The Cartographers(121)

And that notepad at the hostess stand in the diner—with something drawn on it.

Every time she had noticed a hidden tell inside some café or little shop, if she poked around the inside of the building, she always spotted it.

A little scrap of paper, lines carefully etched across its page.

Tiny maps, of individual buildings or streets—all from the printing press.

“Yes,” Wally said, encouraging her. The ink was staining his finger. “You believe me now.”

But Nell was so overcome, she couldn’t speak.

Her mother really was alive after all.

Before Nell turned around, she knew. But even so, nothing could have prepared her to see the person standing there in the doorway when she finally did.

“Tam,” Wally whispered, spellbound.

She was there.

Real.

Alive.

Tamara Jasper-Young was much older than she’d been in the photos, but the resemblance was unmistakable. She was no taller than Nell, her now-gray hair was just as unruly, and she was wrapped in a stretched-out, ratty old cardigan even more overwhelming on her frame than Nell’s was on hers. In her hand was something small, a little package, and her own fingers were also dotted with ink stains and graphite dust as though she’d been interrupted midproject, still just as furiously dedicated to her craft as she had been in all the stories Nell had ever heard about her.

“It’s you,” Nell stammered. “It’s really you.”

Her mother opened her arms and pulled her into a fierce hug.

“I have waited so long for this,” she whispered into Nell’s hair. Nell hadn’t even felt her arms move, but she was hugging her mother back, so tightly both of them could barely breathe.

“Mom,” Nell finally managed.

There were so many things she needed to tell her mother, and so many more she needed to ask, but her eyes were streaming, and her throat was so painfully tight, she couldn’t make it work right. All she could do was hold on.

“Nell,” her mother said. “Nell, Nell, my Nell.” Over and over, like a chant. “You’re here. You’re finally here.”

“I’m sorry it took so long,” she managed to say. “I didn’t know. Dad never—”

“I know,” Tamara replied softly. “It was the only thing we could think to do.” She touched Nell’s cheek. “Someday, when it was safe, he was going to tell you everything and bring you here.”

Nell tried to summon the courage to tell her mother that her father was no longer alive, but the words didn’t come. But it seemed that she knew anyway. After all, how else could Nell herself be in Agloe, but not also her father?

“I’m so sorry,” she finally whispered.

“No, I’m sorry,” Tamara said. “We had a choice to let this map become our entire lives, but you didn’t.”

Slowly, Nell felt her mother’s grip on her loosen as the scene over Nell’s shoulder registered. Tamara seemed to finally remember that there were other people in the room—and that something terrible was happening. Wally was there, and Nell, but not Nell’s father. And Felix was still Wally’s hostage, still fixed within the aim of his weapon.

At last, she let go of Nell.

“Wally,” she murmured as she looked at him. “What have you done?”

“What I promised I would,” he said. He was staring at her like she was an apparition, a spirit. “All this time, I never gave up. I knew you couldn’t be gone. I’ve been searching for a way back in ever since.”

Nell watched her mother’s eyes dart between Wally, the gun, Felix, and the strange scanning machine on top of the printing press beside him.

“You can’t imagine how difficult it’s been to return to a place that doesn’t technically exist,” Wally said, as if it were a sufficient explanation. His words were slow and thick, clumsy. He had been convinced he would find her here, but to truly see her again at long last was overwhelming. “But all of it, everything I had to do to find Agloe again, has been for you.”

“No, it hasn’t,” Tamara replied. “I didn’t want you to do any of this.”

“Then why did you stay?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. “Why did you leave your husband and your daughter, and let all of your friends believe you were gone? Why did you let me believe it?”

He pointed to the package in her hands.

“Why did you finish your half of the Dreamer’s Atlas?”

As one, their eyes all drifted down to follow the line of his finger. Tamara gently pulled the package to her chest, as if doing so could protect it.

When Wally finally spoke again, his voice was soft, as if coming from somewhere far away. “I didn’t understand at first. The fire, and you had vanished. . . . But after a few days, while we waited for the local police to close the investigation into your death and let us all leave, I realized what had really happened. That you hadn’t died, but were trapped inside Agloe, somehow. And I knew that if you were still inside, you would still be working on your half of the atlas. I swore that I wouldn’t rest either, until I’d finished my part of it as well.”

“Would that be your Haberson Map, or all the people you murdered in your search for a way back in?” Felix asked sharply.