Sam
When he’s on top of her, she doesn’t have to think.
She memorizes the lines of his silhouette and the whisper of his commands.
She takes pleasure in testing his patience.
When he ties her down and pushes her to the brink, she tilts her head back and lets the world go white.
When he grips her hips from behind, she buries her face into the pillows and screams. When he gags her, she bites so hard into the cloth that her jaw aches.
He is always merciless with her, and she doesn’t care; it forces her to concentrate on nothing else.
She pulls him down to her when he shudders, digging her nails into his back until she knows they hurt, cherishing the brief moment when he breaks, when she is more powerful than him.
He reminds her of men in paintings by the European masters, a work of chiaroscuro, his presence both brightly illuminated and shrouded in darkness, brows furrowed in unholy thought.
There is nothing about Will that reminds her of Ari, and nothing about Ari that reminds her of Will.
They are the branches of a fork in the road, one leading down a path that was once open to her, the other the path she chose instead, each with no return.
There is no way to loop around, no way back that can lead to another way forward.
Afterward, when their breathing has steadied and their bodies have cooled, she lies beside Will and stares out at the night.
His room has a sliding door that opens the entire wall of glass to the world outside, beyond which she can see a cobbled courtyard lined with cypress leading out to an illuminated pool.
It overlooks the entire expanse of the city, a million twinkling lights spread out in all directions.
In the darkness, no one can see them, but she imagines they can anyway, wonders if the world would judge her.
The wind is whispering through the trees tonight, and the sliver of a moon casts faint hints of silver against their blankets.
Somewhere in the distance, she can hear a symphony of crickets.
Will is gentle now, serene in a way that is unfamiliar to her.
She lies in the crook of his arm as he idly strokes her hair, and studies the way his eyes follow the quivering shadows that the trees cast against the ceiling.
“Why are you sad, Sam?” he says after a while, without turning his eyes to her.
She’s silent for a moment. Nothing about her escapes Will. “My mother,” she replies softly. “We’ll be fine.”
Will’s hand combs through the locks of her hair. “You’ve been talking to her often lately.”
“I try. But we don’t have that kind of understanding.”
He nods once. “I don’t think we ever really know our mothers,” he says.
Sam thinks of the way he sometimes trades barbs with Diamond, the curious contrast between their distance and their undeniable bond. “You seem to know yours,” she answers.
“Do I?” He smiles wryly without looking at her.
Sam hesitates, thinking back to Diamond’s weakening form. “Will,” she decides to ask, “what’s wrong with Diamond’s health?”
He doesn’t look at her, and for a moment, Sam is sorry she asked.
“Cancer,” he says at last. “Pancreatic. She’s had it for over a decade, so I suppose she’s lucky, in some ways. Most don’t live that long.”
Cancer. Sam swallows hard, picturing Diamond’s glittering eyes, still as sharp as ever in her thinning face. “Not even alchiatry can reverse it?” she asks, knowing the answer.
“Oh, Amerson has definitely slowed its progress. But we’re talking millions of cells, Sam, all choosing to misfire. When your body’s that determined to kill you, not even alchemy can transmute it quickly enough. She has about a year.”
Sam stares at Will’s empty drinking glass on his nightstand, condensation still beading against its surface. “I didn’t know,” she whispers apologetically.
Will doesn’t react. “It’s the way of things.”
“She told you all this?”
“Of course not. As you say, we don’t have that kind of understanding. Amerson keeps me up to date.”
Sam is quiet for a moment, understanding him. “Is that how it is? When you grow up like this?”
“Like what?”
“Living in a place like this. Not talking to each other. Getting information through assistants instead.”
“I didn’t grow up here.”
“Oh.” She looks at him. “I assumed you did.”
“No.” Will glances at her. “Diamond didn’t come from wealth.”
Sam returns his look. “I assumed, based on the way she carries herself—”
“—like old money? Everyone assumes it. I guess it must seem impossible that she was ever a member of the herd.” His gaze returns to the ceiling.
“No, she was the daughter of a trucker. Never knew a mother, although she did know a rotation of my grandfather’s girlfriends.
Born into dirt and sweat, like everyone else. ”
Daughter of a trucker. Sam tries to imagine the imposing woman as a young girl, waiting at a screen door for her father to come home after three weeks on the road. She tries to see Diamond as a child, mind full of gears and gadgets, turning in perpetual curiosity.
“Wasn’t she a Harvard grad, though?” Sam asks.
“Scholarship kid. That’s where she met Amerson, at a party at my father’s apartment.”
Emboldened by his open state, she asks, “Did you ever know your father?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and she thinks perhaps she’s asked the wrong question. But before she can apologize, he says, “His name was Peter. I remember sitting around his lab while he worked, toying with pipettes and flasks.”
So, Will had been old enough to remember. Sam tries to recall her own father and fails. Her mother doesn’t talk about him, and considering he’d left them by the time she was six months old, it’s an irrelevant topic, anyway.
“Did he teach you alchemy?” she asks.
“A little.”
She thinks of her fight with her own mother, how walled off her mother’s heart is, and can’t imagine her letting Sam in on anything that personal. “Did you know what your parents were working on?”
