Page 22 of The Women of Wild Hill
Sibyl huffed. “If that’s what you see, you must be hallucinating. I’m perfectly normal.”
“Sure you are,” Ed told her. His mustache couldn’t conceal his smile.
AS DULL AND ORDINARY ASshe may have been, Sibyl never managed to fit in. She didn’t have much in common with the kids at school. Her hair alone would have set her apart, but there was so much more than that. Her clothes were too L.A. Her mom had tattoos. No one in the family went to church. If she hadn’t been the mayor’s daughter, things might have been much worse. Throughout her time in Texas, Sibyl had many acquaintances but only one good friend, an equally strange girl named Lily. When she looked back on those years, Sibyl realized how much she owed Lily. Without her, Sibyl’s childhood would have been unbearably lonely.
By the time she turned sixteen, Sibyl and Phoebe were at each other’s throats. Sibyl’s mother had a way of highlighting her every shortcoming. And the rules she imposed made no sense to anyone. Phoebe didn’t give a damn if Sibyl smoked weed or had sex. (Sibyl, in an act of rebellion, did neither.) But she forbade her daughter to see any movies starring or directed by Brigid Laguerre.
“I hear she worships Satan,” Phoebe once informed her daughter.
Sibyl must have rolled her eyes. “Really? I remember you telling me only morons actually worship Satan. The Satanic Temple was founded to piss off religious zealots.”
“Whatever,” Phoebe responded. “I just get a bad vibe from her.”
This coming from a woman who spoke to snakes—and swore they talked back. Now that she was older, Sibyl’s schoolmates had begun to notice just how unusual Phoebe was. When someone spotted Sibyl’s mom conversing with a crow, she thought she’d never hear the end of it. She’d just about accepted her pariah status when she discovered she could transform her mother’s hangover cures, cramp remedies, and nausea tonics into delicious herbal smoothies. Suddenly, she was wildly popular. Her classmates would come to see her before they’d see a doctor or the school nurse. Of course, there were always a few girls every year who needed much more than a smoothie. Sibyl would take them home to meet her mother.
“You know, I think your mom may be a witch,” one of the girls told her afterward.
“You meanbitch,” Sibyl answered. “And yeah, she definitely is.”
Lily didn’t like Sibyl’s new friends, and she hated the way Sibyl talked about her mother.
Sibyl not so politely pointed out that Lily didn’t have to live with Phoebe.
“Soon you won’t have to live with her, either,” Lily told her.
The idea stuck. Though it thrilled her and scared her in equal measure, from that point forward, it was never far from her mind. As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one who’d been toying with it.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUTwolves?” Ed Fox asked his daughter one day when they were out for a ride.
“What?” Sibyl had been daydreaming. She looked over at her dad, who was brushing his mustache with his thumb the way he did when he was deep in thought.
“You’ve heard all of that alpha wolf nonsense, I’m sure.”
“You mean how the pack is led by a badass male wolf who keeps all the others in line?”
“Yep,” Ed said. “It’s bullshit. Bad science. Native folk never bought it.”
“Yeah?” Sibyl asked. “So what’s the truth?”
“Packs are led by a pair—a male and a female. Most of the time, it’s the parents of a family.”
Sibyl yawned. She still hadn’t caught on to where the conversation was heading.
“When the children are too big and powerful to be led, they set out on their own.”
That got her attention. “Holy shit, Dad!” Sibyl couldn’t believe it. “Are you kicking me out?”
“Nope. I’m saying that your fights with your mother are not necessary. You don’t want or need to be controlled anymore. And that’s exactly how it’s meant to be. Go explore. Find your own way.”
“Now?” Sibyl looked at the barren, beautiful world all around.
“No, sweetheart.” Ed laughed. “Your mother would send out a posse to hunt you down. Wait until you turn eighteen.”
SO AT EIGHTEEN, WHEN TEXASand Phoebe could no longer lay claim to her, Sibyl got the hell out of Dodge. She left the state for the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Her mother had always warned her to stay off both coasts. It was another one of her rules that made no fucking sense. The moment she stepped off the plane at JFK airport, Sibyl could sense she was closer to the place she needed to be. But wherever that was, she wasn’t quite there yet.
In the years that followed, Sibyl focused on her cooking. From the beginning, her technique needed little work. Cooking had always come naturally to her. She’d mastered the classic French omelet by the age of five. She made her father beef Wellington for his birthday the year she turned eight. People drove for hundreds of miles to buy the smoothies she made for her mother’s business. If Phoebe was impressed, she did a good job of hiding it.
By twenty-one, Sibyl had opened her first restaurant in Brooklyn. It wasn’t fancy—just a little hole in the wall. She didn’t even take reservations. And yet word of her culinary masterpieces quickly made its way around town. Billionaires tried to bribe her employees for seats. Celebrities stood in line behind cleaning staff. TheNew York Timesreferred to her as a witch in their review. Sibyl stared at the word on the screen as though it meant something the critic hadn’t intended. She took it away with her and turned it around inher mind for the rest of the day. Every time her thoughts brushed up against it, she felt a charge, like the word was a talisman she didn’t yet know how to use. She’d never dared think of herself in that way before.
