The Cartographers(115)

And beside him was someone else.

An old man, tall and thin like Swann, but with a face that could not have been more opposite. Hard, cold, lifeless. She didn’t know what he’d looked like before, when he was young, but now he looked like a ghost. A shell of a person, all the innocence and joy drained out.

And in his hand—currently pointed at Felix—was a gun.

“Hello, Nell,” the man said. “It’s been a long time.”

Nell stared.

It was startling to see him in the flesh. The man who had once been her mother’s closest friend and would have grown to become an uncle to her like Swann, too, if they had never found the town.

“Wally,” she finally whispered.

Wally’s face pulled into a painful grimace. “I haven’t been called that in a very long time,” he replied. “I left it behind when I left this place.”

“Nell, Swann, he owns Haberson,” Felix cried frantically to them. “He’s the one who broke in. He’s the one who murdered your father and Irene—”

“That’s enough, Felix.” Wally sighed.

“Haberson,” Ramona repeated. His old friends were staring at him with a mixture of horror and pity.

“I thought there was a poetry to it,” Wally said to them. “Our project was called the Dreamer’s Atlas, and Tam was the one who had me read that book in the first place.”

“What?” Nell asked.

“He named himself after a character,” Ramona said through clenched teeth. “The oneirologist. It was a book about dreams.” She shook her head. “It was on our dormitory shelf for years. I should have realized.”

“None of you liked those stories like she did,” Wally replied.

“This isn’t about a book,” Felix interrupted. “It’s about a map. The Haberson Map.”

“Enough,” Wally said.

Felix flinched as Wally gestured with the gun, but he didn’t look away from Nell. “Run,” he pleaded.

“Yes, Nell,” Swann whispered softly. He was hovering protectively, trying to slowly ease her behind him. “Run.”

But Nell could only stare at Felix. “I can’t leave you,” she said to him.

“Yes, you can,” Felix urged.

“She won’t,” Wally agreed. “She’s just like her mother.”

A flash of anger cut through her fear. “You don’t get to speak of her,” Nell said to him.

Wally shook his head. “I don’t know what the others told you, but that night was an accident.”

“You still don’t see,” Eve said. “Even after all this time, you still don’t see.”

But Wally ignored her, his gaze still locked with Nell’s. “I’m sorry you never got to know her,” he said. “It’s my greatest regret. That’s what all of this has been about. What I have spent my life trying to do. To find a way back into this place.”

“At what cost?” Francis asked. “How many more have there been?”

“Sometimes we must make hard choices,” Wally said.

Ramona’s eyes shimmered. “Was Daniel a hard choice, too?”

“He brought it on himself,” he replied. “The map is not his. It never was.”

Nell looked down to follow the line of his gaze—to the Agloe map in her hands, half-hidden behind Swann.

“How did you realize that he still had it?” she asked, voice trembling. “All these years later?”

“I’ve known for a long time,” Wally said. “Seven years, actually. It’s just taken me that long to find a way to get my company into the NYPL.”

Felix looked at him in horror.

“I remember how much you loved maps, too. Even as barely more than a baby,” Wally continued. “When I heard about the Junk Box Incident, I knew something was wrong. You would never leave the library willingly, and your father would never damage your career like that. Unless . . .”

Nell closed her eyes.

Her father must have known what would eventually happen, that day. He had not gone to beg Ramona to hide the map out of fear, but rather certainty. And still, he had given everything to keep her safe.

“How many nights, I searched that place. Every exhibit, every archive. He was not supposed to see me any of those times.” Wally sighed. “But then, he did. And I knew if I didn’t act quickly, he would be forced to hide the map somewhere else—or perhaps even to tell you everything. I had to stop him before he could do it.”

Nell couldn’t find her voice.

“I was only trying to protect you,” he said. “To finish it before you had to get involved.”

When she finally opened her eyes, she saw that his free hand was out, beckoning.

“This can all be over now. Give me the map.”

“Please, no one has to get hurt. Put the gun down, and we can talk,” Swann urged.

But Wally pressed the muzzle closer to Felix, and Nell’s heart flailed.

“Don’t give it to him,” Felix insisted grimly.

But she couldn’t think. “It’s yours,” she said to Wally. She held the map up a little, trembling. “It’s yours. I just . . .”

She needed to stall, to keep Wally talking, but her mind was a runaway train—speeding nearly off its tracks, too fast for her to come up with anything helpful. Her finger slipped slowly into the first fold of the paper as she turned the map over, and she caught a glimpse of a swath of countryside, delicately veined with roads.