The Cartographers(93)

Nell scooted closer and began to sift through the towering jumble of paper with him. “I hid it here before I left—shoved it right into the middle of the mess.”

“What does it look like?” Swann asked, as the others joined to help.

“It’s a plain white Classic envelope,” she said. “No writing on the front.”

Please still be here, she prayed as she dug through envelope after envelope, package after package.

“I don’t see any with no writing,” Swann replied tensely.

“Keep looking,” she said. “It has to be here.”

Please don’t let Wally have found it.

Then suddenly, halfway through the mountain of paper, she pulled a thin, plain white piece of mail from the rest.

Her heart fluttered.

The Agloe map.

It was still safe.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

Carefully, she slid her finger under the flap to open the envelope and took out her father’s map.

The others all drew back a step at the sight of it, both horrified and mesmerized.

“I never thought I’d see it again,” Ramona said.

“I hoped I wouldn’t,” Eve added.

Francis was the first one to come forward. He looked at it intently in Nell’s hands, but made no move to touch it. “But I still don’t understand how Daniel ended up with it. That night, the fire, we lost them all.”

“It was Tam,” Ramona said.

Tell me, Nell was about to say, but there was a gasp behind them.

“Stop right there!” a voice shouted.

Swann banged against the desk as he startled, nearly toppling it and himself, and Nell spun around, holding her keyboard like a weapon.

“Humphrey!” she cried.

“Nell!” Humphrey gasped, relieved. He dropped the umbrella he’d been brandishing and rushed out of his office to her. Behind him, Nell could see his phone on his desk, off the hook—he was still leaving messages for repair technicians, even hours later. “Thank goodness! I thought we were being robbed.”

But he fell silent as he saw Francis, Ramona, and Eve standing behind her in the semidarkness.

“Nell, what . . .”

“She knows,” Ramona said, cutting him off. “Bear.”

Slowly, Humphrey looked back to Nell.

Her eyes suddenly stung. She tried to speak. “Humphrey . . . everything you did for me, all these years . . .”

“It was nothing,” he said.

“But I was so ungrateful. Every day—”

He cut her off, shaking his head. “Every day with you was a treasure, Nelly.”

He opened his arms, and she fell into his huge embrace.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” she asked when she finally pulled back.

“Your father forbid us to,” Humphrey answered. He looked down. “When you and he left Rockland, we all went our separate ways. At first, it was just too painful to see each other. When I finally moved back to my family on Long Island, I reached out to Daniel, to ask to see you two again—he was so afraid that you’d remember things, if we stayed in touch. He was your father, and I was only a friend, even as much as I loved you like my own niece. I did as he asked and kept my distance.” He sighed. “But after what happened at the library, how badly he’d hurt you . . . I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. And you were an adult now. I thought if I could keep the past secret, since the two of you weren’t speaking anymore, it might be all right. I might be able to help you without betraying my promise to him.”

“Well,” Nell murmured. She put her hand on his arm again. “I’m glad.”

Humphrey smiled, and shrugged. Then he noticed the cut Francis had been dabbing at earlier on the side of Nell’s head and the ugly bruise beginning to bloom beneath it.

“Oh my God, what happened?” he cried, puffing up like he always did whenever he could tell she was upset, all shoulders and chest—like a big old bear, she’d always thought to herself. If only she’d known how true it was.

Everything, Nell wanted to say. She didn’t even know where to start.

“I hid the map here,” she said instead.

“What map?”

“The map,” Ramona said. “Daniel had it, all this time.”

Nell held it up so he could see it in the dim room. Humphrey stared at it in shock. He looked at Nell again, and then back at Ramona, until Ramona finally nodded.

“But how . . . ,” he started.

He took a step back from it, as though it might hurt him, and then looked at the others.

“I swear I never said anything,” he said to them. “I didn’t even know it still existed! I never—”

“We believe you, Bear,” Francis said. He shrugged. “Nell’s a Young. It was foolish to think we were going to be able to hide this forever.”

Despite still recovering from his shock, the words brought a faint, proud smile to Humphrey’s lips. “You were always going to be the best one of the bunch, if you ask me. You blow them both out of the water.”

“Humphrey, please,” Nell replied, a little flush rising to her cheeks. “And don’t you start, either,” she said to Swann, who was nodding in agreement with Humphrey.