Guilt niggled at her conscience. She remembered how it felt when Nora rejected her. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Sam. You’re a wonderful guy. You deserve a girl who’s madly in love with you. Someone who will make a wonderful wife and mother to your kids, someone you can build a life with. Unfortunately, that someone isn’t me.”

He nodded. The house came back in sight.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? I’m sure my mother cooked one of your favorites.”

“No, thank you.” They stopped at the walkway. “I guess this is where I say goodbye.”

“I guess so.”

“Well, good luck, Mary.”

“You too, Sam.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked away with his head down. Mary inhaled deeply. She was one step closer to her real home.

“We did it.” Jane Greer jubilantly waved a piece of paper in front of Nora’s nose.

“Which it did we do?” Nora appreciated her friend’s enthusiasm. Numbers made her simply giddy.

“We produced two hundred grams of material…finally. I thought we’d never get there. March, 1944. It took us almost a whole year to come up with two hundred grams—one fifth of the stated goal of one kilogram per month. Still, the big boss seemed pretty happy when I gave him the latest calculations.”

Nora knew Jane had no idea why two hundred grams of sufficiently enriched Tubealloy was significant. She only knew that they’d achieved one of the target numbers she was told they needed.

In truth, Nora didn’t know what they were going to do with two hundred grams of twelve-percent-enriched U-235, either. But she at least had the background to make an educated guess—a guess she’d shared with no one.

“We should go celebrate.”

Nora shook her head. “I wish I could, but I have schedules to manage. Every time one of the girls gets married, a baby inevitably follows and poof, there goes my cubicle operator.”

“Oh, stop complaining. It’s nice that love is in the air. You ought to try it sometime.” Jane breezed out of Nora’s office with a wave and a wink.

Nora heaved a heavy sigh. “You ought to try it sometime,” she muttered under her breath. It had been almost three weeks since Mary had left, and apart from one hurried phone call while her mother was out hanging the laundry, she’d heard nothing. They’d agreed not to send letters. The censor would’ve had a field day with those.

Tonight, she vowed. If she hadn’t heard anything more by tonight, she’d make the phone call. She worked for several more hours and then finally called it quits.