It didn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, she reminded herself.
She had to move, and she had to move quickly. She raced into the kitchen, pulled on her parka, flipped up the hood and tugged her backpack onto both shoulders. Then she unlatched the back door and stepped out into the snowy dark alley. She’d be out of the city bydawn.
1
Night One
Sybil
October 11th
When Sybil Fosterrolled over, the other side of the king-sized bed was empty. Of course it was. She blinked several times and allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness and chastised herself. She didn’t know why she expected otherwise: that Mark would be here.
When would she stop expecting otherwise?
Sometimes, he surprised her, true. He’d slip in after a long night in the OR and fall asleep without disturbing her, which was different from not waking her. Because Sybil was nearly always awake these days, even when her husband would flop on the custom-made mattress and be out in less time than it took Sybil to count five sheep. She had to hand it to him: He really did not disturb her, which at this stage in their marriage was no small thing. Still, on those nights when he made it home, she’d lie there on the right side of their bed, unmoving, frozen, as if greeting him after a sixteen-hour hospital shift violated some unspoken agreement between them.
To be fair, nearly everything between them was unspoken these days.
In the blackness of their suburban bedroom, Sybil pushed up to her elbows and flung their white duvet to Mark’s side of the bed, her feet swiveling to the floor. She tiptoed to the bathroom, until she remembered that her children were no longer home, either—an adjustment that five weeks into their freshman year at college she still hadn’t made peace with. Empty-nesting. Everyone rattled on about how this was the chance for her to reclaim her life. To get a grip back on herowntime. Was she traveling? Had she taken up pickleball? What about a part-time job? Like Sybil was interested in opening up an Etsy store or exploring the wine pairings for the lunch specials in town.
Sybil sighed and flipped on the bathroom lights, then took a glimpse at herself in the mirror on her side of the marbled vanity and recoiled. She quickly dimmed the lights to something softer, something more suitable for twoa.m.and the back half of her forties. How was she only four years away fromfifty? She pulled her hair into a bun and stared at the fine lines that were etching themselves around every millimeter of her eye sockets. Her fingers tugged the skin tighter, then released it, then tugged it again. Maybe she should do that eye lift that a few of her friends had whispered about. Maybe she should just blast off the entire layer of her face, actually. Not that Mark would notice, but wasn’t this the time to do thingsfor herself? That’s the other thing that everyone kept saying: The kids are gone, isn’t this a wonderful timefor yourself?
Sybil turned sideways and raised her chin, considering if she should vacuum off the double chin that had planted itself on her jawline about a year ago. Not a double chin exactly. Jowls? Excess skin with a little fat? Her own mother had remained beautiful right up until the day she dropped dead sixyears ago at seventy-two in her desk chair in her corner office, so Sybil couldn’t call her now and ask if she had any family secrets to pass down, inquire about just what she was doing wrong. If her mother were here, she suspected her list of grievances about Sybil’s choices would have been long anyway. Better not to consider it.
Sybil flipped the lights back off and padded over to her side of the bed, yanking her phone from the charger on her nightstand and reaching for her reading glasses but discovering she must have left them in the kitchen. She’d abandoned them alongside her laptop on the island earlier in the evening having read multiple articles that implored her to get off her goddamn electronics a few hours before bedtime. Then, these articles promised, she would sleep like a newborn.
As if newborns didn’t wake up shrieking every ninety minutes.
Now, of course, she couldn’t see anything on her phone because her body was betraying her, but since she was wide-awake, she plodded down the upholstered steps to the open kitchen and living room, where her dog, Pluto, named by the twins back when they were obsessed with astronomy, snored so loudly, slept so deeply, that Sybil took it as a personal affront to her own sleeplessness.
“Pluto,” she whispered, then louder, “Pluto!”
The dog, an oversized mutt of undetermined ancestry, jolted his snout up and leapt off the custom couch that Sybil had paid too much for because she had nothing else to do than spend weeks working with an interior design shop in town that took a hefty commission. Sybil was once the top of her class at Harvard Medical School.Harvard.Now she roamed her empty house in the bleak hours of the night while her twins were at college and her husband scrubbed into the OR but more likelywas scrubbing into one of the on-call anesthesiologists. Sybil had known about it for at least a year. She simply hadn’t decided what she was going to do about it. What she cared to do about it.
Pluto parked himself at her feet and panted.
“No, it’s not time for breakfast, buddy,” Sybil sighed, opening her laptop and waiting for it to power on. He swatted her with a paw, hard enough that it hurt, but Sybil barely flinched. Maybe she deserved it. She’d be pissed if someone decided to wake her just for a little company too.
“Okay, no, you’re right,” she said, pushing back the counter stool and moving toward the ceramic treats container that she’d bought some other night off a fancy pet site when she couldn’t sleep. Pluto raced around the corner of the island, his feet sliding on the wood floors, the stain of which she’d spent at least six days fretting over but that she probably couldn’t pick out of a lineup anymore.
He sat obediently, his eyes wide, a smidgen of drool foaming on the right side of his bottom lip. She tossed the salmon square in a beautiful arc, and he opened his mouth and caught it with immaculate timing. Sybil smiled. At least some things could still be counted on.
Pluto waddled back to the couch and settled in, so she grabbed her laptop and plopped next to him, her feet resting on the coffee table, a habit that Mark hated, but well, Mark wasn’t here, was he? Mark was still at the hospital. What couldn’t Sybil do when left all alone? Sleep.
She used to listen to true crime podcasts when she was up all night. Incessantly. She’d joined message boards for unsolved murders; she read old news articles and watchedDatelinereruns. Indeed, she’d thought she was pretty close to solving a dead-wife case in Ohio before she realized, as an unlicensed medical professional, that maybe her fascination with themacabre was part of what was keeping her up at night. So she googled and googled, looking for cures or suggestions, and frankly, had spent too much money trying all of them to no avail, and now, here she was. There were sixty-seven people online in the forum. All Sybil needed was one, it didn’t even matter who. Just one person to keep her company until dawn broke through her kitchen windows.
The group, the link, was calledThe Insomniacs.
Her laptop dinged with a notification nearly instantaneously.
Beartown:Mama2Twins, hey, you awake?
Sybil cracked her knuckles, dopamine coursing through her cerebral folds. A friend. A conspirer. Someone who understood exactly just how bleak life could be when your body refused to give itself the one thing it needed: rest.
Mama2Twins:Totally. Wide awake. Just like always.
