Mapmaker (3 page)

After my mother died, after the funeral—after the mourners had left their bright bouquets and the well-wishers had dropped off their baked goods and casseroles—I was filled with a sadness so heavy I could barely stand the weight of it. I knew she was dead. But I was young, and I still believed in heaven. The funeral had sent her on her way. I would lie on my bed sending kisses up to the sky.

For my father there was no funeral, no ashes, or burial. Only a stiff memorial. Wilted flowers at an empty gravesite.

He was killed on a mapping expedition in Cambodia. I remember very clearly how Harrison had tried to stop him from going, warning that the trip was too dangerous; besides, MapOut didn’t have the money to cover his insurance. The countryside was still pocked with land mines. The area was impossibly remote. The argument marked the first real rift between them, and their last: the natural culmination of long-brewing tension.

When it came down to it, Dad had partnered with Harrison because he loved the art and adventure of cartography. But Harrison was a businessman. There was no commerce in rural Cambodia, no lucrative “demographic” MapOut could target
with advertisers. Advertising ruled at MapOut. It paid the bills. Exploring the unknown for exploration’s sake did not.

Dad went anyway, of course. He even used one of Harrison’s business strategies against him: Harrison’s portrayal of Dad as the “brand” of the company. The rugged genius. The lone pioneer. The old-fashioned cartographer, documenting the uncharted until every inch of Earth could be known and seen. Wasn’t that MapOut’s promise? Harrison himself had turned Michael Barrett into its poster child, and this trip proved he was living up to the image … which by definition meant it was good for business, regardless of risk or cost.

Cambodia
. I could picture what had happened. Dad had strayed from the team with his compass and measuring stick. Because in the end, Harrison was right about Michael Barrett: that was what he did; that was what made him who he was. He’d wandered out of cell range—if there had even been any at all—off the GPS and satellite locators. And then he was caught in a flash flood, gone in an instant.

There was nothing left of him. His team eventually found a waterlogged notebook, the ink so smeared across the page that it looked like a watercolor painting. A few days later, the baseball hat from his college days turned up several miles downstream: his good-luck charm.

The only other remnant of the tragedy is satellite footage of the water cresting over the riverbanks. I watched it with Harrison and Beth after Harrison broke the news, all of us in tears. Everything just goes blue, though. You don’t hear my dad’s cries for help; you don’t even see him—the resolution isn’t sharp enough. In stillness and silence, death seems painless. The water rises and recedes, taking my father with it.

The last time I’d pulled into this parking lot, MapOut was still small-time, occupying only the third floor. In the past six months it had taken over the entire building. Much of it was under new construction. I could hardly recognize it as the old paper-manufacturing plant, built of stately red brick, perched on the banks of the Mill River and renovated a decade earlier for an impending boom.

That boom seemed to have arrived.

I
knew
that things were going well. There had been some big acquisition by a major tech company, Rytech International. Harrison had explained it all to me even though I didn’t care. All I remembered from that conversation was that Harrison felt guilty. Right after Dad died, he’d offered Beth a deal: she could sell my dad’s shares in MapOut or keep them. Harrison told her there was a good chance that the company might sink, and I knew he believed it. If MapOut failed, we would be left with nothing except bankruptcy
lawyers. Beth agreed to the payout and accepted a settlement for $350,000.

At the time, she was head-over-heels grateful. It was almost sickening. But I understood her gratitude. She had the rest of the mortgage on the house to pay, plus all the monthly bills on a kindergarten teacher’s salary.

Plus taking care of me.

When she and Dad first hooked up, I was just Internet-savvy enough to research every part of her background, hoping to find something scandalous or incriminating. I still didn’t want anyone taking my mother’s place. What I discovered only made me weirdly angrier. She was blameless. She came from a poor family in Pittsburgh. She’d won a scholarship and put herself through UMass, where she got an advanced degree in Early Childhood Education. And then she’d come to Amherst to teach kindergarten.

Needless to say, she used the settlement money to pay off the mortgage; she paid off her car loan; she put a chunk into a seven-year CD that would be mine after college. But she could have had so much more, and Harrison knew it now—but only after the fact, after this big company had swooped in after his partner’s death and saved his struggling start-up. Maybe that was why he was so insistent that I take this internship.

Staring up at the scaffold, I felt a flash of anger at Dad. He should have listened to Harrison. He should have lived long enough to see the company’s sudden success. I still remembered how he and Harrison would work from the office in our house with only one intern—an Amherst junior named Fred, glued to the screen, hunchbacked, with thick glasses, always guzzling Coca-Cola.

As I made my way to the parking lot, I spotted Harrison’s black Audi station wagon sparkling under the sunlight. I wondered if I could put my bike on the roof. There was no room on the general rack, already crowded with the bikes of the other paid interns from Amherst, UMass, Hampshire, and Smith.

One of the reasons MapOut stayed in this area was because of the inexpensive intelligence. “Ivy League brains at sweatshop prices,” Harrison liked to say, thinking he was being funny. He was always oblivious to how offensive he sounded. That was another difference between him and Dad, and one that I wish Dad would have called him on more.

As I hesitated, a car pulled into the lot, a navy-blue Jetta. The windows were rolled down, and music spilled out into the sun.

I spotted a Stanford University sticker on the rear windshield.

Connor
. My stomach squeezed. I was half tempted to turn around and pedal away. How had I forgotten that Harrison’s son would be a part of the MapOut operation this summer? He and I had been friends when we were young—playmates, really, thrown together while our fathers worked or hung out—until he left for boarding school. Then we lost touch. Or more like he lost touch with me. Screw it; if I was completely honest with myself (and there was no reason not to be), I could admit the truth: he’d hurt me. Even before boarding school, he’d put distance between us. I hadn’t seen him in three years, not since that summer before ninth grade.

