Chapter 25
Night Ten
Betty
Thanksgiving
Betty didn’t know what to expect when she trudged out to Sybil’s house for Thanksgiving.
Growing up, her family hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t like she had been invited to anyone’s home for the feast in the ensuing years since she’d left.
Caleb had gone to his parents’ place in Maryland for the holiday, but she hadn’t expected him to invite her and would have turned him down even if he had, despite promising Zeke she’d extend an invitation.
They were sleeping together now, not Betty’s first time, but she wasn’t exactly a pro, and full admission, if Betty had been another type of girl in another type of life, maybe she would have begun to wonder what the future had in store for them.
But she wasn’t, so she didn’t. Betty could live only from moment to moment, other than the bag of cash at Grand Central and being aware of all of her nearby emergency exits.
She had to be willing to pull that lever at the first sign that she needed to.
Betty could hear voices that sounded heated through Sybil’s front door, so she hovered her finger over the doorbell out of habit, trying to eavesdrop.
She hadn’t grown up in a house of yellers.
Her father’s word was the final word, and Betty couldn’t dream of her mother challenging him.
Levi got in his face once when he was a teenager, but that ended quickly when Levi was kicked out.
But her other two brothers and Patience, no, never.
Patience was the one who taught her: Avoid eye contact, keep your head low, speak softly, say yes when spoken to.
Betty always assumed that Patience hated it as much as she had, but then Patience married Matthew and had no problem being a fully subservient wife to him and keeper for her father’s ever-changing rules, so Betty, it turned out, had entirely misjudged her.
That realization was more devastating than Patience’s about-face.
Betty pushed the doorbell, and Sybil swung the door open, and for a flicker of a second, Betty thought her face was all shadow.
Then there was the Sybil she knew, a smile full of teeth, cheeks perfectly blushed.
Betty couldn’t be sure, but she thought Sybil had gotten her highlights done in the past few days.
Whatever it was, was working, like she’d shed her veil of fatigue just in the nick of time for the gathering.
“Well, don’t you look gorgeous,” Betty said, an entirely different person from just a few seconds ago, and stepped inside.
Maybe she was an actor’s actor. The commercial shoot had gone well; it would be airing starting next week.
Natalie wanted to send her out for more.
Betty had declined, but Natalie was pushy, and the money was life-changing.
“That’s what happens when you leave your husband,” Sybil whispered, leaning into Betty’s ear.
Betty could smell alcohol on her breath.
“I hope you didn’t hear me yelling just then.
I’ve found that since I’ve stopped caring, I just say whatever the fuck I want.
” She pulled back and smiled. “It’s wonderful.
Betty, I’m telling you, it’s wonderful.”
“I thought maybe you’d started sleeping.”
Sybil paused, considering it. “No, not really.” She shook her head and her highlights shimmered. “But this has given me a totally different sort of comfort.”
The house itself smelled delicious, like rosemary and apple cider and crackling turkey skin. Exactly what Betty imagined a bustling Thanksgiving should smell like.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring you a gift,” Betty said, because she only just realized that she was empty-handed. “Also, I’m poor.”
Sybil threw her head back and laughed. Something rose up in Betty again, pride, at how good she was at being a chameleon.
“I wanted to introduce you to Charlie, but since you were on a date”—her voice dropped low and conspiratorial—“you are going to have to tell me all the details.” She reached for Betty’s shoulders, hugging her tightly, which Betty had learned was part of Sybil’s demonstrative display of maternal affection.
So she leaned into it, absorbed it. She was playacting, yes, but also, she really did think Sybil was rooting for her.
It was so highly rare that Betty had people rooting for her.
She again thought of her own mother, of how when Betty’s father mocked her for not knowing an immediate answer at Bible study or when he sent her home from church because she didn’t look tidy enough or when he excused her from the dinner table because she didn’t wait for him to be served to start eating, her own mother never said a word in her defense.
