Chapter 36
Night Thirteen
Zeke
Zeke opened the door to find Simone nearly unrecognizable from when they met at Thanksgiving.
Bloodshot eyes, jutting cheekbones, splotchy skin.
Sybil appeared at his shoulder—she’d gone home to pick up Pluto from the dog sitter and hadn’t left since returning—and swept past him, tucking Simone against her shoulder like they were old friends.
Zeke waited for them to separate before giving the best hug he could manage, but his right arm was aching from the day’s workout, and he wasn’t used to comforting others in the way that Sybil seemed attuned to.
Pluto woke up from sleeping on the couch and bounded over to lick Simone’s leg, then yawned and retreated back into his slumber.
“Honey,” Sybil said, her hand on Simone’s back. “Come in. Come sit. Come tell us what we can do to help.”
They sat on the couch, Simone in a daze, Sybil resting her palm on Simone’s knee.
Zeke, feeling helpless, retreated to the kitchen to get them all water.
He still hadn’t processed it, that Julian was gone.
How could someone be crossing the street on the way home and suddenly be taken like that?
Zeke had spent the past two nights staring at the ceiling trying to make sense of it, remembering how early on, a car had turned the corner as he crossed the street to the diner, and all of this just as easily could have been him.
Last night, Sybil knocked on his door and asked if he were still awake, which he obviously was because they were always awake, then asked if he wouldn’t mind if she lay down next to him.
Pluto jumped on the foot of their bed, and they stayed there, Sybil curled up in the crook of his left arm, the dog snoring, and Zeke wondering why the universe felt so doomed, until the sun came up.
Sybil took Pluto out for a walk around six or seven, and Zeke thought he might never find the energy to get up.
He canceled his physical therapy, told Timothy and his team he couldn’t take their calls, and sat on that same foot of the bed with his head in his working hand until Sybil got back.
The relief he felt upon her return, like maybe they were the only two stuck in this nonsensical spin cycle, was incalculable.
Zeke made his way back into the living room with three bottles of water. Like water could fix anything. Simone startled, like something just occurred to her.
“Is…is Betty here?” She glanced around.
“No,” Sybil replied. “But I called her. She was devastated.”
“Will she be back soon? Or I mean…” Simone drifted, looked around again as if she couldn’t take them at their word or as if she needed to worry.
“She hasn’t been back in a few nights,” Zeke said, and Sybil’s eyes found his. “She has a boyfr—well, I don’t know what he is but she has someone in her life. She was upset, and I assumed…I think she’s at his place?” He looked to Sybil for reassurance.
“Would it be better if she were here?” Sybil asked. “For the three of us to support you?” She reached for her phone. “I’m sure she’s at work right now, but let me text her. I think she was about to quit anyway. She’s doing commercials now.”
“No, no,” Simone interjected before Sybil could even swipe her lock screen. “I wanted this to be…just us.”
“Actually,” Zeke said, the thought only just occurring to him now. “Sybil, have you heard from her since…then?”
Sybil frowned, and Zeke loved the way her face shifted when she was really considering something.
He knew this wasn’t the time or the moment, but he liked this so much about her: that when she took you seriously, she took you seriously, and you never doubted it.
So many people in his life were part smoke, part mirrors.
Not her. Never her. She could be overbearing, sure, and he felt guilty that he snapped at her last week, but that was his shit, not hers.
Sybil unlocked her phone and checked her texts.
“No, now that you say that…” She met his eyes again.
“I think we’ve been so wrapped up in our shock these past few days that it didn’t occur to me.
” She paused. “Also, early on, remember, Zeke? She left that one time. But she came back. And I don’t think she liked us, well, monitoring her. She’s an adult, after all.”
Simone exhaled, long, exhausted, uncertain.
“Right, I don’t think my dad was actually honest with you guys,” she said. She reached into her bag and placed a manila folder on her lap, then ran her hands over it as if it were precious to her.
“How so?” Sybil asked. “And even if he wasn’t, that’s okay. We met him because we were all awake in the middle of the night with our own problems. He didn’t have to share them all with us.”
“My dad didn’t really run a candy store.”
“What?” Zeke said.
“Well, that’s okay too,” Sybil talked over him. “What you do for a living isn’t the gravest of lies.”
“No,” Simone said, firmer now. “What I mean is my mom did own the candy store. It was her thing. When she died, my dad couldn’t bring himself to sell it, which was just as well.”
“I’m confused,” Zeke said. Sybil raised her eyebrows at him as if to perhaps hush him up and let Simone speak. She reached over, placed a hand on his forearm and let it rest there. He stared at it, hoped she never retracted it.
“Sorry, I’m all over the place,” Simone said. “What I’m trying to say is that my dad was former FBI.”
“Oh,” Sybil said, a line forming between her brows. “But, I guess, I mean, that’s still okay, I don’t mind that he didn’t tell us. He was entitled to tell us whatever he wanted.”
Simone sighed out of what Zeke took to be exasperation. She opened the folder on her lap.
“My dad had to retire four years ago. He had a heart attack. I don’t know what he told you, probably not that either.
The stress of the job and maybe with my mom gone, I don’t know, it was too much.
And he promised me that he was done with his casework, really was moving on and managing my mom’s store, putting the investigative stuff behind him. But he didn’t. Or he wasn’t.”
She pulled out a glossy photo of a family, handed it to Sybil, who held it between her and Zeke, who pressed himself closer to examine it.
There were seven of them, dressed in what Zeke thought of as religious clothes, something like what the Amish would wear, if he remembered correctly.
Sybil reached for her reading glasses from the coffee table and pulled the photo closer.
Then Zeke heard her gasp, and her hand flew over her mouth.
Of course he didn’t see what she was seeing.
“Is that—” Sybil turned toward Simone.
“Yes.”
Zeke was too embarrassed to ask what it was.
“Four years ago, their…I’m not sure what the exact definition was, but their cult? Their church? It burned down. My dad had been investigating corruption, or, I don’t really know, abuse or maybe money laundering; I’m sorry, I didn’t live with him then and am only figuring out what I can now.”
“Her parents—she said it was a farming accident. It was a fire?” Sybil said, already putting together jigsaw puzzle pieces while Zeke was still staring at the picture on the front of the box. Betty. Were they talking about Betty?
Simone shook her head. “I really don’t know the details.
I know that they never solved who did it, and I remember my dad refusing to let it go.
Richard, his partner, forced them to close the case because there were other fish to fry.
I can still hear my dad arguing with him about that.
‘Richard, I don’t give a shit about frying other fish!
’ But—” She paused, gestured to the picture.
“I don’t think it’s a leap to say that he never did. ”
Sybil placed the photo on her lap and turned toward Simone. “You think he knew who Betty was?”
“I’m sorry,” Zeke said. “Which one is Betty? I don’t mean to be slow but—”
Simone reached for the picture. “Right here—” She jabbed her finger at a girl maybe around ten or twelve standing at the edge of the rest of the family. She had a mop of brown hair and sad eyes and posture like she wanted to make herself curl up and disappear.
“That’s her,” Simone said. “That’s Elizabeth Jones. And there is zero chance in a million universes that my dad wasn’t onto that, that anything about this”—she flung her arm into a circle—“could be a coincidence.”