Sybil at Sixteen Read online

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.”

  “Let me check,” the agent said. “No, flight one-four-two left from Kansas City, not Chicago.”

  “So it wasn’t your Chicago to Seattle flight?” Sybil asked.

  “No, one-four-two left yesterday from Kansas City at six-forty-five P.M. and arrived in San Diego at nine-fifteen,” the agent replied. “Why? Was there some sort of problem with your luggage?”

  “No problem at all,” Sybil said. “I was simply given the wrong information. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and sat down swiftly on the bed. San Diego. That’s where Sam had ended up last night.

  Of course he might have taken another flight out of San Diego, but there were no notations to indicate that he had, and Sybil could see no reason for yet another flight. Ultimately Sam had to end up where his mother was, and San Diego seemed as likely a final spot as anyplace else in America.

  Sybil automatically massaged the backs of her calves. It was a habit she’d gotten into, smoothing out the pain. Sam was in San Diego. It had really been so easy to find out. Evvie thought she was so clever, so good at concealing things from her family, but Sybil had proved smarter. Claire wasn’t the only one who could find out family secrets and use them to her own advantage.

  San Diego. They’d considered a rehab center there. Nick had heard about it from one of his acquaintances a few years back. It was supposed to be a wonderful place. They performed miracles. But the cost was prohibitive, and Nick had learned after a little more research that the center focused more on back injuries, anyway. Sybil wondered what kind of kidney specialists there were in San Diego. She supposed the FBI could find out quickly enough if they were so inclined.

  For a moment she thought about going to San Diego, finding Sam, and warning him how easy it would be for his secret to be found out. She was sixteen years old, and in less than an hour had located him. She could describe Evvie’s carelessness to him, the way she kept the spare key where it always was, the way she’d failed to change the locks on the door, the way she’d left specific information about where he could be found right in their bedroom. Evvie had betrayed him in a hundred little ways, starting, Sybil realized, by telling her family in the first place. Claire had known and not cared and never broken the confidence. But Evvie, who professed to love Sam, was casual with his life.

  But of course there would be no flight to San Diego, no alignment with Sam and his mother against Evvie. Sybil wouldn’t even know how to find Sam once she got there.

  That decided, the next step was to pick up the phone and call Nick. He would do the rest on his own, and then the FBI would take over, and Linda Steinmetz would be caught, and there’d be money again. Not enough, but a start. Nick was entitled to a start. He’d had too many finishes over the years.

  Sybil wished she could lie to herself. She wished she were the plump little girl in the pictu
re. She wished there were an easier way, one that smacked less of betrayal. She wished Evvie had never gone to Eastgate, had never fallen in love with Sam Steinmetz Greene. She wished as she always did that the car had never swung around and hit her, had never broken up the lives of all the people she truly loved.

  But the car had hit her and Evvie had fallen in love and there was no easier way. To betray Linda Steinmetz, a woman Sybil had never met, was to save Nick Sebastian, a man Sybil owed her very being to. It was no contest. Or at least it shouldn’t have been.

  Sybil got up from the bed and left the bedroom. She closed the door behind her to block out Evvie’s careless mess. Continental Flight 142. Arrived in San Diego at 9:15 P.M. Had Linda Steinmetz met Sam at the airport? Probably not. How would they even recognize each other?

  Sybil thought for a moment of all that Sam was willing to risk for a mother who had deserted him, a mother he had never known. Nick, who had given up so much for her, was asking so little from Sybil in return. Just the name of a city. He would do the rest. Whatever the consequences would be, Nick would take the responsibility.

  Sybil whispered a near silent apology to Sam and Evvie for betraying them in their own home, and only possibly for their own good. She then picked up the phone in the living room and dialed the Boston number.

  “Hello?”

  “He took Continental flight one-four-two to San Diego last night,” Sybil said. “It arrived at nine-fifteen P.M.”

  “Good. Now go to the library and find Thea.”

