“If she even wants us to find her,” Zeke said, and Sybil bristled. It hadn’t occurred to her that they shouldn’t be looking.
“Why wouldn’t she want us to help her?”
“I mean, if she burned down the church, right? She might be better off if we don’t chase her?”
“But she’s in trouble,” Sybil said.
“I agree, probably.” He dropped the elastic band on the counter and walked to the evidence wall. “But also, there’s a chance that she’s not. There’s a chance that she doesn’t want to be found. I saw her handwriting on that Bible as clearly as you did.”
He stared at the old article fromThe Macon Telegraph. Then tapped his finger on it.
“Here, the byline. In my experience, reporters are almost always willing to talk, especially if it’s to me. So let’s start with her.”
42
Night Sixteen
Zeke
They’d found thereporter’s contact information, and Sybil crafted an email, which Zeke then sent from his team account, a New York Mets email address. He included his cell number, as if that might also lure her in, a personal connection to the Mets superstar. He thought his name alone would be enough to merit a reply because that was how things usually worked with a Zeke Rodriguez introduction, but it had been three hours and nothing.
“Zeke, it’s the middle of the night, you have to stop checking,” Sybil had said.
Of course he needed to stop checking. He was just used to, well, getting everything, having everything. Everyone adjusting their posture when he walked into the room, everyone asking what they could do to accommodate him. This was what it was like, he supposed, to have a life stripped of his fame. This, perhaps, was the change he was looking for when he froze as that line drive careened right into his arm.
“I just want to be able todosomething,” he said. “Now.”
Sybil was on her phone playing one of her puzzles that Zeke had given up on. Forget that she always beat him, Zeke didn’t mind that one bit. But without Julian, the whole thing felt empty, or if not empty, a reminder that maybe Julian didn’t consider them friends, that Zeke and Sybil were a means to an end, not the good stuff in the middle. Zeke was almost embarrassed that Julian had used them so seamlessly. Even though Zeke was well aware that he quite often was not the smartest one in the room, he didn’t need it to be pointed out either.
“You’re stewing,” Sybil said, and set her phone facedown on the couch. “About Betty or about Julian?” She could read him so well, Zeke thought, a sea of gratefulness washing over him.
“Both? Him? I’m not sure.”
“You think that none of it was real? Our…situation? Our friendships?”
Zeke moved toward the couch and sat next to her.
“You don’t?”
Sybil stood, and he fought the urge to reach out to her, grab her hand, pull her back beside him. She gazed up at the Christmas tree, then walked toward one side and adjusted an ornament that was askew. She turned back toward him with the glow of the fairy lights illuminating her from behind, and his heart seized. He knew she wasn’t his; he knew that the bond between them could be as make-believe as it had been with Julian and Betty. But it had been so long, seemingly forever, since he’d trusted someone wholly, wanted someone wholly, the way that he did Sybil.
“I think that it seems like they each had their reasons for…this.” She raised an arm and dropped it. “Maybe Betty was in trouble. Maybe Julian thought he could help her. Or maybe Julian was going to cause her more trouble. I don’t know. But I’mnot sure we should take any of that personally. Everything started a long time before we met them.”
Zeke clenched and unclenched his hand. Sometimes now, his fingers went a little tingly. His PT assured him that was normal, just the nerves rebuilding their pathways. But maybe it wasn’t just his nerves. His eyelid still had a mind of its own. He knew that Sybil had noticed, and he also knew that she wouldn’t point it out. Their bodies were betraying them in ways they couldn’t control, and it was just another thing they had in common, another humiliation of their sleeplessness.
“It’s hard not to feel like we were duped,” he said.
“That it wasn’t real?”
Zeke shrugged.
“I think it was real,” she said, then her eyes never wavering from his, said, “I think it is real.”
Zeke felt his pulse quicken. He so wanted to believe that she meant him,this, them, that whatever was building, even unspoken, between them was important and vital and unquestionable. It was. It had to be. But he wasn’t brave enough yet to ask or to articulate his own assuredness.
Sybil returned to the couch right next to him. He adjusted his body, a leg up on the cushion, to face her. “Maybe this is an opportunity,” she said.
“We’re not starting our own podcast,” he said, and she rolled her eyes but smiled, which delighted him.