Pretending not to notice him, I walked my bike into a shady spot beneath the trees. The engine died. The music stopped. A car door opened and closed. I stood still, gripping the handlebars of my bike, hoping I was camouflaged.

“Tanya!”

I still recognized his voice, but it was deeper now. I gripped the handles of my bike tighter. There was no use ignoring him.

“Hey, Tanya!” he shouted again, louder.

I wanted to act surprised but casual, but my eyes widened when I looked up. He was nearly a spitting image of his father. His face was narrower, and somehow softer, too, punctuated by bright green eyes. He’d grown a little under five inches since I’d last seen him; he was six-one now. His shoulders were broader, so the messy brown “I’m-in-college” mop hair finally made sense. His jaw had lost its baby fat. He wore jeans, grey sneakers, and a navy T-shirt with
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
printed across the front.

“Hey!” he yelled with a smile, running to catch up to me.

“Hey,” I said.

“How are you?” He met my gaze, then avoided it, then met it again. His smile faltered. “My dad told me you’d be working here. I’m just … I want to say I’m sorry about your dad. I wish I could have been at the service.”

“Thanks.” I nodded, then stopped myself, wondering why I was nodding. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with self-consciousness, imagining how I looked to him. The pathetically sad figure, the orphaned daughter of his dad’s dead best friend. My bike helmet was fastened tightly beneath my chin, my school backpack on, my pants tucked into my socks so they didn’t get caught in the bike’s gears. Were my armpits sweaty?

“Anyway, it’s nice to see you,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

“Three years.” I wasn’t sure why I needed to clarify. Then
things got worse. The Velcro on my helmet stuck to my hair as I tried to pull it from my head.

“Hey, let me help you,” he offered.

“It’s okay. I’m used to it. This happens all the time. Sometimes I just leave my helmet hanging from my hair all day so I won’t lose it.”

He laughed and walked up beside me, gently tugging my hair loose from the knotted strap, then handed me the helmet. “There.”

“Thanks.” I’d managed to get one pant leg free from my sock. I was working on the other when my backpack fell off my shoulder. I imagined myself back at home with Beth, sobbing into her pillow as the birds chirped. It didn’t seem so bad.

“So my dad really convinced you to take the internship,” he said. He sounded as if he were talking to himself.

“It’s good for college,” I said, sounding like a robot.

“I guess it is. That’s why I took it. Résumé-building. I …” He drew in a breath.

“What?” I asked, feeling even more self-conscious.

He smiled slightly. “I’m just glad you said that, too. Honestly I wanted to intern for Habitat for Humanity. I was all set to go to Tanzania and help on this well-building project, but Dad seems to think this internship will be better for ‘my future’ …” He broke off again, maybe embarrassed at how he’d managed both to put down his dad and extol his own virtues. “Never mind.”

“So, where
do
you go to college, anyway?” I said. I gestured to his T-shirt. I don’t know why I felt the need to make fun of him. On the other hand, his perfection practically begged for it.

His cheeks turned pink. “It was the only clean shirt I had.”

“I was just kidding.” My voice was weak. I felt a pinch in my ribs—why did I say that just to be mean? Now I was the bitter, mean orphan. Wonderful.

At least he gave up any pretenses of being chipper. “Have you been inside yet? They’re completely remodeling.”

I shook my head.

“Come on. I’ll show you around.”

The air inside was
dusty, barely breathable. Connor led me up cement stairs past the first two floors, cordoned off under heavy plastic construction drapes, to where the original office had been. A young woman with very pale white skin and a dyed-black bob sat on the phone at a long white desk. Above her hung a banner of glowing lights spelling MapOut. Her red sandals tapped the floor as she typed the caller’s information into the computer. “Harrison is in a meeting at the moment …”

On the other side of the large room were office cubicles. I saw a bunch of kids barely older than me, typing away: Harrison’s collegiate sweatshop brain trust. Brand-new boxes of unopened Macs stood against the wall. A team of deliverymen were assembling Knoll furniture—red and orange chairs, white round tables. For a second I was dizzy. Rytech International must have given MapOut more money than I’d even imagined. No wonder Harrison felt guilty. This
was
the same floor the old office had occupied, but it had been completely redone. It was unrecognizable.

Connor ushered me past the receptionist to a pair of double glass doors and knocked lightly. Harrison had a private suite
now. I wondered what had happened to my father’s old office, what had happened to his equipment.

“Come in,” Harrison called.

I’m not sure why, but my eyes began to sting. That gravelly tone, that slight Boston accent; I had grown up with this voice. Connor nudged me inside.

Harrison was already hurrying around a vast mahogany desk. He wore a grey linen suit with a white T-shirt beneath. He opened his arms wide to sweep me into the warm, familial hug he always did.

“Tanya, hello. I’ve got that college trust set up for you. I’ll take you out to lunch one day this week and we can talk about it,” he murmured. Then he stepped back and gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. I could smell the watery spice scent of his aftershave. “All you have to do is get grades again like you used to.”

I nodded with a half smile.
Business first
. That was his way. “Connor, I want you to show Tanya the data input she’ll be doing. I have a lunch meeting in Boston.” He glanced quickly at the stainless-steel chain-link watch hanging from his wrist.

“Sure, Dad,” Connor said, his voice equally abrupt.

“How’s Beth doing?” he asked.

At first I wasn’t sure if Harrison was talking to me. He texted a message on his phone, then slipped it into his suit pocket.

“She’s okay,” I said. “She got the roof fixed finally so it’s not leaking. She’s thinking about going back to work …” What I really wanted to ask was, How could MapOut afford this huge renovation? How much was the Rytech acquisition worth?