Sybil at Sixteen (7 page)

“And you want me to look for it?” Sybil asked.

“It's up to you,” Nick said. “But if you do, I promise I'll never tell Evvie or Sam you were the one who did.”

“You can't tell Megs, either,” Sybil said. “If you tell her, she'll tell Evvie. I know she will. She'll do it to protect you.”

Nick stood for a moment, and clenched and unclenched his fists. “I won't tell Daisy, either,” he said at last. “If we can find something, and Evvie assumes I'm to blame, I'll say I did it on my own.”

“Evvie's at her office now,” Sybil said. “In case Sam calls. This would be a good time for me to search.”

“You know where she keeps her spare keys?” Nick asked.

Sybil nodded. “Next door,” she said. “Under their flowerpot.”

Nick took out his wallet. “Take a cab,” he said. “Go easy on your legs. I'll tell Daisy you went to the library looking for Thea. Call me from Evvie's once you've found something, then go to the library, have lunch with Thea. The whole business will be over with before you ever get back.”

“What about Megs?” Sybil asked. “Won't the phone calls make her suspicious?”

“I'll send her to Clark's,” Nick said. “She wants to tell him a thing or two, anyway. I'll force her to do it, and then nobody will be around when you call me.”

Sybil looked around the street, almost expecting someone, Claire maybe, or even Sam, to spot them, and stop her from her next step. But of course, no one was there, except her and her father and a few busy strangers. She took the money from her father's outstretched hand.

“It's for the best,” Nick said. “We're doing what's right for all of us.”

“I know that,” Sybil said, and for that moment, at least, she did.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Each step she took was a moral decision.

Giving the cab driver the proper address was the first, then getting out when the cab arrived at Evvie's block. Taking the spare keys from their hiding spot, an act Sybil had seen Sam do more than once, since he was always forgetting his own. Walking to the door of Evvie's building, and unlocking it. Climbing the flight of stairs to the apartment. Unlocking that door. Walking into the empty living room.

From her arrival at Cambridge to entering the living room couldn't have taken more than two minutes, yet the time lasted forever for Sybil, since she had to decide whether to find the keys, enter the building, climb the stairs, unlock the door, walk into Evvie and Sam's home, violate their privacy. She could feel their eyes on her, and even though she was obviously the only person in the apartment, she checked each room out, expecting Sam or Evvie or both of them to jump out of a closet and demand an explanation.

For a moment she even thought Linda Steinmetz might be there, hiding from the police and the FBI and the bounty hunters. Sybil tried to picture what Sam's mother looked like, but could only imagine a long-haired woman with guns. She had no idea if Linda Steinmetz had long hair, or had ever held a gun in her life.

And she was happier not knowing, Sybil realized. As long as she couldn't picture Linda Steinmetz, then there was no real person there, just a mythical creature who would never be disturbed by any action Sybil took. Linda Steinmetz hadn't existed for over twenty years, after all. She hadn't existed in Sybil's universe until yesterday. Evvie might have lived with her presence a while longer, but Evvie hated Linda Steinmetz. Evvie would be grateful when Linda Steinmetz was in prison. It was best for her and for Sam. Nick was right. It was best for all of them, except maybe Linda Steinmetz, and it might be best for her, too. In prison, she could get the medical care she needed. She wouldn't be on the run anymore.

Sybil sat down on one of the living room chairs. She knew what running was all about. In four years, she'd been in two hospitals and five rehab centers. Five, no six, different schools. Six different states, from Oregon to Massachusetts. Seven apartments before they inherited Aunt Grace's house. Sure, she'd kept the same name, but the doctors and nurses and physical therapists had changed over and over again. After a while, they all looked the same, but they hadn't been. They'd demanded different things of her, caused her different sorts of pain. Sybil knew what it must have been like for Linda Steinmetz, and she suspected that any sort of a home, even a prison, would be preferable to what Sam's mother had been going through for twenty years.

