Chapter 63
Night Twenty-Six
Sybil
They crossed the border into Nevada two hours into the drive. Cell reception was spotty, coming in and out over the stretch of miles, and Sybil tried not to think about how Zeke had reacted when her text came in. When she’d asked Levi where they were headed, he’d said only:
“If this goes to shit, the less you know the better.”
Sybil wondered if this is what it felt like—when you were duped into a car by an ax murderer who passed himself off as congenial, only to have him dump your body in a ditch.
Or if that’s just what consuming too much true crime had led her to believe.
The women on those podcasts were always too trusting.
Sybil would hear the initial episodes and think: Who could be so stupid?
But it turned out, maybe she could! Maybe Sybil Bowman Foster, top-ranked at Harvard Medical School, was actually just a fucking gullible moron.
“Sorry,” he said, as if her anxiety was radiating off her. “I’m not trying to be creepy.”
“You are being creepy though.” She tried to laugh, but it didn’t come off as funny.
He sighed. Gripped the wheel. A large bug smacked the windshield, which was now polka-dotted with various insect innards, and he flipped on the wipers, which mostly just spread their guts around.
“I’ve spent half a decade relying on myself, more than that if you count my childhood,” he said. “It’s not personal. I’ve just found, from, uh, like, lifelong trauma, that trusting anyone else tends to backfire.”
“Ironically,” Sybil said, “I am much the same.”
“I’m not trying to freak you out. I just know what I’m doing, where we’re going and how.”
Sybil eased back in the passenger seat. Levi did not appear to be a serial killer, so either she was going to end up on a podcast episode as a Jane Doe or they were going to find Betty. There weren’t many options to get herself out of this anyway.
“And what are we doing and where are we going?”
Levi laughed. “That was a good effort, a different way of asking the same question. This is old history, with me and Bets.”
“So trust you?”
“Something like that.” He bounced his head, and Sybil was struck by how young he was.
He wasn’t much older than Charlie. A boy who had been abandoned years ago, who had to grow up with only himself for guidance.
Sybil hadn’t been cast out of her home, but she’d had to raise herself too.
Here they were, semi-lost souls on a dark highway in the dead of night, bugs splattered on their windshield.
The jury was still out on if they’d raised themselves effectively.
“I had to try to pry for information,” she said, and he nodded again, kept his eyes on the road. “Okay, how about…twenty questions? Whenever my family would take road trips, we’d play twenty questions.”
“And I’m sure you know enough about my family to know that we did not.”
“Did you take road trips at all?”
“Only to, like, indoctrination events. They used to do something every few years at the Greenbrier. West Virginia. I only went once though—they realized I was too young to see what I saw; not sure if Bets ever did.”
“Indoctrination?”
“You don’t just get to show up for my dad’s church and start praying. Have you ever heard of very fine Christians throwing what was essentially a key party?”
“You mean, like, from the seventies?”
“More or less.”
“I thought part of your dad’s whole thing was…um, purity?”
“What applies to me does not apply to thee,” he said.
“And you didn’t play twenty questions with your dad afterward, on the way back? Talk about a missed opportunity.”
At this, Levi managed a half grin.
“I don’t think I needed to ask questions, to be honest. I understood from pretty early on that none of it was for me.”
“But your brothers? And Patience?”
“My brothers are, what I would say kindly, fairly stupid. The church set them up with money and prestige within the community that they’d never have a shot at otherwise.
They’re not in charge of anything really.
They sit on the council, and that makes them feel important, so, you know.
” He took a hand off the wheel, batted it.
“In some ways, even though they propped up my dad and still serve under Matthew, they’re harmless. Complicit, yes, but neutered.”
“And Patience?”
“Not fairly stupid,” Levi said, then went quiet.
“Meaning…?”
“Is this the start of twenty questions?”
“It can be. We’re up to three.”
“Fine, Patience was a good older sister to Bets and me. She didn’t have a say in whom she married, and she seemed to tolerate Matthew well enough.
I think she is the smartest one of us, or at least the most adaptable.
She watched my dad for years, learned how to avoid triggering him, figured out how to appease him.
In a different life, I think she’d have gone to college, become a doctor maybe, or a scientist, something like that. ”
“I was told that she did some…disciplining? On behalf of your dad? And Matthew.” Sybil tried to remember exactly what Annabeth had told them down in Georgia. Defanged but not toothless.
“That’s question four, and she’s complicated.”
“Explain please,” Sybil said.
“When you’re in that…bubble, which is actually a very gracious way to say cult, you figure out how to survive. Patience was always the best at surviving.”
“But you and Betty got out.”
“I was kicked out, which probably saved my life, though I never knew if he would change his mind about me, either, so I stayed inconspicuous, tried not to be found. Betty had to run. My dad…” He paused and flicked on the wipers again to clear the bugs.
