“Where is he? What hospital?” Sybil was back on her feet, like she could fix this. Shecould fixthis.
“No, you don’t understand,” Simone said. “It was a hit-and-run, and he, oh my god I can’t believe I am actually saying this, but he died. My dad is dead.”
35
Night Twelve
Betty
Sybil had calledBetty while she was feeding the rats behind the restaurant, the snow beginning to fall, and in a literal instant, everything changed.
Betty hung up the phone and sank into the back booth of the diner. Then she jolted up, raced to the front door and bolted it, then raced to the back door and bolted that too. She needed to think.She needed to think.
“Something’s happened to Julian,” Sybil had said, and Betty was entirely unprepared for what came next. Julian? Curmudgeonly but sweet Julian? Betty was not a stranger to death, but nothing about this made any sense to her. Her brain couldn’t compute the news. She glanced down at her hands and saw they were shaking, and then she glanced down at the table and saw the single sheet of paper that had been tacked up on the back door of the diner by the garbage cans.
RUN
Bile rose up from her stomach into her throat. She tried to swallow it back down, but she gagged and tilted over towardthe edge of the booth so she didn’t vomit on the tabletop. She hadn’t eaten in hours so it was mostly just stomach acid, and her clothes were soaked in a cold sweat by the time she was done.
“Right,right,” she said aloud.
She had prepared for this; she had essentially trained for this. She knew she was lucky to have been warned, though she couldn’t imagine who warned her, what mistakes she made. Well, the laundry commercial for Natalie for one thing. But it was regional, and she didn’t think anyone from the church would ever see it in the tri-state area, much less so quickly. Maybe she shouldn’t have trusted Caleb, who was so roundly wonderful that maybe it had just been part of a long con.
It didn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, she reminded herself.
She had to move, and she had to move quickly. She folded the sheet of paper and made her way to the back to tuck it into her backpack. She pulled on her parka, flipped up the hood and tugged the backpack onto both shoulders. Then she unlatched the back door and stepped out into the snowy dark alley. She would slip away from this life before any more mistakes caught up with her. She’d done it before, she’d do it again. In the end, Betty would do anything tosurvive.
PartTwo
36
Night Thirteen
Zeke
December 13th
Zeke opened thedoor 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 onthe 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’msure 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.”
