“Something she had to keep safe from Wally,” Nell finally said.
Outside, a gentle rain had begun falling as they drove, misting the windshield and turning the road slick.
The patter against the roof swallowed Francis’s words as he leaned forward. “Let’s slow down,” he said as he stared out the windshield. “We don’t want to attract attention by speeding, in case he’s following us.”
“He already knows Nell still has the map,” Humphrey replied. “Where else could she be heading but there?”
“We just have to get inside before he catches up,” Francis said. “Then we’ll be safe.”
“And trapped,” Ramona added.
Humphrey’s eyes were locked grimly on the road ahead. “We’re already trapped,” he said. “We’ve all been, since we first found the town.”
For a moment, no one said anything. Despite Francis’s advice, Nell felt the car speed up a little more beneath them.
“It’s happening all over again,” Eve murmured. “Who would have thought that decades later, we’d be doing the exact same thing, in some inescapable cycle?”
Nell watched a collective shudder pass through the group.
“All of us together, going back to this same terrible place,” Francis said. “We even have Nell with us.”
“You’ve grown up so much,” Eve said to her, studying her tenderly. “You look . . .”
“Just like Tam,” Ramona agreed.
Almost like she was taking her mother’s place, Nell could tell that she meant. A chill slipped down her back at the open fear she could see in their eyes.
“And Swann makes a fine Daniel,” she said. “If everything is repeating all over again.”
“It should be Felix then, not me,” Swann replied.
She put her hand on his. “I’d rather be going with you.”
He smiled at her. “You’re really sure you don’t want me to call him?” he asked.
“Very sure,” she said.
She thought Swann was going to beg her to tell him what happened again, but instead he just said, “I’m sorry.”
Nell sighed in response. She would not admit that she was, too.
“Just give it time,” he offered. “Maybe he’ll come around.”
Nell shook her head. “He won’t. Not after I ruined things again.”
When she looked up, she realized that the faintest hint of a smile was on his lips.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Swann said. “It’s just, that’s the first time in seven years that when I suggested you two might patch things up, you said ‘he won’t,’ instead of ‘I won’t.’” He smiled. “It gives me hope it might work out after all.”
“Why, because this time Felix hates me instead of me hating him?” She scoffed.
Swann shook his head. “My dear,” he said, his voice gentle. “He’s never hated you. It was always you standing in the way of you both.”
“That’s not true,” Nell said.
It couldn’t be. Felix was the one who left the first time. And he was the one who left again this time.
But then again, she had asked him for only a few minutes of advice the day after the breakin. It was Felix who kept coming back to her. He was the one who wandered into the same bar they always used to visit because of the memories, and then stayed. He was the one who invited himself to her apartment for dinner.