Zeke took an extra beat, seeming to have a better scope of the situation and called, “Sybil,Sybil!Look!”
She turned, and he pointed.
Betty—was that Betty with black hair and a bob?—was flying down the slope of a small hill, and that’s when Sybil saw two people racing toward a parked car on the far end of the road.
Zeke cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Betty!”
She didn’t stop.
“Betty!” Sybil shrieked, and maybe it was the high piercing tone that would have reached dogs miles away, but Bettystopped, turned and squinted. The other two running did as well. Levi. Sybil could make out Levi, and…was that Patience? She blinked, reopened her eyes. That was Patience. Levi and Patience made a beeline toward their sister.
Zeke took off, and Sybil ran lagging behind him.
Zeke got to her first, then Levi. Sybil had a cramp in her side and a cough that was building from the ash.
“You can’t be here,” Levi said to Betty. “What are youdoinghere?”
“I came to tell Dad that I was done with him forever. To leave me alone forever.”
Sybil wanted to pull Betty into her, assure her that she was okay. But she didn’t know if Bettywasokay. She didn’t know if any of them were. This whole thing was meant to be a quiet cadre of friends who could calm each other’s anxieties. Now Julian was dead, the fire was growing, and Betty and her siblings may have been complicit in arson. None of this was at all what she imagined it would be.
“We need to go. Right now,” Patience said. She had only just made her way up the hill and appeared both unbothered and wild, like the flames below that could take their time but also destroy everything in the path. “Youneed to go,” she said pointedly to her sister.
Sybil caught Zeke’s eye, and he mouthed,Patience. Then he mimicked an explosion with his fingertips. It took Sybil a long beat to intuit what he meant.Patience had started the fire.Back then. And now. Patience had always started the fire.
How?Sybil mouthed back.
“I realized what my sister would do for me,” he said. And Sybil nearly lost her breath, at how easy the puzzle piece actually was. Family. How far we would go.
“Levi,” Betty said, her voice breaking.
“I know,” he said back, and she walked into his arms.
She pulled back and said, “You never called me. I would have been here, I would have done this with you.” She looked at Patience, a little mystified. “With both of you. You don’t have to fight my battles.”
“Your battles areourbattles,” Patience said.
“You’re our little sister, Bets,” Levi said, a shoulder rising and falling. As if it was that simple. Maybe it really was that simple.
Patience took a long look at Betty, then clutched her by both cheeks. “You need to go. You aren’t any part of this.”
“I have to tell him—to leave me alone, that I’m nothis, that I never was,” Betty said, the hitch in her voice gone, the steely resolve returning. “I want this over. For good.”
“You don’t need to tell him,” Levi said. “Itisover. For good.”
Betty’s eyes flared wide, and Sybil felt her own chest heave with a gasp of air.
“He was alone,” Levi said. “Before anyone else arrived for the day.” He paused. “Just him.” He reached into his pocket, passed Sybil back her phone. “Sorry. I couldn’t use mine, and I couldn’t risk you being there. It wasn’t personal. I knew he would come get you.” He nudged his head toward Zeke.
In the distance, Sybil heard the wail of a siren. The fire alarm must have triggered.
“I’m leaving,” Patience said. She tilted forward and kissed her sister on the forehead. “I always told you that I had you. I have you.”
“Patience—” Betty started.
“If he makes it out alive, tell him I did it for both of us, for all of us,” she said over her shoulder just before she ran toward the other side of the incline. “But I want him to know that it was me.”
69
