With an affectionate sigh, Felix slid the silver letter opener Dr. Young had left behind deftly into the gap in each envelope, sorting the pages into business and junk. There were still a fair number of congratulations cards coming in from old colleagues far and wide, as well as no shortage of invitations to various conferences and symposiums.
Then there was one simple white envelope, made out to Felix Kimble and bearing no return address.
He inspected it curiously and then slit it open. He was expecting mass-printed spam and almost tossed the whole thing into the junk pile, but the contents stopped him. The papers inside were old and custom-looking, and the ink on them darker and richer than what a typical office printer would produce.
Nell?
His heart leapt illogically, like it always did in the moment before he discovered whatever he’d foolishly hoped had been from her was actually mundane, and he felt a little foolish.
But when he turned the envelope over to glance at the back, his breathing quickened. Where the flap was, the sender had drawn a shape he immediately recognized.
An eight-point compass, with a small C in the center.
He moved too quick—the rest of the envelope tore clumsily, offering its contents.
Had she written him a goodbye letter? An explanation for why it had to be this way? It would be so like her, he thought. Damn you, Nell. Making yet another rash decision that affected them both and then stealing the final word.
Carefully, he reached in and pulled the note free.
After a long moment, Felix looked up, across the cluttered, book-crammed office, everything cast in pale gold as the dust motes swirled in the sunlight, and smiled.
It wasn’t a letter after all, but rather an invitation.
Printed on an old-fashioned offset press.
In the next few weeks, thousands of them would go out, to every university and library and museum in existence. The greatest secret in the world of cartography would no longer be a secret. It would be shared far and wide, so many maps printed that it would be impossible for anyone to do what Wally had done again.
Agloe would be for everyone.
But for now, until the postal service delivered the others, his invitation was the first copy.
The next page had no words. Just a picture, sketched in that singular frenzied scribble that he knew so well and loved so much.
Nell had drawn him a map.
A map to somewhere new.
Acknowledgments
In writing, there are no maps except the ones you create yourself. This book would not have been possible without the people, my landmarks, below.
Thank you to Naomi Kanakia, Mike Chen, and Jillian Keenan for always being willing to talk craft, first drafts, and the labyrinth of revision, and to my mother, Lin Sue Cooney, for always believing this novel was going to get finished. It never would have without you. And thank you to my husband, Sathyaseelan Subramaniam, for your constant friendship, tireless encouragement, and love.
I’m indebted to my agents, Alexandra Machinist and Felicity Blunt, who are both very wise and endlessly patient. To my editors, Emily Krump and Emad Akhtar, for helping me find the heart of this story, and to Danielle Bartlett, Ryan Shepherd, Stephanie Vallejo, Hope Breeman, Ploy Siripant, Julia Elliott, and everyone at William Morrow and Orion who make the incredibly difficult task of turning a manuscript into a book look easy. I’m also grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for its generous writing fellowship, and to the New York Public Library for being a place of wonder and inspiration.
Last, but not least, thank you to General Drafting Corporation for putting magic into maps. As I mentioned in the Author’s Note at the beginning, this book is a work of fiction, but its seed grew from a true story. General Drafting was a real business. Agloe really was a phantom settlement its founder hid on a map to protect his copyright. And it really did become real—for a time.