Never put her daughters first. She leaned into Sybil’s embrace for another second; it was something for Betty, even if it couldn’t ever be everything.
Julian was loitering in the kitchen deep in thought when they made their way inside. His eyes, heavy with bags, wandered toward Betty’s, and everything about him perked up.
“Betty!” She stepped toward him, and he tapped a striking young woman on the elbow. His daughter, Betty could tell just by her eyes. “This is Simone.”
“Hi, Simone,” Betty said. “I’m Betty. Your dad has been very kind to me.
” It was important to be cordial here, to blend in with the gregariousness of the spirit of the holiday.
Also, much like Sybil, Betty had taken a shine to Julian, who had indeed been very kind.
She could tell the truth and still keep her wits about her.
Simone raised an eyebrow and made a face as if to say she couldn’t believe it, but then she smiled and said, “My dad has told me so much about you.” Which made Betty’s hair stand on end. She never wanted to be the star of any story.
“I heard you just shot a commercial?” Simone continued.
“Oh yes,” Betty said, now itchy and claustrophobic, though surely Simone was just making conversation. “Well, yes. But I really just did it for the pay. I’m not the next…” She had to stop and think of a movie star, but none came to mind. “I’m not the next big thing.”
“She’s an actor’s actor,” Julian said with a wink.
“Is your family far?” Simone asked. “Not close enough to head home for the holiday?”
“My parents have both passed,” Betty said. She always let a beat of silence fall after this admission. A proper mourning period for the conversation. “And my siblings…” She waved a hand. “They’re all over.”
Some of that was actually true. Betty didn’t know where Levi was these days, though she’d tried to track him down these past few weeks.
His radio silence unnerved her, and if she weren’t already not sleeping, the worry probably would have kept her up all night.
Early on after their dad kicked him out, they’d stayed in touch as much as was possible.
She set up an email account to use at the school library’s computers just for him, and he’d also left her an emergency way to reach him.
But only if things were dire. They used to message back and forth every few weeks.
Levi was a nomad, and he assured her she was ready to do the same, ready to leave when the opportunity arose.
He was the one who taught her to be overly cautious, to look not just over her shoulder but out front and to the left and right too.
Once you leave, he said over email, you have to be sure that you are never dragged back.
But once she fled Georgia in a hurry and determined to leave no trace of where she’d gone, their correspondence became even sparser and more coded.
He told her in another email that she couldn’t be too careful, even if it meant leaving him behind too.
And she told him she never would, but it had been a few months now, and she had no idea where he was in the world, and he certainly had no idea about any of what had happened to her. Zeke, the commercial, Caleb, all of it.
Sometimes, now, at night when she couldn’t sleep, she thought about Patience.
What she would say to her if their paths ever crossed, what she would ask of her and if her sister’s answers would ever be enough.
Patience’s betrayal—how easily she abandoned Betty when she bound herself to Matthew—was still the most acute.
An open oozing wound, and so it really was her sister’s face, not her father’s, not her mother’s, that Betty envisioned when she envisioned returning home, saying her piece.
“Anyway, my family is too scattered, and we weren’t big on holidays,” Betty said to Simone. Only Christmas, and even that was all for show for her father’s benefit to gin up money for the church. Which mostly went right into his own pocket.
“Oh, well, that’s too bad,” Simone had said. “Though family can definitely be complicated.”
“We’re not complicated,” Julian said, and Simone rolled her eyes, then huffed air through her nose.
“You two are lucky,” Betty said. “I was never close with my dad.”
She thought of being called to the altar a week before her eighteenth birthday. The empty auditorium. How her footsteps echoed as she made her way to him. Her dad telling her he’d decided that Silas, Matthew’s odious brother, was meant to be her husband. God had told him. God had sent him a vision.
Maybe God forgot to tell him that everything was about to go up in flames not even a week later. Maybe God forgot to tell him that it was only a matter of time before your luck ran out.