Chapter 15
15
Sybil
“Mom? You here?”
I dropped my purse on the kitchen table after using my key to let myself in. I’d been somewhere between a tornado of anxiety and a fog of disbelief for hours. Really, the only time I’d felt calm was with Kieran, helping me focus on my breathing and holding my wrist. I traced my fingers over the spot he’d rubbed and wondered if that was just his professionalism, his method of calming patients. Or maybe that was just for me. I shook my head at the silly thought and looked around the corner. “Mom?” The house was quiet. I should have called ahead, but when you’re given millions of dollars and pick up a fake boyfriend all in the same day, it’s easy to lose track of your manners.
Kieran had sat next to me through the whole thing, only dropping my hand when I had to sign documents and take a photo with the big cardboard check. He’d been sweet and kind and more like the man I’d met before I ran out on him than the grumpy one I’d encountered in the store that morning. He was going to be the perfect guy for this charade, I could feel it in my bones.
“Sybil!” Mom said, pushing through the door loaded down with bags. “You scared me.” Grace was behind her, carrying shopping bags. “What are you doing here? Your car was blocking my spot. I’ve asked you a hundred times not to do that.”
She hustled past, dropping the bags in the living room and circling back to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders for a squeeze. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just wanted to share some news.”
Mom squealed, an actual squeal, as she fell into the other chair at the small table. “You got a full-time job?” Her face was bright and her smile hopeful. I wondered if she knew her hands were clasped as if in prayer.
“No, not a job. I haven’t started looking yet.”
“Oh,” she said, that hopeful smile falling. “I thought for sure it would be a job after I put you in touch with my friend’s uncle in real estate. Did you call him yet? You really need to stop being lazy about this and get moving.”
“Um, no, I haven’t called him yet,” I said, not even remembering her giving me any contact information and trying not to let her reference to me being lazy hurt, though it did. It always had. Instead, I turned on a forced brightness. “But that sounds interesting. I’ll check into it.”
“Oh good,” she said, patting my arm. “I just want you to land somewhere. You’re so talented at so many things.” Mom stood and pulled a glass from the cupboard. “So, what is the news? Are you finally ready to tell us more about this guy you’ve been seeing?”
“No. I mean, well…kind of.”
Mom looked over her shoulder as she approached the sink to fill her glass. “What does that mean?”
“Well, remember Friday night, how I told you I hung out at the donut place?” This time I spoke to Grace. I hadn’t thought this would be so hard to get out, and I also wasn’t sure why I was burying a pretty significant lede with the millions of dollars, but I continued.
Grace nodded. “Sure. You went out there with the guy.”
“Kind of.” Technically, we hadn’t so much gone out as gone down the last time, but Mom didn’t really need those details. “It’s a wild story, actually. But we weren’t exactly seeing each other before, just, you know, flirting and spending time together.”
“Oh no. Honey…” Mom turned from the faucet. “You didn’t do something regrettable, did you? I just don’t know if I can handle another romantic storm from you. You’re not pregnant, are you? In trouble with drugs?”
I dug my fingernails into my palm to stifle the hurt response that triggered, the one deep down in my chest. “No! God, Mom.”
“Mom, just let her finish,” Grace urged.
“The guy actually owns the place, or his family does, and I’ve been going in there but I…well, I never told him my name. I wanted it to stay casual.” I’d worked out what I was going to tell them in the car, but to my own ears, this lie was cockeyed. “Not casual like casual sex, but like…slow and mysterious and romantic.”
“Oh, Sybil…” Mom’s face fell. “You’re going to bring a guy you’re just sleeping with to your sister’s wedding? Please, no.”
I rethought my lie. It wasn’t pregnancy or drugs, so she’d mentally skipped the part where I’d claimed a relationship with someone who didn’t know my name. “It’s not that. I like him, but I was afraid of getting hurt, but we like each other, so we’re really dating now.” That was a lie on so many levels that I held my breath.
Mom pulled me into a hug, her voice immediately softening. “It’s hard to open up our hearts, honey.”
I froze at her sudden shift. This was going better than I thought.
“That’s great,” Grace encouraged. “Can’t wait to meet him.”
“You’d like him,” I offered. “He cares about the community, and he’s running his family business. He’s even going back to medical school as soon as his grandfather’s health is better!”