  “I will,” Sybil promised. She hung up the phone, walked to the bathroom, and retched with great heaving shudders for a very long time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sybil sat in the kitchen Tuesday evening while Meg cut up a tomato and put it in the salad. “Supper smells good,” she said.

  Meg smiled. “It isn’t often I have my four daughters together for a meal,” she replied. “I thought it was worth a little extra effort.”

  “I don’t think you should expect too much from Evvie,” Claire said, walking into the kitchen. She grabbed a carrot and took a bite. “Not with everything that’s going on.”

  “Evvie will come through fine,” Meg declared. “Just watch.”

  Claire jerked her head toward Meg and frowned. Sybil knew exactly how she felt. None of them were normal that day, but Meg seemed the most out of it.

  “Tomorrow you and Thea will be back in New York,” Meg said. “And it will just be Nicky and Sybil and me again. Not that I’m unhappy, mind you. But this supper is special. It makes up for our not having lunch together yesterday.”

  “Evvie was sorry about that,” Sybil said. “She felt she had to wait at her office in case Sam called. And he did.”

  “I know that,” Meg said. “But tonight will be different.”

  Sybil couldn’t take it anymore, so she left the kitchen. She found Thea in the living room, poring over a biology textbook. “Does Megs seem strange to you?” she asked.

  “Everybody seems strange to me right now,” Thea replied, putting the book down. “You seemed strange to me at the library yesterday. You were practically clinging to me. Sybil, I love you dearly, and I know you love me, but I’ve never seen you cling to anybody before. Not even Claire.”

  “I did not cling,” Sybil said, but she was uncomfortably aware that she must have. She’d gone straight from Evvie’s to the library, and had found Thea, just as Nick had instructed her to. The only way she could keep from shaking or weeping was by asking Thea a thousand foolish and distracting questions, so ask them she did, until Thea finally gave up in disgust and went back home with her.

  “All right, you didn’t cling,” Thea said. “But you sure seemed odd, and so did Nicky and Megs.”

  “They seemed normal to me,” Sybil said.

  “They hardly talked,” Thea said. “I don’t think either one of them said more than five words last night.”

  “They’re worried about Evvie,” Sybil replied. Actually, she had enjoyed the silence. As long as nobody was talking about Sam and his mother, it felt as though nothing had happened. And as long as Nick didn’t say he had indeed called the FBI, Sybil could choose to believe he hadn’t. He could have changed his mind, after all. He could have decided it wasn’t worth it. Or he could still be thinking about it. Nick was occasionally impetuous, but not always.

  “Of course they’re worried about Evvie,” Thea said. “We’re all worried about Evvie. I think even Claire is, and she never notices what’s going on. Unless, of course, there’s a man involved. Last night she came into my room and said she thought something was going to go very seriously wrong, and I should be prepared. I asked her why she felt that way, and she wouldn’t tell me. She said it was just a hunch. She said she could smell trouble the way other people smell flowers. Claire can be very strange.”

  “Do you think there’s going to be trouble?” Sybil asked.

  “I hope not,” Thea said. “To be perfectly honest, I’d feel better if Evvie weren’t coming over here tonight. Does that sound terrible?”

  “No,” Sybil said. “It doesn’t sound terrible at all.”

  “I wouldn’t mind under ordinary circumstances,” Thea declared. “I’d love it. Sometimes I feel like I never see Evvie without Sam. There are times I think she uses him for protection, so she won’t be alone with us. Do you ever get that feeling?”

  “I do,” Claire said, joining them. “And I don’t blame her. If I were in love with someone as good as Sam, I’d use him as an emotional bodyguard.”

  “But why should Evvie need one?” Sybil asked. “I could see why she might feel that way about Sam’s family, but not about us.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Thea said. “It’s just a feeling I get.”

  “Evvie judges people,” Claire said. “She always has. And if you stand in judgment of people you love, it can get uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why she needs Sam.”

  “I think she should stand in judgment of Sam,” Sybil declared. “The way he’s lied to us all these years.”

