The Cartographers(97)

Because that, right then, was all I’d wanted. That moment was the reason I’d ruined my life to rent the house. Not for the Dreamer’s Atlas. Not for that godforsaken gas station map. And especially, especially not for Agloe. I did it for us. For us to be together, the way we’d always been. It was the only thing that mattered.

Twice, I was so overcome, I had to pretend I’d gotten a little sauce in my eye when Tam noticed me tearing up.

I wish I could say it was happiness that had been welling in me. It was, but it was also fear. I had one week to come up with thousands of dollars, or it would all be over.

I thought it was hopeless—but then the next night, we found out what Wally had been doing all summer. That he’d been buying up or stealing every single copy of our map he could find, in an effort to control them all. That by that point, rumors of his obsession had spread far and wide among amateur collectors and antiques hunters, all desperate to make a quick buck on a piece of junk. And that most of all, he must have had hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of that map lying around somewhere.

And suddenly, even amid the despair of Francis’s and Eve’s betrayal, and Romi’s anguish, I had an idea.

A terrible, dishonest one.

But I didn’t see any other way. I didn’t have a choice.



Romi knew where Wally kept the maps he’d found or stolen, she said when I went to her motel. Francis had confessed everything to her in the car on the way there, desperate that she might forgive him.

“He said Wally calls it the vault,” she whispered.

I had barely dared hope that I might be able to convince her to tell me where in Agloe that was—but Romi offered me much more than that.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You were so mad at Wally for betraying you when he found Francis. But isn’t stealing a map from him the same thing?”

Romi almost smiled. It made her look even more sad than before. “Exactly,” she said.

Morning dawned somberly at the house. Since Francis and Eve had betrayed Romi, it was Romi’s right to choose first whether or not she wanted to remain part of the project. Tam, Daniel, and I took her to Agloe so she could gather up her research until she’d decided, and Francis and Eve stayed home to watch you and keep an eye on Wally.

After we finished taking everything out of the ice cream parlor, I kept Tam and Daniel occupied helping me load the car while Romi took a walk alone—to clear her head and think, we’d decided she should say. They believed her. They had no reason not to.

It seemed to take her a long time to reach the vault. Or perhaps that was just my nerves.

After dropping off Tam and Daniel at the house at dusk, I drove Romi back to the motel. We sat there a long time in the dark in the car, neither of us able to get out.

“I wish there was some way . . . ,” I said, but I knew it could never be. I could never ask Romi to forgive Francis or Eve, so we could all stay together.

She sighed. “I know.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out one of Wally’s maps.

She’d chosen one that was well-preserved but unremarkable, no unique marks or wear, like we’d discussed. One hopefully Wally would not be able to recognize as one he’d already found.

“He had thousands,” she confessed. “Even for Wally, with all his records, there’s no way he’s going to miss only one—or be able to tell.”

I tried to convince myself that my plan was harmless. It wasn’t even really stealing, because Wally would still get his map back, in the end. He cared about that far more than he cared about money.

“Let’s make the call,” she said.

Upstairs in her room, Romi dialed the shop she’d rung the day before, the one whose name she’d found on a note in Francis’s pocket, which had led to the unraveling of his and Wally’s secrets in the first place. Abram’s Books and Stationery.

I pretended to be a customer. I said I’d been cleaning out my garage and came across some old maps, and heard his shop had the best text and art antiques section in the area.

The man wasn’t interested—his shop had just been broken in to, he told me. All his funds were going into repairs. He shrugged off my attempts to set up a meeting until I finally mentioned exactly what map it was that I wanted to sell.

Romi knew he’d already heard of this strange collector called the Cartographers, and what kind of maps they were looking for.

And just how much they would pay for a copy.

“I had a friend take a look, and she said one of these might be worth something,” I continued, feigning ignorance. I described the Agloe map we’d stolen from Wally in detail. “She told me there’s a buyer out there willing to pay good money for it—is it you and your shop?”

The man was so relieved at this stroke of luck, he didn’t consider we might be suspicious. All he could think about was the money.

“That’s right,” he lied, straight to us. “If you’ve got the right edition, it can be worth quite a bit. Thousands, at least. Abram’s Books and Stationery would be glad to help.”

I asked for exactly as much as I owed on the house. Not a penny more.

Even after complaining about how tight money was, the man didn’t hesitate in the slightest. He knew how much Wally would be willing to pay—it was far more than what he would be paying me.