“If this goes to shit, the less you know the better.”
Sybil wondered if this is what it felt like—when you were duped into a car by an ax murderer who passed himself off as congenial, only to have him dump your body in a ditch. Or if that’s just what consuming too much true crime had led her to believe. The women on those podcasts were always too trusting. Sybil would hear the initial episodes and think:Who could be so stupid?But it turned out, maybe she could! Maybe Sybil Bowman Foster, top-ranked at Harvard Medical School, was actually just a fucking gullible moron.
“Sorry,” he said, as if her anxiety was radiating off her. “I’m not trying to be creepy.”
“You are being creepy though.” She tried to laugh, but it didn’t come off as funny.
He sighed. Gripped the wheel. A large bug smacked the windshield, which was now polka-dotted with various insect innards, and he flipped on the wipers, which mostly just spread their guts around.
“I’ve spent half a decade relying on myself, more than that if you count my childhood,” he said. “It’s not personal. I’ve just found, from, uh, like, lifelong trauma, that trusting anyone else tends to backfire.”
“Ironically,” Sybil said, “I am much the same.”
“I’m not trying to freak you out. I just know what I’m doing, where we’re going and how.”
Sybil eased back in the passenger seat. Levi did not appear to be a serial killer, so either she was going to end up on a podcast episode as a Jane Doe or they were going to find Betty. There weren’t many options to get herself out of this anyway.
“And what are we doing and where are we going?”
Levi laughed. “That was a good effort, a different way of asking the same question. This is old history, with me and Bets.”
“So trust you?”
“Something like that.” He bounced his head, and Sybil was struck by how young he was. He wasn’t much older than Charlie. A boy who had been abandoned years ago, who had to grow up with only himself for guidance. Sybil hadn’t been cast out of her home, but she’d had to raise herself too. Here they were, semi-lost souls on a dark highway in the dead of night, bugs splattered on their windshield. The jury was still out on if they’d raised themselves effectively.
“I had to try to pry for information,” she said, and he nodded again, kept his eyes on the road. “Okay, how about…twentyquestions? Whenever my family would take road trips, we’d play twenty questions.”
“And I’m sure you know enough about my family to know that we did not.”
“Did you take road trips at all?”
“Only to, like, indoctrination events. They used to do something every few years at the Greenbrier. West Virginia. I only went once though—they realized I was too young to see what I saw; not sure if Bets ever did.”
“Indoctrination?”
“You don’t just get to show up for my dad’s church and start praying. Have you ever heard of very fine Christians throwing what was essentially a key party?”
“You mean, like, from the seventies?”
“More or less.”
“I thought part of your dad’s whole thing was…um, purity?”
“What applies to me does not apply to thee,” he said.
“And you didn’t play twenty questions with your dad afterward, on the way back? Talk about a missed opportunity.”
At this, Levi managed a half grin.
“I don’t think I needed to ask questions, to be honest. I understood from pretty early on that none of it was for me.”
“But your brothers? And Patience?”
“My brothers are, what I would say kindly, fairly stupid. The church set them up with money and prestige within the community that they’d never have a shot at otherwise. They’re not in charge of anything really. They sit on the council, and that makes them feel important, so, you know.” He took a hand off the wheel, batted it. “In some ways, even though they propped up my dad and still serve under Matthew, they’re harmless. Complicit, yes, but neutered.”
“And Patience?”
“Not fairly stupid,” Levi said, then went quiet.
