The Cartographers(104)

“Romi,” Francis whispered in surprise, his voice so hoarse it cracked.

He collapsed into me, halfway between an embrace and a faint. Even as angry as I still was at him, I let my belongings slide to the ground and put my arms around his waist to hold him up, instead of shoving him away from me—everything was so off, it was terrifying, and I couldn’t think straight. The world felt suspended, like we were frozen in time, or had gone outside of it, where old history didn’t exist. Something far worse did.

“Where’s Tam?” I asked, when I realized what was different, who was missing. “Francis, where’s Tam?”

“We have to burn the house” was all he said.



The sheriff, police, and fire department showed up, eventually. Drawn from town by the hot glow and the smoke churning over the trees, blotting out the sky. It was after midnight by then, and the horrible white beams of their headlights blinded us when they came roaring up the long driveway. As they jumped out of their vehicles, engines still on, I caught sight of Eve and Bear clinging to each other, both sobbing, and Daniel, standing at the edge of the grass, staring off into the trees. You were in his arms, although I’m not sure he could feel you there. You had been crying hysterically after the fire in Agloe, but now you were staring up at him silently, perfectly still, more like a doll than a child. Waiting endlessly, for him to come back to life. To tell you that your mother was fine. That she would be back soon. That everything would be all right.

But nothing would ever be all right again.

“All of it,” Francis said softly as we stood beside each other in the dark, watching the embers of what used to be the house, orange lines traced through the pile of black char. “All gone.”

“I don’t want any of it back anyway,” I answered numbly.

The gravel crunched, and I heard the crackle of a radio, felt the piercing halo of a flashlight pass over me.

“This was your house?” the sheriff asked gently, once he reached us.

I turned back to the ashes. I wanted to plunge myself into them.

“Yes,” Francis managed. “We were renting it this summer.”

“And she was inside? Tamara Young?”

I closed my eyes, so they wouldn’t see my heart break.

Francis took a ragged breath. “Yes,” he lied. “She was inside.”

Over the next hour, the officers gathered our statements and the paramedics treated your burns, Nell, but it was already over. They would never find Tam’s bones there in the ash, but it didn’t matter. They already believed she had died in the house. Everything else about that night was real, after all. Our open, agonizing grief, and your desperate cries for her, the burns on your arms. And no matter how hard they searched, they would never find the place where it had truly happened. The way back there was gone forever, without a map.

They had all burned up. All of the thousands Wally had hunted down, and the very first one that Tam always kept. The one we all used to get in and out of the town together each day. The one she’d found together with Wally.

It had died with her. And so had Agloe.

As the fire department was packing up to leave, the remains of the house waterlogged and cold, the sky already brightening with dawn, the sheriff convinced us to follow them back to Rockland in our cars, where they could book us into the motel until we got back on our feet again. Just yesterday, I would have fought tooth and nail against the insult of having Francis and Eve in the same building as me, after what they’d done. Now, I didn’t care at all. I didn’t care about anything.

The paramedics guided Daniel into the ambulance, so your burns could be cleaned at the local hospital. I watched them close the doors, until the only part of either of you I could see was his face through the little square window on the back of the ambulance—the horrible emptiness in his eyes.

As the ambulance pulled away, I saw a flicker of movement in the trees. It was Wally, I realized. He seemed so far away, so hollowed out, that he looked more like a stone than a person, just part of the landscape. Or maybe more like a ghost.

I was so buried in my pain, I couldn’t even raise my voice to tell him to get into one of the cars. But I could see that he wouldn’t ever have come anyway.

“Come on, Wally,” Bear finally said. Each word was such an effort, they barely made it past his lips. “We have to go.”

But Wally took a step back, receding farther into the trees, disappearing.

He was going back to the field, I knew. That empty, empty field. Looking for a way back in, even though it was impossible.



We stayed in the motel for two weeks, waiting for the case to close. The firefighters combed through the rubble four times over searching for Tam’s remains, until the station chief finally told them to give up. The whole house had been made of wood, which burns hotter than a house made of mixed materials, the sheriff told us when he broke the news. If a fire smoldered so long, sometimes not enough could be found to make an identification. I think he just wanted to be done with us, more than anything. Rockland was a peaceful little place, unused to such agony. We all were barely alive, barely able to even hear him, whenever he came to the motel to update us. He was a father too, he’d told us the first night—I could see how Daniel’s grief haunted him. By the end, he couldn’t even look Daniel in the eyes. Couldn’t finish his sentences if you were in the room, whimpering helplessly. Couldn’t wait to escape us.