I didn’t really have much of a plan, other than simply to get the truth. Part of me still didn’t fully believe it or didn’t want to. I held out hope that there would be some explanation that would magically make it all better. That I’d been mistaken, and it was all just a huge, weird coincidence. That none of this was really Wally. Or if it was, that we could convince him to stop, before something truly terrible happened.
Of course, it was already far too late. By that point, news of Wally’s fervent collecting had spread all over the East Coast, through the amateur hobbyist network. He’d spent months seeking out copies, honestly or otherwise, but now, invitations and offers came to him, to that post box he kept in Rockland. News spread quickly about the kind of money this strange, obsessive collector who called himself part of the Cartographers would pay for a copy of such a seemingly worthless little map—or even a rumor about one. He’d created a web of eager, oblivious informers, everyone from retired schoolteachers to mischievous teenagers to antique-book sellers, and was using them to scour the countryside for every last copy of the Agloe map, so that he could have them all.
But at the time, overwhelmed by the evidence I’d only started to find, and the phone call I’d had with the bookstore owner, I scarcely had the first inklings of how far it had really gone. None of us really knew just how deep this obsession of his really went. We didn’t know what he was truly capable of.
The car from Agloe reached home first. I heard you laughing as someone carried you up the front steps, Nell, and then Tam was through the door, calling for me.
“Romi, we’re so sorry! We went back to the Rockland Library to pick you up, but they said you’d left two hours ago!” Tam apologized as she came into the living room and spotted me.
“You should have waited, it’s way too hot to walk,” Bear said, with you on his shoulders. Eve and Daniel were behind him, lugging our research books back inside, and he let you down to run to your mother so he could help them.
Finally, as the bustle settled down, they all noticed everything spread out on the table.
“What’s going on?” Tam asked.
“Sit,” I said. “And wait.”
“What are we waiting for?” Bear asked.
“Just sit,” I repeated. “It can’t be long now.”
It wasn’t. Just a few minutes passed in uncomfortable silence before we all heard Wally’s car crunching up the gravel driveway. Then the engine faded out, and doors slammed, and the scrape of a key echoed in the lock.
“We’re back,” Francis called from the door.
I could see that the others wanted to call out to them, but I fixed them all with a glare.
Francis and Wally drew closer, footsteps going from mudroom to kitchen to where we were waiting for them in the living room.
“There you all are,” Francis said, at the same moment that he realized something strange was going on. “Guys?”
In the meantime, Wally’s eyes had drifted to me and then to the table behind me, where all the photocopies waited. “What’s this?” he asked.
“You tell me,” I said.
Francis and Wally looked at each other and then back at me. Finally, they both came up to the table and began to look through the articles.
Only a few seconds passed before I saw their faces shift from confusion to something else.
Panic, I thought. Or guilt.
“I can explain,” Francis said.
“Okay, that’s it. What is going on?” Tam asked, and went to snatch up a bunch of the papers. “What are these . . .”
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.