“I don’t know why you lied to us,” Mom said, releasing me and walking toward the kitchen. “Or made me think the worst. Bring him by. I want to meet him.”
“Well, there’s more. I left something at the shop on Friday, and since he didn’t know my name yet, he didn’t have a way to get it back to me.” I glossed over the finer points about why I’d left it there and also decided not to sprinkle in how much fun I’d had with Kieran. That felt almost more intimate than what we’d done later. I waited for Mom to interrupt, but she was sipping her water patiently. “Well, thing is, he tried to find me to give it back, and there was a video online that kind of blew up.”
“Why was he so adamant about finding you?” Mom asked from the kitchen before taking a sip of water. “Didn’t he assume you’d be back if you’ve been flirting ?” She put emphasis on the word, implying flirting might still mean casual sex and perhaps a little light meth distribution.
“Well, that’s where it gets wild…”
“Wild how?” Grace asked. “What did you leave there?”
“Um,” I said, speaking with my chin tucked to my chest the way I had as a kid. “It was a lottery ticket.”
“Oh, Sybil,” Mom said, returning to her task with an eye roll. I didn’t need to see her face to know it was there. “That’s such a waste of money!”
“Yes, but not this time, because the ticket was a winner. Three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar jackpot.”
Grace screamed and Mom’s glass crashed to the ground, shattering into hundreds of pieces, the shards and water catching the overhead light like a kind of violently beautiful glitter.
Grace hugged me, her face a mask of shock, and Mom stood stone still in the middle of the glass. “Mom!” we both said, getting to our feet to clean the glass.
“Sybil, you won the lottery? You won the actual lottery?” She didn’t seem to notice the glass, and she was pale as a ghost, her hand shaking over her mouth. She kept repeating the question before I could answer. “Just, I’m sorry, you won the lottery?”
Grace grabbed the dustpan, and I scooped paper towels from the counter to clean up the glass. “Don’t move yet, Mom—there are shards all around you.” Grace began a circle around her to clean, but Mom didn’t seem to notice.
“Sybil Marie Sweet. You actually won the lottery? Like, you’re a millionaire?” Mom usually only used my middle name when I was in trouble, so this was a new context.
I slid a paper towel over the floor to catch glass and water. “Ouch!” I cried out when several shards made it through. It was the first time in my life Mom hadn’t lectured me about taking my time with cleaning broken glass. No matter, though; Grace was making quick work of it, and Mom was vibrating to get out of her circle of danger.
She finally screamed the way Grace had, and I grinned, joining her in the scream. “I know!”
Grace swept the last of the glass into the trash, and Mom leaped forward, wrapping me in her arms. “I can’t believe it!”
“This is unbelievable, Sybil!” Grace joined in, adding to the hug. “I have to tell Warren.”
“Do you want us to go to the lottery office with you?” Mom’s hands slid up and down my arms as if checking to make sure I was still actually there and this wasn’t a dream.
“I actually went this afternoon,” I said, and she froze, as did Grace.
“Alone? Honey! That’s not safe!”
“When did you get the ticket from the donut shop guy?” Grace motioned to my hand, where there were tiny trickles of blood from the run-in with the glass. In typical older sister fashion, she interrogated me while tending to my injuries.
“It all happened really fast. And I wasn’t alone, Mom.” I gave them the rundown, from the video to Marcus being my muscle to seeing Kieran again. That’s where I stumbled. I couldn’t tell them we were pretending to date, but I didn’t know how else to explain him. “We’d had such a connection when we talked, and I know it sounds wild, but when we saw each other again, it was there still. It’s…it might be something special, and I didn’t want to go alone, so he went with me to the office.”
Grace and Mom shared a look, their faces sporting matching creases between their brows.
“What?”
“It’s just a little convenient, right? That he’s interested in you and this connection blossoms the day you win the lottery?” Grace dabbed at my hand with a wet paper towel. “You’re being careful, right?”
“Yeah, it’s not like that. He doesn’t want money from me.” I bit my cheek at the lie. I knew it would be worth it.
“Things are different now, baby. How do you know this boy isn’t trying to scam you?”
Oh, Mom. If you only knew. “He’s a really nice guy. He’s a lot like Grace, actually.”
She gave a harrumph. “Don’t give him any money.” She left it there and then began writing down a laundry list of things I needed to take care of.
