The two men looked at each other, then back at me.
“Please,” I begged. “If I talk to you in good faith like this, don’t you have to give me at least one extension?”
“Your account is already incredibly past due,” the first man said.
But the second finally shrugged. “How much will you be able to contribute toward your debt, after this week?”
“All of it,” I promised, even though I had no idea how.
They both arched their brows in surprise. “All of it?” one repeated.
I nodded. “I just need a week.”
The first man still looked incredulous, but the other took pity on me. “One week,” he said. “We’ll come back next Monday.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” I closed the door again as fast as I could.
My heart was pounding as I ran back to the kitchen, just in time to save the sauce from bubbling over. I raced to finish boiling the pasta and stir the sauce as I listened to their car ease down the road—and then, a few minutes later, heard the one Daniel had been driving pull up and sigh into silence. Doors slammed, bottles clinked, and tired, familiar voices mumbled as the gravel crunched.
“Bear?” Tam’s voice floated in from the mudroom.
“In here,” I called back.
As they came into the kitchen, and the scent of the spaghetti sauce and my homemade garlic bread enveloped them, I watched the strain melt off all their faces.
“It smells incredible,” Eve said, smiling.
“Wow, Bear,” Romi agreed. Their eyes roamed the still-steaming platters I’d set out on the counter. “This looks so good!”
“Let’s eat while it’s hot!” Daniel cried.
The room swelled with laughter. I passed out plates, and Tam opened the wine. If things had tentatively been going better lately, that night felt downright magical. Everyone was joking, helping serve each other across the counter, and playfully stealing bites off someone else’s plate. Daniel poured far too much to drink for everyone, and we finished it all, and then drank more. Even Eve was laughing, more relaxed than I’d seen her in a long time. The only thing that would have made it better was if Wally and Francis had been there, but I knew they’d be back from their latest trip and rejoin us soon. I would cook again, and I would figure out something to save us from my horrible secret. If I just worked hard enough, I could keep this feeling going forever.
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.