As the ambulance pulled away, I saw a flicker of movement in the trees. It was Wally, I realized. He seemed so far away, so hollowed out, that he looked more like a stone than a person, just part of the landscape. Or maybe more like a ghost.
I was so buried in my pain, I couldn’t even raise my voice to tell him to get into one of the cars. But I could see that he wouldn’t ever have come anyway.
“Come on, Wally,” Bear finally said. Each word was such an effort, they barely made it past his lips. “We have to go.”
But Wally took a step back, receding farther into the trees, disappearing.
He was going back to the field, I knew. That empty, empty field. Looking for a way back in, even though it was impossible.
We stayed in the motel for two weeks, waiting for the case to close. The firefighters combed through the rubble four times over searching for Tam’s remains, until the station chief finally told them to give up. The whole house had been made of wood, which burns hotter than a house made of mixed materials, the sheriff told us when he broke the news. If a fire smoldered so long, sometimes not enough could be found to make an identification. I think he just wanted to be done with us, more than anything. Rockland was a peaceful little place, unused to such agony. We all were barely alive, barely able to even hear him, whenever he came to the motel to update us. He was a father too, he’d told us the first night—I could see how Daniel’s grief haunted him. By the end, he couldn’t even look Daniel in the eyes. Couldn’t finish his sentences if you were in the room, whimpering helplessly. Couldn’t wait to escape us.
And the whole time, Wally was barely there.
Sometimes late at night, I thought I could hear the creak of his door at the end of the walkway, but he was never inside his room when any of us went to knock. Because he was out there, trying to find a way back to Agloe.
The only time I saw him was the day they closed the case. It was late and dark, and I was sitting on a plastic chair by the motel’s dirty, silent pool, staring at nothing. I heard the gate open, and then he came around the corner, on his way to his room.
He looked terrible. He was barely more than a skeleton.
“They closed the case” was all I could say.
“I don’t care,” he answered.
His voice was toneless, like it wasn’t even coming from him, or rather, like he was very far away. He was, in a way. He was still in Agloe, even though his body was here.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Wally murmured. When I looked up, his eyes were fixed on the dark, still water.
“The fire? Weren’t you trying to destroy them all anyway?”
“No,” he said. He raised his hands and then let them drop.
I didn’t understand at first—until I did.
“You were trying to destroy all of them—but one,” I said.
Wally nodded. “The town was safe from outsiders, but it wasn’t safe from us. There were still thousands of chances for me to be betrayed again, no matter how carefully I tried to guard them all. I had to fix that.”
He could not possibly keep track of thousands of copies. But he could keep track of just one.
“I was going to take them out and burn them safely. All of them but the original. The one Tam and I found together. But then everyone started fighting, and Nell . . . and Tam had to save her . . . and . . .”
For a moment I thought he might cry. But there was nothing left inside of him.
“I just wanted one thing,” he finally said. “Daniel and Nell could have her love, all of you could have her friendship, the whole world could have her brilliance. I just wanted one thing that could be ours. That’s all.”
I looked down because I couldn’t bear to keep looking at him.