The Cartographers(56)

He checked the list again.

It wasn’t there.

Nell was hovering even closer to him now, breathless. “Felix,” she said.

“It’s not there.” He looked up and tilted the paper more, so she could see the index better. “There’s no town by that name.”

But there it was, on the map.

A town named Agloe, where no town was supposed to be.

Excerpt, General Drafting Corporation highway map of New York State





They found it.

They really found it.

They stared at the nonexistent place for a few more seconds.

Gently, Nell put her finger over the little white dot, as if she could feel it.

This was the reason Dr. Young had kept this map, all these years, Felix thought. This little phantom town was the secret hidden on it.

“Felix,” Nell said. Her voice was barely a whisper.

He knew what she was looking at.

It was not five miles from where Nell’s mother had died.

Rockland was the last town, real town, that one would pass through going north before they reached Agloe.

Could that be right? How was it possible?

“What does this mean?” she asked. “That over thirty years ago, my father, and mother, and I . . . we lived just a few minutes from Agloe?”

The desperation in her eyes—the need to understand, for him to help her do it—reached right inside and gripped Felix by the heart. He barely resisted the urge to pull her into another hug.

“He tried to call me, Irene said,” Nell finally stammered. “The night he died.”

Felix blinked. “What?”

She touched the map hesitantly again. “It had to be about this.”

Felix didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. She was up, pacing now. “You don’t want to take a midnight road trip, do you?” she asked. “It would only take a couple hours to get there. If we left now, we could be back in time for a late breakfast.”

Felix frowned. “There wouldn’t be anything there, because it’s not a real place. It’s just countryside.”

“I know. But don’t you want to go anyway? Just to be sure?”

“Nell. Wally broke into the library because of this map, and possibly killed your father, there’s that car you keep seeing, and now Ramona’s one more missing person to add to this list.” He looked back at the map. “The last thing you want to do is head out to some rural field in the middle of the night without a plan. You need the police’s help.”

“But they’ll just—”

“Okay, well then you need the library’s help, at the very least,” he compromised, before she could continue. “Even if this map didn’t originally belong to the NYPL, they can still take it as a private donation from your father, through you.”

“But what if Wally goes after Irene, then?” Nell asked. “He already got to my father.”

“This time, he won’t be able to get in,” Felix replied, suddenly feeling hopeful. “The press release hasn’t gone out yet, but after the break-in, the library board agreed to let Haberson take over database and inventory security there.”

“What!” Nell gasped.

He was grinning now, thrilled to be able to give her some good news for once. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

“Yes—I mean, I don’t know,” she fumbled. “The library definitely does need better security, but . . . a tech company? It’s like the exact opposite of what the library is all about.”

“Come on, it’s not like that,” he said. “Yes, Haberson is huge, but it’s a good company. More data will always benefit us, but it’ll help the NYPL, too. Ainsley Simmons herself has been in constant communication with the police since the day of the break-in, and we’re helping them search for the burglar using our tech—it’ll only be a matter of time before it finds Wally. And until then, the library will be impenetrable. Every map and book will be backed up a dozen times, the archives better organized, and all inventory tagged with microscopic chips, trackable to the millimeter.”

Nell made a face at that last part. She was even more old-fashioned than her father when it came to technology. He used to tease her constantly about it.

“Bottom line, the library will be safe,” Felix repeated. “And so will this map, if you let the library have it.”

Nell sighed and ran her hands through her hair.

“Plus, this is your last night with it anyway,” he said. “You’re still going to meet Irene tomorrow, right?”

Nell nodded—with far less enthusiasm than he’d been hoping for.

“Irene will keep her word,” he continued, trying to remind her of how much she missed her old job. “You could be back in those halls in no time. The library needs a Young in it!”

It was working. Nell was smiling now, despite not wanting to. He could see how excited she was, and how conflicted. How badly she wanted both things at the same time. “You know me.” She sighed, frustrated.

“Yep.” He shook his head affectionately. “Can never let anything go.”

Especially this.

It had hung over her life for seven long years—even more than that, if he now considered the way it had shadowed her entire childhood, unbeknownst to them. How much more would she let it take?