“You know she wants to be a women’s studies major, right? Or has she not broken that news to you?” He unzipped his parka like maybe he was actually going to be able to stay awhile.
“She’s hinted,” Sybil said. “I haven’t taken it well.” She refocused on the postcards. “But wait, can you explain what you’re talking about with these?”
“Sure.” He flopped a shoulder. “There was that Wheaties contest, the list of the top fifteen things you have to do on a road trip, or I don’t know, see before you die? I can’t remember. You had to go to each place, grab a postcard, then send them all in with the bar codes from Wheaties boxes. After college, before I met you, remember I drove across the country? Jasper and I hit all of them. This was mostly before you could buy anything on the internet because now people would just order the postcards and cheat.”
“Wait, so you’re saying there is anactual listof places where, if someone has gone to these”—she hesitated and counted the postcards—“these twelve, that they are likely to go to next?”
“I mean, I’m not a travel agent, but it’s pretty obvious.”
“So if I google Wheaties contest, I’ll find the others?”
“Hmmm, it was twenty years ago. Maybe not. But I’ll find it for you,” he said. “Although I really don’t get why you have these up if that wasn’t your intention?”
“It’s a long story,” Sybil said.
“I do have all night,” Mark replied.
“It’smylong night.” She stepped into the pantry and fished out a granola bar that she had stocked up on when he used to live there and had gone untouched since.
“Syb,” he said.
“I appreciate the help,” she replied. “And I do appreciate the apology.”
He dropped his chin, raised it. That was that. He knew her well enough to know there was no swaying her once she made up her mind. Though remarkably, in just a few minutes, Sybil had an entirely new appreciation for her daughter and how wrong she’d been as her mother, to pigeonhole her into her own dreams. Mark’s apology and opinion had potentially just led to a breakthrough, and without her daughter, he wouldn’t have thought to offer the apology in the first place.
“I’ll email Jasper for the information. He’ll know where to find it. He was the navigator; I just sat there and drove.”
“Sounds right,” Sybil said but smiled.
“Jesus Christ,” he laughed.
“It was low-hanging fruit.”
“Fucking A,” he said, but laughed harder.
52
Night Twenty-One
Betty
Betty had actuallymanaged to fall asleep on the bus, lulled by the rhythm of the tires against the pavement. She was woken by her seatmate, a boy about her age dressed in military garb, who gently nudged her leg and said, “Hey, we’re here.” He looked a bit like Caleb, whom she was trying not to think of.
“You need a ride somewhere?” he said. “My buddy is picking me up, lives outside the city.”
He was harmless, even kind. But Betty couldn’t afford to trust strangers. Not right now. She grabbed her bag from the overhead bin and was on her way.
The bus depot wasn’t too far out from the heart of the city. She’d been prudent with her money in the past five weeks. Staying in hostels, relying on public transport, eating only to feed her hunger, not for anything pleasurable or greedy. Sometimes, when her stomach clenched, she thought of what she had left behind: the platters of food in Zeke’s kitchen, the open-fridge policy where just about anything she ever craved was on hand,and if not, his assistant would track it down. She thought about Thanksgiving, the headiness of cider and rosemary and garlic that turned on all of her senses at Sybil’s house. But that girl, the indulgences she allowed herself, she had to be erased for now.
She had never been this far west before. The outside air was chilly and dry, but not nearly as biting as New York. Tolerable, even though the temperature must have been below freezing. She hauled her backpack over her shoulders and decided she would walk to the hostel. She could have afforded a cab—a splurge, sure—but the few miles would do her legs good. Also, she couldn’t be too careful. The walk would allow her to check behind her every so often, ensure that she wasn’t being followed.
She’d paid a barber in Cleveland to chop her hair into a bob and dye it a muted pink. In Chicago, where her lips nearly turned blue from the wind chill, she paid someone else to color it Raggedy Ann red. Somewhere in Iowa, she couldn’t even remember the town, she went espresso black. That was three weeks ago, and she stuck with it, like its harshness suited her. But also, she hadn’t been given reason to think that anyone was trailing her, so she left it for now. Of course, she hadn’t thought anyone was trailing her in New York either. Sometimes, she’d wake up after a few hours of fitful sleep in whichever bed, whichever town she’d landed in and wonder if she’d misremembered: the warning ofrun, Sybil’s phone call about Julian. In Omaha, she’d spent an afternoon in the public library googling Julian’s name to be sure that maybe this wasn’t a wild fever dream, that maybe she hadn’t lost touch with reality. It wouldn’t be unheard of, she knew, that a child of a cult leader had distorted memories, had fits of paranoia and delusion.
Tucked in a library cube with a desktop computer and their free Wi-Fi, she hesitated, nearly googling the Revivalist Church but unwilling to stomach whatever the results now were,whatever complicity her sister was tied to, whatever conspiracy Matthew was surely involved in. How had it been four years since she’d last seen Patience? The night of the fire, her sister was in charge of Sabbath dinner, tasked with setting up the refectory, aligning the place mats and the servingware and the decor. Their dad had always been fanatical about the dinners, or rather, in hindsight, fanatical about theappearanceat these dinners, as he welcomed in church outsiders under the guise of breaking bread with strangers. But more often than not, he used the time to recruit the more gullible into the church. That afternoon of the fire, Patience was in the main kitchen; she had her younger child on one hip and another, her middle son, who sat cross-legged at her feet, with damp cheeks, wet eyes but not making a sound. Betty and her siblings had been routinely punished for tantrums as kids, and she’d spent enough time around Matthew to know that his tolerance for outbursts was nonexistent. Children were meant to tame their inner demons, meant to act godly at all times. Anything less was disrespectful to their elders.
Betty knelt in front of her nephew. Outstretched her arms. “It’s okay, buddy, come on.”
His round eyes peered toward his mother before he agreed to an embrace. Patience, lost in the trail of a thought, only just saw Betty there when he did.