We were still at the kitchen table together thirty minutes later, and they’d moved on to a third page. I tried to breathe the way Kieran had told me to at the lottery office instead of admitting to the hives that list gave me. When Mom ran down the hall to grab another notepad, I pushed the list to the side. “Grace, I was thinking, I know I dropped the ball on the bachelorette party weekend and I was late for the appointment with the cake guy and I lost your wedding bands for a few hours when I picked them up for you, but I could pay for the whole wedding now!” My smile grew as I said it, feeling good about being able to contribute something. “And for your honeymoon, too.”
I expected another round of screaming, but Grace placed her hand on mine. “That’s way too generous,” she said. “You don’t need to spend your money on us. You can figure out what you really want. We’ve got this.” She hugged me, and the familiar scent of her perfume wrapped around me. “Thank you for the offer, though.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to ignore that niggling self-doubt. I’d been excited to contribute something to her wedding, to be able to be the hero, but now I felt that same old shame at trying to do something and failing.
After Mom returned, I stepped into the hallway, feigning a need for the bathroom, and pulled my phone from my pocket. I shook off my disappointment at Grace turning down my offer and opened the group chat with my friends.
Sybil: Update.
Emi: ?
Marcus: ?
Deacon: You had a sex dream about me?
Sybil: Are you sitting down?
Emi sent a selfie of the three of them together at their kitchen table with a delicious-looking dinner in front of them, no doubt prepared by my muscle, who really did need to be a chef.
Sybil: Don’t freak out
Emi: Just say it!
Marcus: Are you okay?
Deacon: Did the dream start with me sitting down?
Sybil: I’m pretending to date the donut guy, who is actually going to be a doctor, to impress my family and get good press for the shop. As far as you know, it was love at first sight, okay?
Emi: I have questions, but we got you.
Marcus:
Deacon: Was he in the dream, too? I’m just saying, I’m game.
I chuckled and tucked my phone away, bracing myself for a return to the kitchen table and the inevitable fourth page they’d moved on to in my absence. I rolled my shoulders back and took a step forward but paused when I heard their low voices.
“I don’t know why you’re worried,” Grace said in a hushed tone. “You’re always concerned about her keeping a job, and now she doesn’t have to. She’s going to be set.” I leaned against the wall and angled my ear to them.
“She’ll have plenty of money, but…” Mom paused, and I imagined Grace tilting her head to the side and welcoming part two without comment. In my head, I was already saying, “But what?” Mom sucked in a breath. “She doesn’t commit to anything. She never follows through. I was hoping that was on the horizon, and now she has no reason to.”
I stiffened at her observation and awaited Grace’s rebuttal, but Mom kept going. “And now this new guy she barely knows…I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong, but I think she’s going to keep flitting from thing to thing with no motivation to do anything or build anything. She’s always said she’s letting luck drive her, and now this…” The pause hung in the air for a moment. “I think this lucky break is going to ruin what little drive she had to find and do something meaningful.”
I covered my mouth to stop from sucking in an audible breath at Mom’s assessment. Hearing the words so plainly was like experiencing a long, slow paper cut. I knew I was the disappointing daughter, but I didn’t realize she’d already decided I was such a lost cause.
“Syb is so talented,” Grace said, voice pitched low. “She’s got so much potential.”
“She does. She always has, but she never sticks with anything or anyone long enough to realize it.” Mom let out a heavy sigh. “Now, with all this money, I worry she’s going to keep flying in circles until she crashes, and if he’s actually a good guy, which I don’t believe yet, she’s going to crash into this boy and his small business.” She flipped the list in front of her, the paper rustling.
“Okay,” Grace said slowly. “But can you imagine how great she’d be if she found the right thing and stuck with it?”
I couldn’t hear my mom’s response, but my eyes stung with the impending tears at the plain prediction. This was perhaps the luckiest day of my life, and I was pressed against a wall listening to my own mother describe how I had no hope of being a serious person living a meaningful life.
If I ever wanted to, I had a sense this was the time. Blowing off things with Kieran and the shop wasn’t an option—it would just further cement that nothing had changed. I wiped away the tears and walked toward the bathroom in the hall to splash water on my face. I’d show them I was serious about this, that I could commit, that I was doing something meaningful, that I could make a real difference, even if the thing with Kieran was fake. I looked at myself in the mirror. “Time to show them I found the right thing.”