The Cartographers(50)

“We were in there for not even ten minutes,” Wally grumbled as he slid into the back seat, his cheeks red, and busied himself with helping Tam fasten you into your car seat. “You always take forever.”

“Oh, it was funny,” Tam said to him, and leaned forward to lovingly muss up Daniel’s hair.

“Was it all junk?” I asked as Daniel started to reverse the car out of the parking spot.

“Yeah,” Wally said. “Just old knickknacks and broken furniture.”

“It wasn’t a total waste of time,” Tam replied, holding out something small and folded for us to see. I took it from her before she slid back into her seat and turned it over to see the front. “We did find something.”

It was the gas station map.

As I stared at it, listening to Tam and Wally describe the shop—how friendly the old owner had been to them and Nell, telling them about where around town to get various supplies for the house if needed, and how the map had been only a dollar, and that even though it was junk, they felt like it would be rude not to take it after all her help—I felt the faintest sense of unease. Just a tendril of dread, down deep, starting to curl.

But I ignored it. We were all exhausted from the drive and eager to get back to the house. Too excited by what lay ahead.

I should have paid more attention.





XII




Eve finally broke off from her story, as if she couldn’t bear to continue. She looked down at the Sanborn map on the table again, seeming to lose herself in it. Nell gave her a few moments, hoping Eve would say something, but the preservationist didn’t offer any more.

Nell realized that if what Eve had said was true, then she’d been wrong about the gas station map. It didn’t belong to the NYPL—it had only been hidden there. It hadn’t come from an uncatalogued donor. It belonged to her father. Because her mother and Wally had found it, decades ago.

Whatever happened, whatever all of this was about, wasn’t about the library at all. It was about them.

“That house,” Nell finally said. “Is that where the fire was?”

It had to be. She knew that the accident had happened the summer she’d turned three, and she knew that it had happened in upstate New York, where her family had been renting a house. She just hadn’t known that there had been other people there, her father had never said that, but he never said anything about it. The rest of the details of Eve’s story all matched perfectly.

“Yes and no,” Eve said.

“What does that mean?” Nell insisted, desperate. “The house we lived in burned down. I have the scars. It happened there—it had to have.”

Eve sighed. “It did. It just started long before.”

The chills down her back were like knives. Was this why her father had always refused to talk about her mother? Because there was more to it than just the grief? “Are you trying to tell me that her death wasn’t an accident?”

Eve shook her head again, this time more forcefully. “No, it was an accident. A terrible, terrible accident. She died saving you.”

She seemed to be telling the truth. Nell watched Eve for a moment, surprised at her grief. Nell’s father had always kept his locked down deep, and Nell, as much as she wished her mother hadn’t died, did not remember her mother the way that Eve and her father did. Nell’s sadness was more of a bitterness, a longing, for something she would never have the chance to miss as much as they did.

It made her think of what Eve had said about how much Wally had loved her mother, too.

“Eve. Were my mother and Wally—”

“No,” Eve replied vehemently. “Your mother loved your father more than anything. She never would have betrayed him. And neither would have Wally.” She sighed. “But after he lost her, it drove him to madness. He just couldn’t let go.”

“You’re saying Wally’s the one behind all of this? That he’s the one acting as the Cartographers?”

Eve nodded. “It couldn’t be anyone else.” She looked at Nell. “He’s still searching for a copy of the gas station map.”

“But if there are none left . . . ,” Nell began.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Wally never will believe it. It’s the only thing he has left.”

“The only thing he has left?” Nell scoffed, surprised. “What about what I have left? I’m the one who lost my mother. My father lost his wife.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Eve replied quickly. “I can’t imagine your or Daniel’s pain.” Her gaze drifted down again, heavy. “But as terrible a loss as it was, at least you still had each other. Wally had nothing. Nothing but the memory of that map.”

Nell waited for a moment, until she’d gathered herself. “How can I find him?” she asked.

“You can’t,” Eve answered. “After your mother died, he disappeared. None of us heard from him again. No one knows where he is.”

“Except maybe my father,” Nell said.

Eve looked spooked enough to run.

Nell backed off, searching for a new angle. Eve might not know how to find Wally, but Nell knew what he was after. And the Sanborn map was somehow connected to it—otherwise why would her father have spent his last few days desperately contacting his old friends, trying to obtain a copy?