“How did you realize that he still had it?” she asked, voice trembling. “All these years later?”
“I’ve known for a long time,” Wally said. “Seven years, actually. It’s just taken me that long to find a way to get my company into the NYPL.”
Felix looked at him in horror.
“I remember how much you loved maps, too. Even as barely more than a baby,” Wally continued. “When I heard about the Junk Box Incident, I knew something was wrong. You would never leave the library willingly, and your father would never damage your career like that. Unless . . .”
Nell closed her eyes.
Her father must have known what would eventually happen, that day. He had not gone to beg Ramona to hide the map out of fear, but rather certainty. And still, he had given everything to keep her safe.
“How many nights, I searched that place. Every exhibit, every archive. He was not supposed to see me any of those times.” Wally sighed. “But then, he did. And I knew if I didn’t act quickly, he would be forced to hide the map somewhere else—or perhaps even to tell you everything. I had to stop him before he could do it.”
Nell couldn’t find her voice.
“I was only trying to protect you,” he said. “To finish it before you had to get involved.”
When she finally opened her eyes, she saw that his free hand was out, beckoning.
“This can all be over now. Give me the map.”
“Please, no one has to get hurt. Put the gun down, and we can talk,” Swann urged.
But Wally pressed the muzzle closer to Felix, and Nell’s heart flailed.
“Don’t give it to him,” Felix insisted grimly.
But she couldn’t think. “It’s yours,” she said to Wally. She held the map up a little, trembling. “It’s yours. I just . . .”
She needed to stall, to keep Wally talking, but her mind was a runaway train—speeding nearly off its tracks, too fast for her to come up with anything helpful. Her finger slipped slowly into the first fold of the paper as she turned the map over, and she caught a glimpse of a swath of countryside, delicately veined with roads.
She had been so close. So close.
“Can I do it?” Nell blurted.
The others braced, but Wally cocked his head.
“That’s what you want, right? To go back to Agloe with the map?” she asked. “I want to be the one to do it, just one time.”
Wally might have smiled, but it was barely a shadow of an expression. Finally, he nodded. “Your mother would have liked that,” he said.
“No, Nell,” Swann hissed desperately to her. “You can’t lock yourself in there with him. He’s got a gun, and—”
“I know,” she whispered back, helpless. But Wally was too determined, too consumed. “I don’t know what else to do.”
She took a few steps forward, her heart racing, her shoes squelching in the mud, as Swann clung to her sleeve, continuing to plead with her. She pulled the hood of her cardigan out from her head as wide as she could, to shield the map from the rain, and then looked to Ramona.
“How do I . . . ?” she asked softly.
“Just open it,” Ramona answered at last.
Nell unfolded the map and stared at the all-too-familiar lines. The sea of pale green and the roads she knew so well by now.
“Find the town,” Ramona said.
Her eyes darted, searching, trailing up from New York City into Sullivan County, toward the Catskills.