Tamara turned back to him, her curly hair tossing in the breeze just like Nell’s always did.
“She’s a Cartographer now,” she said. “Like she always wanted to be.”
A Cartographer.
He liked that. It wasn’t enough, but it was something to hold on to, at least. That even if Nell wasn’t here with them, she was still out there, somewhere, in Agloe. It was better than the alternative. And if anyone had any idea what had happened, it would be Tamara, and she was smiling at him, not crying.
Tamara put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go with them too, and let you have some time alone,” she said, and he nodded gratefully. “Take as long as you need. We’ll wait for you.”
Felix went to Swann’s body as she left and crouched beside him. It made his heart ache to see him up close. To see how much older he looked than the last time Felix had seen him, when he’d left the library. If only he’d gone to Dr. Young’s funeral, or not stormed out of the NYPL memorial event early. Their first conversation in nearly a decade wouldn’t have had to be their last, too.
He looked up. In the distance, the others were making their way through the grass back toward the road, Naomi and Priya leading as Francis and Humphrey half walked, half carried Wally between them, to where their car was still parked along the shoulder.
So much had changed in just one night.
Swann had come to help, but now would not be going back. The unconquerable Haberson Global had crumbled. Nell’s mother had returned, impossibly.
And Nell herself . . .
Nell . . .
After a few moments, Felix heard the faint sound of car doors slamming closed and the sputter of an engine coming to life, so the heat could be turned on. He imagined the local police pulling up around them, lights flashing, radios blaring. Naomi on the phone with Ainsley, explaining everything. The eventual news stories breaking that William Haberson had been arrested and was responsible for countless crimes. He tried to picture what was going on back at the sleek, towering Haberson offices right now, within the company that had once seemed like his whole world and now would utterly cease to exist.
And he wondered what would happen to the Haberson Map. It was easy with maps on paper—if you tore them, or burned them, they were gone. But what about a map like that? Where did it go when you turned it off for good?
Slowly, Felix touched Swann’s still, cold shoulder and told him he’d be right back. There was one other person he had to say goodbye to today, as well.
He stood and walked forward, deeper into the field, leaving the sounds of the humming engine and the others’ voices behind him. He kept going, until he was alone, and all he could see was meadow and the low gray sky.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” he said softly. The green absorbed the sound into its myriad blades of grass and did not reply.
He toed the dirt.
There was no point in staying. Nell could not answer him now, or probably even hear him. And there was so much to do. But he couldn’t make himself start the long walk back to Swann, and then back to the police to answer their thousands of questions, and then to reporters after that, and who knew what else.
He wished he and Nell had just had a little more time, or that there was some way he could see her again—but that was impossible now. She was in Agloe, wherever Agloe was, if it was anywhere at all. There was no way to get to it anymore.
But he had so much left that he needed to tell her. It was infuriating—for years, they’d had absolutely nothing to say to each other, and now all of a sudden there were a million things—but she was gone.
“Take care of yourself, Nell,” he whispered at last, his throat tight.
Something he’d heard her father sometimes say on the phone to colleagues at other institutions came to him, a memory from a lifetime ago. He smiled and wondered if perhaps it was something the Cartographers used to say to each other long ago, when they’d all still been friends.