The Cartographers(124)
By the time your father came back, I knew what we had to do.
It was one week until your mother and I finally saw each other again, after the fire in Agloe. A week of not knowing what had happened to her, or her to me. Without the map, she was trapped inside the phantom settlement, and with everyone’s eyes on me, I was trapped outside of it, trying to breathe through the grief and fear in order to take care of you. And all the while, Wally was always lurking, haunting the silent, empty countryside day and night like a vengeful spirit, searching for a way back into the town.
Even after finding the map hidden on you at the hospital and realizing I could go back after all, it took planning. Wally could not know that this map hadn’t burned to ash like the rest of them. With only a single copy left, there’s no telling what he’d do to obtain it. Every night, I followed him as he went back to the part of the field he knew was the entrance to Agloe, where he paced and paced for hours. I waited in the shadows, studying his routine, learning when he gave up and went home, and when he was only checking some other part of the field and would return, so I could finally slip inside unseen.
That first time, I didn’t bring you with me. It was probably irresponsible, but you were exhausted every day from crying and slept like the dead, and if you had woken, Romi’s room was right next door.
It wasn’t that I wanted to leave you. It was that it was impossible to know what would be waiting inside Agloe. What if your mother had died in the fire, and you saw her body before I could shield you? That kind of a memory could never be erased. Or what if the fire had never burned out? What if it was still burning, engulfing the whole town? I had to face it alone first.
It was the middle of the night, but your mother was wide awake, waiting. There was no way she could have known I would finally return to Agloe that evening, no way for me to have gotten her a message from the outside, but somehow, she knew anyway. When I walked up the dirt road into the town, the map clutched desperately in my hands, she was already there on the sidewalk at the very first intersection.
I don’t know how long we cried. My throat was so raw, my eyes so swollen from the salt of my tears, I could hardly even speak or see her when we finally quieted.
There was so much to tell her. The house we’d burned as a decoy, the police investigation, the agonizing days and the endless nights at the motel. The way our friends had become hollowed out. How everything had broken apart and could never be put back together again. And how Wally, in his guilt, had become even more consumed with finding and controlling this place again.
That last bit hit her especially hard.
She’d been hoping, she told me, that this tragedy might have cured Wally, somehow, rather than driving him even more deeply into his obsession. That we wouldn’t have to do what she knew we needed to.
I didn’t understand at first. And then when I did, I didn’t want to agree.
But your mother is right.
There’s no easy way to say this, Nell. But the only way to protect all of us from Wally is to make him believe that she’s really gone, because that’s the only way he’ll also believe the town is really gone, too. And the only way we can do that is to keep her here. In Agloe.
As long as she stays, and as long as Wally believes the last copy of the map is really gone, there’s no way he can reach her. She’ll be safe from him—and able to save the town, too.
Because if your mother can manage to completely map Agloe from the inside out, the way she always wanted to as part of the Dreamer’s Atlas, this town—the most incredible, important discovery of our lives and in the history of cartography—can be preserved. Because even if Wally manages to find my copy of the map, there will still be one more. He won’t have total control.
In the meantime, my job will be to search for Wally in the outside world, so we know where he is and what he’s up to. And, even more importantly, to keep the map she hid with you a secret, until it’s safe for us to return to get her.
We know it’s dangerous for me to have it, but it’s the only way. If your mother keeps the map with her, she could leave Agloe whenever she wants, but she’ll never know when it’s safe to do so—Wally could be waiting right outside in the field for her, and she’d have no idea until it was too late.
Our only hope is that she can finish her version of the map, and I can track him before he ever begins to suspect me.
And that’s why, Nell, we have to leave. To pull all this off, Wally has to be convinced that I believe your mother really died in the fire. If you and I stay and live in Rockland to be near her, it’ll be too suspicious. He’ll know we still have the map for certain. I have to appear like I’ve given up hope and moved on with my life, and yours, too. I have to take you away from here, to find a new job for me and a school for you, and raise you on my own. Just the two of us, starting over together. Pretending that Agloe no longer exists.
We know this seems cruel, for your mother to stay here, and for me to hide the truth about it from you. It is cruel. It’s just that there’s no other way. Nothing else will stop Wally.
We talked for hours that first night, asking if and reassuring each other that we were doing the right thing, until it was nearly dawn, and I had to go back before you woke up in the motel. I swore to your mother that I would find a way to return to Agloe at least one more time before I left Rockland for good and would bring you with me. It took until today, when the sheriff closed her case, for Wally to finally give up and disappear—but we know that he won’t stay away forever. He won’t be able to let go. And so, we have to set everything in motion tonight. Too soon to say goodbye, but anytime would have been too soon. It was always going to be impossible.