The Cartographers(46)

“Like your friendship?”

Eve didn’t look at her. “Among other things.”

Nell was about to press her for more, but Eve had turned to the Sanborn map. Even though it had come with the photograph, which proved that the map could have come only from Francis, she still expected the woman to study it carefully first—double-check the paper and the ink, compare its individual aging signs to the notes Penn State must have for each specimen—but Eve barely had to glance at it before she was sure.

“Yes,” she pronounced. “This is the one I loaned to Francis, to give to your father.”

Nell watched her as she picked the map up, to put it back in its folder and envelope. As she did so, her eyes passed over the little compass rose sketch on the back of the cardboard—and lingered.

“I didn’t see that before,” she finally said.

“Do you know what it means?” Nell asked, hopeful.

Slowly, Eve nodded. “It’s a symbol for a group called the Cartographers.”

The Cartographers.

Ramona’s and Francis’s warnings rang in Nell’s ears as her mind raced.

The mark was on both maps—the back corner of the gas station map and the folder of the Sanborn. Was it because the Cartographers had owned the gas station map before her father had found it, and this Sanborn map before Eve had loaned it out? Were they much closer on her heels than she’d thought?

“Is it . . . a threat?” she asked.

To her surprise, Eve smiled. “A threat? Not at all. It’s more like a greeting.”

“A greeting?” Nell paused. “From whom?”

“Francis.”

Nell took a step back, alarmed. “Francis is a Cartographer?”

Eve nodded. “So am I,” she said. “The Cartographers were us. All seven of us.”

Nell stared, stunned.

“It was what we called ourselves, back then,” Eve continued. “Like a little club. Your mother made it up.”

“My mother?”

“Yes—and Wally. They invented it sometime in their freshman year, long before I met them all, along with this little symbol. They put it on everything we worked on. Hid it on the backs of our essay pages or in the corners of our drafts. It was cheesy, but we all loved it. We were so young.”

Everything Nell had found out about the Cartographers seemed exactly the opposite of what Eve was saying. How could it be the same group to which her parents had belonged?

“But the Cartographers . . .” She hesitated.

“Broke into the NYPL?” Eve finished for her.

Nell looked up to see the older woman staring evenly at her.

“And attacked your father?”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Because it’s true,” Eve said. “Or rather, partially true.”

She looked at the Sanborn map again, and Nell waited for her to continue.

“After the fire that summer, there was no group anymore,” Eve finally said. “We didn’t see each other, didn’t talk. That was how your father wanted it—that was how we all wanted it, really. We thought we had to put it behind us to survive the grief of losing your mother. But Wally couldn’t.”

“Wally couldn’t?” Nell repeated.

“He was the one who found the map. He and Tam.”

“You mean the Sanborn? Or the gas station map?” she asked.

Even before Eve’s tense gaze met her own, Nell could see the panic flare in her body. “What do you know about that?” she asked.

“Not much,” Nell lied. “Ramona told me it was destroyed a long time ago.”

Eve grimaced. “It was dangerous, that thing. Cursed. Everyone who touched it got hurt.” Her eyes drifted back to the compass rose symbol. “And it’s still not over.”





Eve




The morning after the party, Wally was the only one not hungover, of course, so it was decided that he would drive the first car, with Tam, Daniel, and me. Francis, when he woke up, would drive the second, with Bear and Romi.

This was May of 1990. You were just two or three years old then, Nell, born in the middle of our Ph.D.s. Wally, Bear, Francis, Romi, and I had been there at City Hall, overdressed and excited, clutching bouquets and cheering as your parents kissed for the first time as husband and wife, and then just a few years later, we all were gathered the same way in the waiting room at the hospital, nervously pacing in front of the vending machines while your mother labored in the delivery wing with your father by her side.

At the time, even being as tight knit as we were, and for so many years already, I remember worrying a baby would change the closeness of our group. The magic of it. We had been a little society of seven for so long. But somehow, you made it even stronger. You changed us all from friends to family.

We got on the road early, Wally going exactly the speed limit, with me in the passenger seat to help navigate and Tam and Daniel in the back with you, in your car seat. That party, the night before, where we had practically closed down the bar, was because we had all just graduated from our Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin. The celebration had run late into the night, and I had been so drunk I was still dizzy if I stood up too fast. I wasn’t a big drinker then—later that summer, I would learn to hold my liquor, we all would, but at the time I could only stomach a glass or two of champagne—but Daniel kept ordering bottle after bottle from the bar and passing it around to the rest of us. We were all so giddy, none of us could say no to him, even after the fifth bottle.