“It’s Naomi and Priya,” he said, seeing Naomi’s name as the sender, and William nodded. He tried to skim the message quickly, without being rude.
<Felix, we’re still in the office. Something weird is going on. The Haberson Map is showing that William is also where you are, at the house.>
“I’m sure they’re worried about you, too,” William was saying.
Felix put the phone away, already knowing what Naomi was telling him, and turned up his collar to keep the rain off. “I’m sorry I ran off. I just thought if I could find Nell . . .”
Naomi’s next message came in, another urgent buzz.
“Sorry, let me just tell her everything’s fine,” Felix apologized, as William shrugged off the interruption, unbothered.
He swiped the screen to reply—but found himself confused by Naomi’s words.
<But it’s telling us that William left before you. Way before.>
“We’ll figure all this out,” William assured him. He studied the scorched ground. “As long as you can explain what you’re doing here.”
“It was supposed to be a stepping-stone,” Felix replied. “Nell lost her mother here. She died saving Nell in a house fire when she was a baby. This was the house where it happened.”
William was silent for a few moments, as if considering something.
“It wasn’t here,” he finally said.
Felix paused, confused. A prickling sensation along the back of his neck needled at him, like a tiny warning.
Naomi’s messages were coming fast now, frantic. <William left before we found Nell’s old Rockland address and put it into the Haberson Map. How did he know about the house before us? How did he know where to go?>
Felix took a deep breath. Tried to ignore the feeling, tried to think. “How do you know the fire wasn’t here?” he asked William.
“Nell would have come then, wouldn’t she?” William answered. He gestured to the ground around them, to where their cars had stirred the mud and leaves together as they’d each crept up the long driveway. “Only two sets of tire tracks—ours. Do you think she’d drive all this way and not come to the place where her mother was last alive with her?”
Felix looked at the remains of the house again. “I guess not,” he said.
But something still didn’t make sense. He tried to shake off the growing unease.
<Felix, answer us. Are you okay?>
“But if Nell’s mother didn’t die here, then why is the house burned to ash?”
“To keep a secret,” William said.
“But what secret? Nell said the fire had been an accident,” Felix replied. “And her parents’ friends confirmed it. How would her mother have died, then?”
“Maybe the secret isn’t how,” William answered. “It’s where.”
“Where?” Felix repeated.
The chill of sudden understanding crept over him then.
William turned back to the house. “It’s like the Haberson Map. This has been the eternal struggle with our algorithm, hasn’t it?” He sighed thoughtfully. “The paradox that even if our map could be perfect, every bit of data completely measurable and knowable . . . the world it represents isn’t.”
Felix had listened to him quote this very speech many times over the years—William drifted off into exploring this personal philosophy of his more often than not during their brainstorming meetings. Could a perfect map only be developed for a perfect world? Or would the perfect map make the world within it perfect? he’d ask.