“My dad never would have let her go. The older she got, the more possessive he became of her. Started giving sermons aimed at her. Started changing all of his rules at a whim just because of her. So we planned for it for almost a year—me, teaching her how to get out.” A car crossed the other side of the highway, and its headlights illuminated the wince on Levi’s face.
“He was not…” He considered. “He was the worst combination: erratic, possessive and willing to do anything to maintain control.”
“And now you think Betty’s in danger?”
“Yes. Possibly.” He blinked quickly. “I don’t know how dumb she is being. So maybe.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Also yes, maybe. But I also don’t know what else she knows.”
“Extremely vague answer,” Sybil said. “Technically, these are supposed to be answered yes or no.”
“Nothing about my life has ever been black or white. If that’s the case for you, you’re extremely fortunate.”
“Your decision to leave home, that wasn’t black or white?”
Levi’s jaw twitched. “Actually, it wasn’t. I knew I could never become an elder in my dad’s church like my other two brothers had, but leaving all of it behind wasn’t clear-cut, no.”
“Because of Betty?”
“Because of Betty. I knew she wasn’t meant for the church any more than I was. But ultimately, I couldn’t protect her. If you’d known my dad, you’d understand.”
“So you didn’t start the fire?”
He turned to face her, the tires overcorrecting just a bit, and they swerved on the empty highway.
Sybil thought of Zeke down in Georgia, at his obvious pain when he’d rammed into the armrest. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised when he left for Arizona.
He had a whole big life outside of their little Insomniacs quartet.
She was embarrassed now, two weeks after their fight, that she had expected that she was enough for him to reconsider, to prioritize finding Betty.
She checked her phone again, still no signal.
Levi steered them back into the middle lane without answering one way or the other about the fire.
“All right. Well, I found all of your postcards. Please explain.”
“I thought twenty questions were yes or no answers?”
“And I thought you’d never played before,” Sybil said.
“The postcards were some old lark that I’d told Bets about when we were kids. I’d torn a page out from an ad in an old National Geographic. Had it hidden under my bed, told Bets we’d do it, get out and see all the places, even though the contest was obviously over.”
So Mark had been right. Sybil made a mental note to thank him.
Despite everything, particularly the anesthesiologist, she found that she no longer resented Mark.
Maybe they did the best they could in the circumstances they found themselves in and had raised two brilliant kids who gave fantastic advice, without which, she would not be in this car with Levi, who hopefully was not going to murder her.
And who hopefully was taking her to Betty.
Maybe life was all interconnected like that.
Mark and her kids and Levi and the Insomniacs and Zeke and Julian and Betty.
Maybe there were invisible strings tying them all together, and the best thing anyone could do was be tugged along and appreciate the journey in retrospect.
She reconsidered. Not just in retrospect.
That was like saying she loved a surgery only after the patient was in recovery.
In the middle of it, too, that was juicy and exciting and yes, uncertain and sometimes catastrophic, but thrilling all the same.
Maybe Sybil had forgotten in the middle years of her life that she could still be thrilled by the simple fact of being alive.
Her phone, resting between her legs, vibrated with a notification. They must have been driving through a spot with service.
Zeke: tell me where you are in LA, I just landed
Zeke: and I’m sorry about before
Zeke: not that I should apologize over text, I know
Three dots appeared as he was typing, and then the cellular bars disappeared from her phone again.
Sybil typed in a reply: Not in LA anymore!
She tried to send it three times, but it kept getting bounced as undelivered.
“Do you know when we will get cell service again?”
“Is this part of twenty questions?”
“No,” she said.
“Usually outside Reno,” Levi replied.
So they were headed to Reno.
She typed: meet me in Reno??? Hit send, held her breath hoping it would go through. Finally, after a long gap, she heard the whoosh of a sent text.
“Oh!” she said, just remembering something. She should have written down all of her questions, been better prepared. The old Sybil Foster wouldn’t have arrived at Levi’s doorstep anything less than over-overprepared. “Betty’s Bible.”
“Betty’s Bible?”
“Yes, we found it in a flour tin. In Zeke’s bathroom cabinet. It’s a long story.”
“You found Betty’s Bible in a flour tin in a bathroom cabinet?”
“Yes, but that’s not my question. My question is…I haven’t asked: Are you sure she didn’t set the fire? I know you want to protect her but, isn’t it possible—”
Sybil’s phone vibrated, then dinged, and she lost her train of thought.
Zeke: I’ll be on a flight to Reno in an hour. Tell me where to meet you.
“Zeke is meeting us in Reno,” Sybil said to Levi. “Can I give him a meeting spot? An address?”
“I’ll tell you when we get closer.”
“Okay, not to be overly dramatic, but I want to confirm that you haven’t kidnapped me?”
“No, I haven’t kidnapped you.”
Another text:
Zeke: also, I know who started the fire
Sybil started to type back, but an SOS appeared in lieu of reception bars. She raised her cell to the roof of the car but still nothing. All she could do was dip her head back and exhale. Sybil had never been good with patience, but now the only thing to do was wait.