“I meant it when I said that you should drop this,” he repeated once they’d stopped.
“You don’t understand,” she started.
“No, you don’t.” He glanced around. “Do you have any idea how dangerous all of this is? Or who else could be here tonight?”
“You mean Wally?” she cut in. Francis blinked, surprised. “I told you. I know more than you think, Francis. Too much for you to keep ignoring me.”
Francis sighed. “Trust me, whatever it is that you think you’ve stumbled onto, you have no idea. There’s so much more that—”
“I know about the phantom settlement,” she interrupted. “I know about Agloe.”
She expected Francis to either tell her she was wrong yet again, or turn around and run away like the last time.
But instead, his entire face changed.
The room around them seemed to contract, voices receding into the background, as he edged closer. He was no longer glaring tensely at her. Instead, he seemed to be trying to shield her with his body, blocking her from view. As if to protect her from something.
Did he really think Wally was here? In the middle of a giant, public party? There was security everywhere, including Haberson’s systems now. There was no way for anyone—even someone as brazen and dangerous as they all seemed to think Wally was—to try anything tonight. Nowhere for him to hide.
“I’m impressed,” Francis said, after a long, silent moment. When he spoke again, his voice was so much softer. “Which one of them did you wrestle it out of? Ramona or Eve? They both doted on you so much when you were a baby. Couldn’t keep them away.”
“Neither of them,” she said. “I put it together myself.”
Francis looked down, as if he might be ill. He removed his glasses to clean them on the silk handkerchief from his pocket. His hand was shaking, Nell saw.
“Please, just tell me,” she begged. “Why is the map so important, for something so common and practically worthless? Why did it destroy your friendship? Why is Wally still looking for it, after all this time?”
And what does a phantom settlement have to do with my mother’s death, if anything? she wanted to ask.
“I can’t,” Francis whispered. “I promised your father. We all did.”
“I’ll go public,” Nell challenged him, desperate.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
“I will, unless you tell me.”
“That would be the worst possible thing you—”
“I’m a Young,” she said defiantly. “You knew two of them well enough to know I won’t give up either.”
Francis grimaced.
“Tell me,” she urged. “Why is a little mistake on a map so important?”
His voice was barely audible. “It’s because it’s not a mistake.”
“Fine, I misspoke,” Nell said, conceding the point. Eve had said that phantom settlements were placed deliberately, just in secret. “It’s a copyright trap, not a mistake.”
Francis shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”
A smattering of applause and a nearby toast drew their attention for a moment, and Nell leaned in. “Are you talking about the copyright infringement lawsuit?” she asked.
“That’s what started it,” he allowed. “Even though General Drafting had been the first to realize that driving maps were the future of mapmaking and made early deals with national gas station chains to supply its maps to anyone who stopped to fill up their tank, automobile ownership just kept increasing, and the demand for this kind of map skyrocketed. The profits were too much for the bigger companies to ignore. They wanted in on the market too, and would stop at nothing to get it.”