when it came to sniffing out the value of a research project. And he now realized the enormous potential of Adam’s investigations.
Therefore, in a gesture of magnanimity, he restored two of the post-docs he had removed from the team.
He also made a point of reminding Adam of the revised publishing etiquette for all work emanating from what was now his lab.
“Max took a back seat,” he explained with a thin smile. “But I enjoy visibility. Since I’m chief, my name naturally precedes all others.”
It was a flagrantly unfair practice, but not uncommon. Forcing himself to be pragmatic, Adam resentfully acquiesced to what was an exploitative necessity. Yet he was just concluding the outline he had been working on with Max. Surely the Brit would never try to appropriate
this
as one of his publications? Unfortunately, the man’s ego was stronger than his conscience.
“Rules are rules, old chap, and we might as well start on the right foot. Naturally, you’ll have to put a dagger—or whatever that mark is called—before Max’s name to indicate that he’s passed on.”
Thus the paper went out to the
International Journal of Fertility
as being primarily the collaboration of an Englishman and a dead man he had never met. Did Cavanagh really think that the medical community would accept this authorship as either credible or respectful?
Keeping a low profile, Adam continued his explorations. Meanwhile, Toni executed what she lightheartedlyreferred to as a “double play.” In the same week, she received positive results from the Massachusetts bar and her beta sub unit pregnancy test.
Excited by the prospect of fatherhood, Adam worked even harder, as though inspired by a subliminal creative rivalry. In the months that followed, he repeated the final experiments in Max Rudolph’s half-filled lab book, using corticosteroids to suppress the embryotoxic reaction in pregnant white mice.
After much
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