“Of course I did. He was wrong—look how wrong!”
“He was the senior curator of the Map Division. We were interns.”
“So I was supposed to let him lie? To embarrass me in front of all of our colleagues?”
She was lining up her argument—she would win this, she would make him see—but Felix didn’t have any fight left in him.
“Maybe this is my fault, for believing it could be different this time.” He sighed. “I’m done talking about the past. And the present.”
Nell felt sick. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done. One last favor, you said. For Swann. I think I’ve more than fulfilled that obligation.”
Nell gulped, trying to fight the lump back down into her chest. Her breath was starting to hiccup. Dimly, she was aware that Francis was still there, lurking somewhere behind her, too afraid to step farther away in case he lost track of her, but she didn’t care.
She had to convince Felix that she hadn’t meant to hurt him. That it wasn’t like that—that she had not chosen the map over him, again. She had to convince him to stay.
“I’m so close to figuring this out, Felix. I have to, we have to—”
That was the wrong thing to say.
“No,” he replied. “There’s no ‘we’ anymore.”
Nell was clenching the strap of her tote bag so hard she was afraid it was going to dissolve in her hand.
“This isn’t your job. It hasn’t been for a long time. Just let it go.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped, a little too loudly.
A couple of guests nearby glanced over, but Felix didn’t raise his voice back. “I’m serious, Nell. This isn’t a game. And it’s dangerous. Crimes have been committed. People have died. Just tell the police about the map, and—”
“You know I can’t,” she argued, quieter again, but no less upset. “If I do that, they’ll say it’s evidence, and it’ll get processed and put into closed-case evidence warehouse purgatory, and I’ll never see it again.”
“Who cares if they file it away, if you get your job back?”
“Because then I won’t be any better than him!” Nell hissed. “He spent his whole life trying to do something with this map, but failing, and I’m so close to figuring it all out. To doing whatever he couldn’t with it!”
Felix might have laughed or sighed. It came out as a dry, static cough. “Unbelievable. All these years, and you still can’t let it go. You could have everything you want back, but you’d rather throw it all away just to beat him. To prove you were right.”
“What do you know?” she asked. “You’re not even in maps anymore. You sold out.”
“I sold out?” he snapped, furious.
Nell grinned angrily even as she winced. She’d finally gotten under his skin and hit a nerve.
“I work at a good company, helping create technology that will make people’s lives better,” he retorted. “I’m bringing mapmaking into the future. I respect cartography. You’re the one who’s sold out by making knockoff trash at Classic for people who want a cheap piece of shit to hang over their fireplace so they look cultured!”
The air between them hung silent for several seconds as they both stared at each other, stunned. Guests toasted and admired the hanging collection all around the lobby, oblivious.
Finally, a weak laugh escaped from Nell’s throat. Her eyes stung. “Well, now that I know how you really feel . . .”