Chapter 13
Night Five
Sybil
Sybil still hadn’t gotten used to Zeke’s easy handsomeness, to the way that she felt like maybe he was flirting with her.
But wasn’t that a ridiculous thought? She was probably mistaking kindness for flirtation.
She’d given in to his proposal for a sleepover.
She’d boarded Pluto with their dog walker because Mark was allegedly working an overnight shift (again), and since this was a night for an Insomniacs gathering, she thought why not, what the hell.
Sleeping alone in the perfume-scented king-sized bed in their pied-à-terre had already lost its appeal.
She’d spend the time listening to another bleak murder-y podcast or watching some gruesome documentary—Death on Cruise Ships or Rocky Mountain Horror House, and wondering if she could make Mark’s body disappear.
Betty had left early for her shift, and Julian texted that he had something come up, so it was just the two of them.
Zeke had greeted her in his sponsored tracksuit and fleece slippers, and Sybil felt a little foolish in tapered jeans and a cashmere sweater, but she didn’t know how to be casual in front of him yet.
She was always too aware of her age, of the fact that she needed tinted moisturizer to get her skin to look normal, that if she slipped on Eloise’s sweatpants, she wouldn’t have the luxury of looking like she hadn’t just given up.
The cliff between chic and dowdy was a steep one in your forties.
It was midnight now, and she decided to make them baked ziti.
She’d gone to the organic co-op in her town and shown up with a full bag of groceries, even though Zeke said his assistant could just as well pick them up.
But she needed to stay busy. She needed to be busy.
Eloise had called and said she regretted not taking a gap year, which spiraled into an argument about Sybil pressuring her to go right to college and pressuring her even more to become a doctor.
Like Eloise hadn’t been the science star all through high school!
Forgive me, Sybil had shouted, for supporting your interests!
Charlie never called, which made her wonder if he missed his mother at all, and if not, what she had done wrong such that he hadn’t.
And Mark? She sighed as she sliced a perfectly round, perfectly red tomato.
She’d sharpened her knives last night, and the cut was incredibly satisfying.
“At what point,” Zeke was saying—he was lounging in his breakfast nook, and Sybil had a hard time meeting his eyes— “do you think our bodies will just break down, just collapse from never sleeping?”
“Mine sooner than yours,” she said, then regretted it because she didn’t want him to think she was fishing for compliments.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You seem to be holding it together.”
“My back disagrees.”
“Have you seen my eyelid?” he countered.
“Sometimes when I stand up too quickly, I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Sometimes at PT,” he said, “I get so angry that I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.”
“Sleep does control your mood,” Sybil said.
“You learned that at Harvard?”
She dared to look at him now, and he was smiling.
“You know that I learned that at Harvard,” she said, smiling back. “Anyway, how are things going with Betty?”
“Fine? I wouldn’t say she’s particularly expressive.”
“And you don’t have…anyone else in your life to keep you company?
” Sybil was digging, obviously. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him about his love life yet, but when she wasn’t thinking about true crime podcasts late at night and wasn’t playing Sudoku, she was googling Zeke’s ex-girlfriends, creeping onto gossip boards to see what sort of partner he was rumored to be.
“You’re the only girl in my life right now.”
Sybil felt her eyes go wide, and her knife stopped in midair.
“Oh shit,” he said, his own eyes wide. “I didn’t mean…I mean, obviously, there’s Mark. I wasn’t implying…”
“There is indeed Mark,” she concurred, and slid the knife cleanly through another tomato. He hadn’t meant anything by it; she needed to get a grip.
Mark had been charming at first. Of course.
More than at first, if Sybil was being honest. They were each assigned to assist in a clinical oncology study, and it was immediately clear that he thought she was brilliant.
She loved this about him. She loved this about herself.
It helped that he had a curated stubble, a swimmer’s build and, honestly, he wasn’t dumb.
He just wasn’t Sybil. He kissed her one night when they were trying to get a few hours of sleep in the break room, and then when their shift was over, they stumbled home bleary-eyed and took off each other’s clothes.
Had she thought they would get married and have twins?
She wasn’t sure she was a reliable narrator in her own story anymore.
But if she hadn’t gotten pregnant during their residency, she suspected they would have fizzled out.
Her heading off to a prestigious fellowship at Stanford or Hopkins; him landing at some midtier hospital where his dad, a retired but important cardiologist, had pull.
Sybil sighed aloud, and Zeke, popping a handful of supplements he’d read might alleviate the sleeplessness, sat up straighter.
“Okay, well, if you insist on cooking, how can I help?”
“You are down to one working arm,” she said. “Let me do this. Really, I enjoy it.”
“That’s a lie,” he laughed. “You know you’re very type A, right?”
“Eldest daughter. Workaholic parents. Tale as old as time.”
“So what happened?” he asked.
She set the knife down.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened with the doctor thing? You…I mean…you mention it…a lot? Maybe that would help, with the sleep. A job.”
Sybil angled her body so she was sure he couldn’t see the rush of blood to her cheeks. Obviously, that would fucking help, Zeke.
“I didn’t mean…” he said, then stuttered. “I just meant that you seem supercompetent. That’s all. Like, I happen to be good at one thing. And only one thing. But I think if we were in a foxhole, you’d be the person I’d want by my side.”
Now she turned toward him with a smile. This was exactly the sort of compliment that charged Sybil Foster’s battery. Her love language was appreciation, and Zeke unknowingly realized that. She couldn’t say that she wasn’t at least a little turned on.
“I basically raised my siblings,” she said. “My brother’s a state senator. My sister runs a tech company in Palo Alto.”
He rose, and for a brief moment, Sybil imagined that he was going to cut the distance between them into nothing and kiss her.
He instead made his way to the refrigerator, opened it and tilted over, looking for something or other while Sybil admired the way that his T-shirt clung to his back muscles.
He righted himself. “Okay, so what are you going to do now with all that competence? I don’t think, um, er, I assume that you can’t still be a doctor?”
Sybil shook her head. If she knew what else she could do with her life, she’d be doing it.
“I guess I like helping people.”
“Well, that’s not nothing. That’s actually a very big something,” Zeke said.
“I’m not sure about that. It’s sort of already factored in when you have kids. The caretaking.”
“Okay, but they’re gone now. What about, like”—he stared up at the ceiling—“like a life coach?”
Sybil burst out a staccato laugh. “I don’t even have my own life together. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m making ziti at midnight and have circles under my eyes that they could measure the diameter of in geometry classes.”
“Well, (a) that’s not true, I’ve never even noticed the circles, and (b) isn’t that a thing with therapists? Doesn’t everyone say that they are the most screwed up?” Zeke smiled.
“No, I don’t think everyone says that.”
“Well, you haven’t met mine. The one the team insists on.
” He smiled wider, pleased to be entertaining her.
Sybil found herself staring at him and he back at her, and she could hear the blood pounding in her ears, which is why—she realized later—she must not have seen or heard Betty slip back into the apartment and announce herself in the kitchen.
“Hello?” Betty said. Then repeated herself, only louder—a sharp bark that punctured the thick air in the kitchen.
Sybil was so startled that she jumped at least a foot in the air at the surprise, shouting “Jesus Christ,” and knocking the newly sharpened knife off the counter with the small of her back.
Then watching in horror as gravity plunged it directly into the vortex where her big toe met the top of her foot.
If Sybil Foster had been listening to the scene on one of her podcasts, she would have known right then that this was an omen. Instead, the only thing she did was scream.