Page 18 of The Women of Wild Hill

Growing up on the Allswell Ranch, Sibyl lived in awe of her radiant mother.

No one had ever mistaken Phoebe for an average person, but only those who shared the same roof knew exactly what she could do.

She would often disappear into the desert for hours at a time.

Then she’d come back at sunset with wounded animals.

When she spoke to them, their ears perked up.

And when they responded, Phoebe listened.

“Poor thing’s in shock,” she once said of a snake that wouldn’t uncoil. “A big bird dropped it out of the sky. Let’s put him in a sunny window. He needs a little time to relax.”

“How do you know?” Sibyl asked.

Phoebe shrugged. “Just a gift,” she said.

Sibyl’s dad had grown up in Endswell, but her mother hailed from parts unknown. Where Phoebe’s people were from, she refused to say. She made it clear she had no desire to see them and didn’t want to be found. Once, when she was small, Sibyl had asked Phoebe if she was on the run.

“Where did you get that idea?” Phoebe had asked, trying and failing to make her question sound casual. Then she got serious, and it felt as if the sun had momentarily vanished behind a cloud. “Did you have a vision?”

“A what?” Sibyl had asked. After that, her mom was all smiles.

Her mother loved her. Sibyl never doubted that for a moment.

Phoebe hugged her and kissed her and took her with her wherever she went.

So it was strange that it often felt like the best way to please her mom was to fail.

When Sibyl showed a knack for cooking, her mother gave her a patch of the garden to grow her own ingredients.

Within a month, all the plants in Sibyl’s little plot were dead.

The leaves were withered and the vegetables bored through by bugs that didn’t seem interested in her mother’s herbs.

Phoebe had been delighted. “That’s okay, sweetie,” she’d said merrily. “One green thumb in the family is more than enough!”

A few years later, when they drove into Dallas to buy Sibyl a dress for her eighth-grade dance, every sales associate in the store had ignored the gawky teen and rushed to greet her gorgeous mother. Even after they were told that the pair was shopping for Sibyl, they only had eyes for Phoebe.

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” Phoebe told her on the drive back. “It’s exhausting having to deal with that kind of attention.”

And Sibyl would never forget the day in tenth grade when she failed chemistry and was rewarded with carrot cake.

“You don’t want me to be good at anything, do you?” she’d asked her mother.

“I just want you to be happy,” Phoebe said.

“And boring,” Sibyl told her.

“Boring is safe,” said the woman who was anything but.

WHENEVER THE TENSIONS IN THEIR house began to build to a boil, Sibyl’s father would hand her a hat.

Old and wide-brimmed, the hat had once been white.

Over the years, it had acquired a golden patina.

It was the hat his mother always wore when she hopped on her horse and set off on her own.

No one ever knew where she went. No one dared ask.

Her family had followed the old tribal ways, and Ed’s mother was the last woman in a matrilineal line that stretched back for centuries.

He and his brothers never knew exactly how long she’d be gone—just that she would return.

And tucked inside her saddlebag would be whatever their family most desperately needed.

When his mother died, the hat would have gone to the daughter she never had.

Instead, it had hung on a hook for years, waiting for the next woman in the family.

Now it belonged to Sibyl. She knew what it meant when her father handed it to her.

They’d walk out to the barn and saddle up.

Then they’d ride until the resentment wore off.

“Why doesn’t she drive you crazy?” Sibyl once asked him when they were out where only the sagebrush and jackrabbits could hear them.

“Who?” Ed was messing with the kid, but the question could easily have referred to any woman in his family.

“Mom!” Sibyl gave him the stink eye.

Ed’s chuckle came out a low-pitched rumble. “I was raised by a woman just like your mother. Good thing for you and your mama I got a high threshold for difficult ladies.” He winked at his daughter.

“Me?” Sibyl made sure he could tell she was shocked to the core.

“Sweetheart, you are just like your mother. Right now you’re both too close to realize it. But I can see it clear as day.”

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 AS she 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 mean bitch,” 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 ABOUT wolves?” 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 TEXAS and 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.