But Sybil knew it was a lie to say she was doing this for Linda Steinmetz. It was a lie to say she was doing it for Sam, or even Evvie. She was doing it for Nick, giving him the stake he needed. Right or wrong, her loyalties were with him. Linda Steinmetz meant nothing to her, and Sam meant very little. Evvie could fend for herself. Nick was the one in trouble, and Sybil was the only one who could help.

She forced herself to get up, and she began her search by looking around the living room. She knew she'd find nothing there, but she needed to feel more at ease, and the living room was the room she'd spent the most time in. Since moving to Boston, she'd had dinner with Sam and Evvie almost weekly. Warm, friendly, laughing evenings. Evenings filled with lies and secrets. Evenings Sybil longed to be able to return to.

She found the Sunday paper, and rifled through it. She located a pile of Evvie's textbooks, and flipped through them. There were books all over the place, and Sybil picked a few of them up, shook them for clues, then put them back. No clues. Not that she'd expected any.

The telephone rang as she stood there, and she jumped with the shock. She made no effort to answer it, and the machine kicked in. Sybil could hear the message. Some friend of Sam's wanted to know if he and Evvie were free for supper Friday night. In spite of herself, Sybil laughed.

She went into the kitchen then, and some compulsion made her look in the refrigerator, check all the cabinets. There were still some leftovers from her birthday dinner. Meg always cooked enough for an army. Sybil found a box of cookies, and ate a couple. The taste of chocolate calmed her.

There was nothing in the kitchen to tell her where Sam had gone. Sybil knew there wouldn't be, but she had to check. Just in case.

That left the bedroom, where Sybil knew she had her best chance of finding things. It felt strange and terribly wrong to go in there. She'd spent almost no time there during her visits, feeling somehow that the bedroom was Sam and Evvie's private, and slightly sinful, sanctuary. Besides, she knew Evvie's cleaning technique, which was to throw everything into an unused room and close the door. The bedroom door was almost always closed when Sybil came for supper.

The door was open now, though, and Sybil walked in. Evvie hadn't made the bed that morning, and her night-clothes were tossed in one corner. She hadn't hung up what she'd worn the day before, either. Sybil found herself wanting to tidy up. There'd been a little period, five or six years back, when she, Thea, and Evvie had all shared a bedroom. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, before the accident. She'd tidied up for Evvie then, Thea, too, on occasion, not that they'd ever asked her to. She was just a naturally tidy person. That was one reason why it was easier when she and Claire shared a room. Claire was compulsively neat. Sybil had always appreciated that. Nick was that way also. His office never had a single paper out of place, while Meg's kitchen frequently looked tornado-struck. Evvie and Thea were like Meg. She and Claire were like Nick. Claire wouldn't hesitate for a moment if she wanted to find out where Sam had gone. Claire would do exactly what Sybil was doing, only efficiently and without conscience. Sybil wished with all her heart that she was Claire.

There was nothing on the chest of drawers, except a jumble of cheap jewelry and scarves. Under the pile, though, Sybil found a photograph. She picked it up and examined it carefully.

It was a snapshot of all of them, taken years back. Nick and Meg both looked so young, so extraordinarily beautiful. Sybil had forgotten how handsome they used to be. They were still extremely attractive, but now their hair had gray in it, and they had aged so in the past few years. Evvie looked fourteen or fifteen. Her hair was short, and it seemed to Sybil that she hadn't let it grow until after she'd met Sam. Thea's hair was long, though, and she had a dreamy look in her eyes, and that private smile that she used to have. Sybil had almost forgotten that smile. When had Thea stopped taking pleasure in her own universe? Claire, of course, looked the same. She was just a girl there, ten or eleven, but her eyes shone with a defiant beauty. She stood slightly apart from the others, a subtle shading that might not be apparent to strangers.

And Sybil herself was nearly unrecognizable. She'd been almost fat in those days, she was startled to see. Sybil had known that in a family of beauties, she was the ugly duckling, but it had never bothered her. Evvie and Thea were so casually pretty, and Claire so secure in her beauty, that there was no sense of competitiveness and failure. Sybil couldn't remember once feeling less than her sisters because she was less attractive. Certainly Nick and Meg never treated her that way.