  “Don’t you start standing in judgment,” Claire said. “I don’t think I could take that.”

  “I don’t think I can take any of this,” Thea said. “Evvie’s coming for supper tonight, not to spend time with us before we go back to New York, but because Sam decided it was safer to call here.”

  “I’m sure she wanted to see us, also,” Claire said.

  “I’m not,” Thea said. “I offered to stay at her place last night, so she wouldn’t be alone, and she wouldn’t let me. She sounded very tense, too, jittery, and I wasn’t comfortable leaving her by herself, but she practically shouted at me when I asked her again. And it wasn’t like Sam was going to call. She made that perfectly clear; he can’t call her there because their phones are tapped.”

  Sybil took a deep breath. She’d forgotten about the tapped phones. What had she said to Nick? Had she informed the FBI with her message? Would they find Linda Steinmetz and cut Nick out of the reward? If that happened, everybody would hate her, Evvie and Sam and Nick. But Nick was the one who told her to call, so he couldn’t blame her, or would he? The Nick who would turn in Sam’s mother for twenty-five thousand might turn against the person who screwed up the reward for him.

  Sybil tried to appear casual as she thought over what she had said. She didn’t think she’d mentioned Sam’s name, and she knew she hadn’t mentioned Linda Steinmetz. She had said San Diego, though, and Sam’s flight number. If the FBI really did follow Sam around, then they might indeed start tracking. But the odds were they didn’t, and they couldn’t be sure who was in San Diego, or what the significance of the call was. She realized with a start just how desperate she was not to be personally responsible for what happened to Linda Steinmetz.

  “Hi, girls,” Nick said. “What’s up?”

  “We’re talking about how crazy everybody is,” Claire said. “This whole Linda Steinmetz business.”

  “I don’t feel crazy,” Nick declared. “Worried a
bout Sam and Evvie, naturally, but that’s it.”

  “You don’t think it’s weird the way Megs is ignoring all the problems?” Claire asked.

  “Daisy is worried, also,” Nick said. “But she doesn’t want to seem that way, especially since this is your last night home. You could make a special effort, too. It would mean a lot to her.”

  The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Claire said. “It’s probably Evvie.” But they could hear her say, “Clark!” after she opened the door.

  Nick shook his head. “That man has the worst timing,” he whispered, but he went to the hallway, and escorted Clark into the living room. “This is a pleasant surprise,” Nick declared. “You certainly are loaded down.”

  “I brought a VCR,” Clark said. “Hello, Nick. Where’s Meg?”

  “In the kitchen,” Nick replied. “Finishing supper. Care to join us?”

  “I’d be delighted,” Clark said. “I know this is unexpected, but I had a special treat, and I wanted to share it with all of you. Meg mentioned to me that Evvie was coming over, and I thought she’d enjoy it, too.”

  “Enjoy what?” Meg asked, walking over to Clark and giving him a kiss on the cheek. Sybil examined the man who had continued to love Meg for so many years. Clark looked rich and weak and exactly the same as he always did. He was as close to an uncle as she had ever had. In some ways, she realized, she had as little family as Sam or Nick.

  “I brought a VCR,” Clark said. “It seems to me you don’t have one yet.”

  “Our TV barely works,” Nick said. “VCRs aren’t high on our list right now.”

  “That’s why I brought one,” Clark said. He put it down on the sofa. “Meg, dearest, don’t you think you should buy some decent furniture for this place? Grace must be turning over in her grave with the junk you’ve been using.”

  “Then she should have left us her furniture along with the house,” Nick said. “Why did you bring the VCR, Clark? Certainly not for us to sit on.”

  “I took all the home movies I’ve shot of you and the girls, and had them transferred to videotape,” Clark said. “I thought this evening after dinner we could watch them together. Meg, they’re priceless. The memories they bring back. I even have some of our summers at Eastgate. Remember that movie camera of Dad’s? That summer when he went everywhere with it? I put all of it on a videotape. There’re even some shots of you, Nick, and of course, there’s lots of film of the girls growing up.”