“We don’t really know her that well. I don’t want her to feel like I’m monitoring her. Also, no, I don’t think it’s weird that she, an adult, left the apartment without issuing an all-points bulletin,” Zeke said.
“And youdidn’tdo something to scare her?” Julian asked.
“What? Julian, I think you have the wrong impression of me.”
“What impression do I have of you?” Julian felt a little acceleration of his heart rate. This was just like an interrogation, only Zeke wasn’t aware. It had been so long since he’d felt that invigorating thrum.
“Like I’m like some idiotic lecherous jock.”
“I don’t think you’re lecherous,” Julian said.
“Just the dumb jock.”
“Come on, you guys,” Sybil said. “Let’s focus on being positive.”
They’d retreated to the kitchen, Zeke pulling the plastic wrap off the platters.How many people did he expect to feed?Julian wondered. Everything about Zeke was almost cartoonish—this apartment, for one. The ceilings were nearly two stories high; the kitchen was expansive enough to be a subway stop; the living room was goddamn palatial, like Zeke was Louis XIV and required his own personal Versailles.
“Honestly, Jules,” Zeke said, as if Julian had ever told him that he had a nickname (he did not), as if they were old friends (they were not). “My entire life has always been about my game.I just want to help Betty out. Keep each other company, I swear. I have the room, and it feels like good karma.”
Sybil looked up from her phone, the whoosh of her text going off into the void. She nudged her head at his soft cast. “I texted her.”
From Betty’s bedroom they could hear the very distant ding of a text being received.
“Shit,” Sybil said. “She left her phone. Okay, now maybe I can be worried?”
“She wasn’t kidnapped from the apartment,” Zeke said. “Like, she wasn’t taken against her will and left her phone behind.”
Sybil sighed. “You’re right. You’re right. I really need to cut off those podcasts.”
“Come on,” Zeke said. “Please, let’s eat.”
He put three different types of sandwiches on a plate and passed it to Julian. Julian wasn’t hungry, but he knew that he needed to be collegial, so he nodded a thank-you and rolled up his sleeves, a habit from boyhood when he had to tuck a napkin in. Zeke gestured to the table, and Julian was relieved to sit. His ankles were swollen, he’d forgotten his compression socks, and he needed a break. He was good at stony-faced but must have winced as he sat down.
“You okay?” Sybil asked.
“Just tweaked something. The price of being sixty, I guess.”
Sybil gave him a long stare like she was used to seeing through liars, but maybe he was imagining that, because right then, the front door unlatched in the foyer, and then squeaked open and slammed shut, and Sybil jumped from her seat, her demeanor changing entirely. She rushed into the other room, with Zeke and Julian trailing.
To Julian’s great surprise, Betty had returned.
He watched her from across the foyer, his hackles rising, his eyes narrowing. She was back; hadn’t gone or at least hadn’t fled. If he didn’t see it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it, because Julian, in a moment of rarity, had gotten the facts wrong. And Julian knew, deep in his bones, that he never got anything wrong. At least nothing like this.
12
Night Five
Betty
November 1st
Betty had gottenused to being a fully functioning island. Even when she was living with Mallory, they were two circles that never overlapped on a Venn diagram, other than when Mallory would occasionally eat Betty’s Chobanis. So she’d forgotten what it was like to have people expect to know where you were, what you were doing. Everything felt easier, albeit lonelier, but easier nevertheless, as an island. She was safer this way; she could see all the exits; she had no blind spots. Every turn was a horizon. It had been an adjustment at first, of course. Growing up in a house with five kids, being part of a thousand-person church. Back then, she was never alone. But once she left, isolation became a necessity.
So last week, when she came back to Zeke’s after slipping out, she hadn’t expected a full interrogation. It made her so twitchy that she almost packed her one bag and fled. But she knew that was counterproductive, and she’d trained herself to ignore counterproductivity.
“Betty!” Sybil had rushed to her that night and wrapped herin a tight hug. In another lifetime, it would have felt like a comfort instead of just a violation. “Julian made us think you’d…left. Left us.”
They both turned toward Julian, who was standing in the archway that divided the foyer and the kitchen, his arms crossed, his brow knitted. Zeke was right behind him, looking like a man who had intended to throw a party that the cops busted before he even tapped the keg.
