She checked the images to be sure it was the same map and nodded to herself. She clicked replicate to create a new entry, snapped two quick pictures of her copy’s cover and legend with her phone, and then tweaked the details so it was accurate to her father’s piece. For Location, she put the NYPL. She’d take the map back to Swann tomorrow.
Log Identifier: [PENDING]
Specimen Name: Esso 1930 Highway Map, New York State
Date of production: 1930
Description: Mass produced foldable map depicting major highway routes of New York State by mapping company General Drafting Corporation for distribution at major gas station retailers in the relevant geographic area.
Attachments: [COVER.jpg] [LEGEND.jpg]
Date of log entry: 15 March 2022
Location: New York Public Library, Map Division Collection, Room 117 New York, New York, USA.
Status: In collection
Nell let out a long breath, her finger hesitating on the trackpad.
This would be it. Entering the final thing he was working on, its nonsensical worth aside, and closing the database out. The last goodbye.
Her eyes drifted over to the map.
She felt a tightness in her chest as she tried not to think about her father sitting at his desk in his sixties, years after that horrible fight, pulling this map out of the secret compartment in his desk to look at it.
Why? Just to remind himself of how alone he’d made himself?
Why to all of it. Why had he been, if not a good father when she was young, then at least possibly a proud mentor and colleague when she was an adult? Why had he let her work so hard her whole life, and then ruined it all in one moment? And why did he regret it afterward—enough to save this cursed piece of paper that had caused it all?
Why, Dad?
Nell stifled a hiccup before it turned into tears.
Enough.
She clicked submit, and the screen blinked as her entry was uploaded into the database. A moment later, a confirmation box popped up with her map’s log identifier number and a link to the entry. It was done.
“Hope the maps are good wherever you are now, Dad,” Nell finally said. “Better than this one, anyway.”
She closed the program.
In the darkness, Nell tossed the covers off and sat up in bed. The red numbers on her clock glowed in the dark, displaying a ghastly time.
She tried to blame it on the wine, but she knew it wasn’t that. It was the log, and her own superstitions about copying a bad entry for her own. It was silly, but so what? Even if her father didn’t deserve it, at least she’d sleep better.
Nell dragged herself to her laptop again. She reopened the database, squinting at the burst of light from the screen, and ran the same search, pulling up 213 entries this time—the same as before plus her newly created one. She clicked on the second entry in the list, to borrow that data instead.
Log Identifier: G77089257332
Specimen Name: Esso 1930 Highway Map, New York State
Date of production: 1930
Description: Mass produced foldable map depicting major highway routes of New York State by mapping company General Drafting Corporation for distribution at major gas station retailers in the relevant geographic area.
Attachments: [COVER_LEGEND.jpg]
Date of log entry: 13 May 1985
Location: Stamford County Public Library, Stamford, Connecticut, USA.
Status: MISSING
But it was missing, as well.
Nell frowned. These smaller libraries needed to take better care of their artifacts, no matter how minor. She clicked on the next one, her eyes jumping immediately to the bottom of the entry to check its status.