The Cartographers(90)

But she trailed off as she read them.

That made Daniel get up, and Bear, too. Eve hung back nervously, waiting for one of them to pass her some of the pages.

Tam finally looked up. You took the paper she’d been holding and pretended to read it, blessedly oblivious to what it actually said. She was too stunned, too confused, to even try to get it back from you.

“Wally, what’s going on?” she asked. Her voice was so quiet and sad. He looked wounded by the sound of it. “Were all of these . . . were they all you?”

“We’re not criminals,” Wally said.

“Really?” I cried. “Then what do you call it? You’re just doing it for fun?”

“No,” Francis insisted, aghast, but I was too angry to stop.

“Or to make yourself feel tough? Or for money? Or—”

“I owe it to Wally, okay?” he finally shouted. “It’s only a favor!”

“A favor? What kind of a favor could he possibly have done for you that would be worth you committing crimes?” I shouted.

“I’m trying to protect the town,” Wally stammered. “Our project depends on it staying a secret until we finish. I thought if I gathered as many as I could find—”

“Gathered?” I repeated mockingly. “You call this ‘gathering’? I don’t think that’s what your victims would call it!”

“No one even cares about these maps,” he tried to argue, but I cut him off, still yelling.

“You’re breaking in to people’s businesses and homes, Wally!”

“But we’re not taking their valuables! We leave everything else!”

“Are you kidding me right now? You could go to jail. And now you’ve drawn Francis into it!”

“It was his choice!” he cried, his voice cracking slightly at such volume. Wally had seen the rest of us argue plenty, especially toward the end of any major project, but he was always a bystander, always waiting on the sideline for our tempers to die down before he offered up any of his suggestions. He wasn’t used to the anger being aimed directly at him.

I knew I could make him crumble.

“If he owes you, it doesn’t sound like his choice!” I snapped back. “It sounds like you coerced him into this! Are you trying to blackmail him, Wally?”

“No,” Wally pleaded, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that!”

“What was it like, then? What do you think you have on him that would be worth this?”

“Romi, please,” Francis said, his voice tense, desperate. “Just leave it.”

“I’m not leaving it. I want to know what the hell is going on!”

Wally was cowering before me, miserable, terrified. I had grabbed his arm, clutching so tight his skin was turning white under my fingers, so he couldn’t get away from me. “Please. Francis doesn’t have to come anymore,” he tried to promise me, but I shouted over him.

“It’s too late! You already dragged him into this. I want to know why!”

“I just . . . I saw something I shouldn’t have!”

“Romi, stop!” Francis yelled, looking panicked.

I slapped Wally in the face. “What did you see, Wally?”

“Romi, stop!” Tam shouted, horrified.

But I did it again. “What did you see?” I slapped him a third time, so hard the others cried out. “What could be so horrible that he would agree to—”

“He cheated on you,” Wally moaned, his eyes wild. He looked like he was going to faint. The words lingered as he repeated them, like a horrible, unconscious chant. “He cheated on you.”

The whole room went silent at that.

Everyone stared at everyone else in abject shock.

It couldn’t be.

“But . . . how?” I finally whispered.

It sounded so unfathomable to me. I couldn’t even imagine it was true, let alone believe it.

“With who?”

And then, Eve burst into huge, heaving sobs.



The motel was dingy, but it was better than the house. Anything was better than that house.

At the little table in my room, I repacked my things into my suitcase more carefully, now that there was time.

The first thing I’d done, after nearly blacking out from the shock, was sprint upstairs, while Daniel shouted at Wally and Francis for what each of them had done, Bear tried to calm everyone down, and Eve continued to cry. I didn’t know where you were, Nell, but I hoped that Tam had taken you outside, so you didn’t have to see all of it. I tore everything of Francis’s out of the dresser drawers and threw it over the banister and down the stairs into the middle of the living room, for the rest of them to see. Then I changed my mind and pulled out my own suitcase and started packing that.

I probably could have convinced the group to throw Francis and Eve out that night, but I didn’t want to stay, anyway. I couldn’t sleep in the same bed where I’d been sleeping with him that whole summer—not until the sheets had been stripped and washed, or better yet, thrown out like trash.

I just wanted to escape. To get away from all the lies and secrets, away from the house, away from the town.

While everyone else continued to interrogate Wally, I forced Francis to drive me to Rockland and drop me off at a motel there. I didn’t know if I could bear to be near him, but it was also the cruelest thing I could think to make him do, in the moment. I yelled at him for half the drive, demanding he tell me everything, every disgusting, shameful detail, then refused to speak at all for the rest, no matter what he said or asked me, and then yanked my suitcase out of the back seat and left him begging me for forgiveness in the parking lot without saying goodbye. When he tried to follow me into the lobby, I screamed at him so loudly that the clerk told him she’d call the police if he didn’t leave me alone. Francis left, tears streaming down his face, and the clerk gave me what she said was the best room they had.