But she hadn't realized before just how great the disparity had been. She wondered if other kids had teased her, and she'd been oblivious to it, or shielded from the insults by Claire.

Sybil rested against the chest of drawers, and stared into the picture, into her past. She remembered a long-ago incident. She must have been around eight, and she was a round eight, all bulges and blob compared to the rest of her family. She was with Nick at some project he was working on. A building was being renovated, and Nick had put the money people together, and was getting a cut of the deal. That was how he used to operate, where his money used to come from.

Nick loved to show her his projects. He'd explain to her who the prime movers were, how he'd convinced different people of different things, and Sybil had loved equally hearing about it. Thea used to love watching Meg bake. Sybil loved the business.

A man had come up to them, one of the partners, Sybil now assumed, and had started talking with Nick. He seemed like a nice man, and Sybil could remember him at their house more than once. In those days, they frequently had company. It was hard to remember that now, the guests and the parties. The man was complimenting Nick. Nick used to get complimented a lot back then.

“And your daughters are all so pretty,” the man had said. “I imagine even this one will grow into a beauty someday.”

“She doesn't have to,” Nick had replied. “She's the real beauty of the family already.”

Sybil stared at the photograph, looked at the image of Nick from that time, a time when everything went smoothly, and people wanted to be with him, to share in his glory, his joys. She stared at the man who had so much faith in her. She thought of the irony. She had become a beauty, not from any natural growth, but because the accident had forced her into almost constant exercise. Pain had killed her appetite as well. She was tall, thin, muscular, and striking in appearance. Canes and crutches were a small price to pay.

It almost hurt to put the picture back. Sybil couldn't remember ever having seen a photograph of the six of them together. There were other pictures of course, taken at various stages of development, and a few of Nick and Meg alone, where they looked so bonded it was almost as though they were two sides of the same person. But Sybil couldn't remember one of the six of them before. Not much after that, Sam came into Evvie's life, and they were never the same six, anyway.

Sybil wondered why Evvie had never framed the picture, but it was like her to be careless with the most important things. Sybil was counting on that after all.

Sybil checked the night table first. There was a pad by the phone, and a pencil by its side, but the pad was empty. She walked over to the desk next and went through the papers. They mostly seemed to be schoolwork Evvie was completing. She only had a month or so to go before getting her bachelor's degree. Last year had been a good one for graduations, Claire's and Sam's. Next year, Sybil would graduate from high school. She wanted to go to Princeton, since that was Nick's alma mater. Maybe Nick could turn the twenty-five thousand into four years' tuition with some of his magic.

There on the bottom of an Abnormal Psych paper were the words Sybil had been looking for. Just a few scribbled letters in Evvie's handwriting: Amer. 29. 2:20. 4:35. Cont. 142. 6:45. 9:15.

Sybil looked at the paper and waited for it to explain its mystery to her. The last two numbers of each sequence were times, departures and arrivals, she assumed. That meant the rest of it must be the flight numbers. She couldn't figure out at first why there were two of them, though. Why hadn't Sam just flown from New York to wherever he was going? Why make two flights?

But then she thought about it, and realized there were three flights, not two. The shuttle from Boston to New York, to throw off anybody who might be following him. The next flight must also be a precautionary one. Instead of flying directly to wherever, Sam was breaking up the trip, flying different airlines, using, undoubtedly, different names. He must have told Evvie what names he'd be using, in case one or another of the planes had crashed. But they hadn't, and Evvie, in her carelessness, hadn't bothered to erase the flight numbers from the paper. For all her years of lying, she still wasn't a professional conspirator.

The first flight number didn't matter, Sybil decided. She only cared about Sam's final destination. That was Cont. 142. Continental Flight 142. Departing from someplace at 6:45. Arriving at Linda Steinmetz's side at 9:15.

Sybil picked up the phone and got Continental's 800 number from information. She pressed the numbers into the phone, and within two rings had a Continental ticket agent.

“I'm calling about your flight yesterday,” Sybil said. “Flight number one-four-two. I think it left from Chicago.”