“Yes, well.” A strong wind bends the shadows on the ceiling, and Will’s gaze follows the movement. “They tested the batches on me.”
Sam props herself up on one elbow to stare down at him. “They tested sand on you?”
“My father made samples, and my mother administered them to me. Sometimes I reacted well. Sometimes I reacted badly. I was very sensitive to it, so I made for a good subject.”
She’s quiet, horrified by his words. All the sand in the world, all of Grand Central’s success, all the syndicates in their modern form, exist because Will had been his parents’ lab rat.
“How old were you?” she ventures.
“Four.”
So young. Her skin prickles at the cruelty of it, and she pictures a little version of Will, perpetually pale and sick, cheeks still round with baby fat, hunched over a toilet and retching violently into it while his mother looked steadily on.
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers, stunned, not knowing what else to say.
“Don’t be.” Will’s voice is emotionless. “Amerson always patched me up afterward. I manage it well enough.” He nods at the empty glass on the nightstand as he says it.
It had never occurred to Sam that Will’s regular drinks were something he needed to have. What lingering effects did he suffer? Pain? Illness? Whatever they are, he hides them well.
No wonder the old alchiatrist had seemed so familiar with Will. She’d watched over him since he was a child, had nursed him back to health countless times.
“Does your mother ever regret it?” Sam murmurs.
“Can’t say,” Will answers. “She would keep meticulous journals about my reactions to everything, how I’d deteriorate and how I’d heal.
It wasn’t always about the sand. She would write down everything that happened to me.
My changing height and weight and the length of my limbs.
Whether I was happy or sad. Whether I got along with others at school.
My questions. My opinions. How often I told her I loved her. It was all data.”
Sam remembers the day when Diamond came into bathroom while Sam was frantically washing her hands.
She recalls how the woman had spoken in her firm, soft voice.
How Sam had felt herself leaning in the woman’s direction, wanting her affection.
She can hear the same yearning now in Will’s voice, some buried part of his boyhood, an eternal longing for his mother’s love.
“What happened to your father?” Sam asks.
Will is quiet for another stretch before he finally answers.
“Sand enhances everything about you,” he begins.
“Everything good, and everything bad. My father had always suffered from depression. As the first philosopher, he had no idea that his talent would shorten his life, or that sand would hit philosophers the hardest. At Harvard, he took a cocktail of drugs to keep himself functioning and productive. By the time I turned nine, alchemy and sand had taken their toll on the darker corners of his mind. So one night, when my mother was still at a series of meetings, I went upstairs in our home to find my father hanging from the ceiling of their bedroom.”
Sam’s heart twists at his words. She winces. Will had been nine years old when he’d found his father’s body. He had been alone in their home when it’d happened, must have huddled somewhere and waited for help to arrive.
She reaches for him and touches his cheek with her hand. Will doesn’t seem to notice her gesture at first. His eyes are far away now, lost in some memory, and it isn’t until she closes her eyes and leans her head against his that he turns in her direction.
“I’ve never told anyone,” he whispers, and she opens her eyes again.
His gaze is so different tonight. The hard exterior she is so used to, the cold glint and the intimidating sear, all of it has faded, and in its place is something that must resemble the boy he used to be.
And Sam wonders if this is how it happens to all of them, that once upon a time, he had seen beauty in the world too, had trusted and smiled and been a child.
He had kept his heart open until he couldn’t bear the wounds any longer, and then he had shut it, letting himself go still and cold.
She kisses him. He kisses her back, and this time his touch is gentle. His arm curls around her bare waist and pulls her to him under the blankets. She wraps her arms around his neck as she shifts beneath him, relishing the heat of his body, wishing this night would stretch on indefinitely.
In the hour before dawn, a low buzz from Sam’s phone stirs her awake. She shifts, remembers she’s still in Will’s bed, and glances over to see his back turned to her. Then she looks at her phone and sees a message from her mother glowing on the screen.
Sam. I’m sorry. I need to talk to you. There is something we need to discuss in person. Just one meeting.
Sam feels her heart constrict in grief again. She can still hear the familiar authority in the words, but the words themselves are a little different this time. Meeker. Pleading. Like she is unsure whether her daughter will obey her.
Sam thinks of Will’s stories about his own mother. How strange and difficult the path is between parent and child, how the tether pulls taut in spite of everything.
She misses her mother. She wants to talk to her, work it out. She looks away from the message and glances over her shoulder to Will’s figure. When she’s sure that his chest is still rising and falling gently in deep sleep, she sits up.
Quietly, she slides out of bed, pulls on her shirt and shorts, and moves to the balcony, where she steps sideways so as not to be in the center of Will’s view when he opens his eyes. There, she leans against the railing, deletes her mother’s message, and calls her.
Her mother picks up before the first ring can even finish.
“Sam.”
Her voice sounds different tonight—high-pitched and soft, hesitant in a way that makes Sam uncomfortable.
She’s silent for another beat before she whispers, “It’s too early.”
“I know. But I need to see you.”
“Why?” she whispers, and her voice is hoarse with sorrow.
Her mother’s voice lowers now too. “We can discuss everything. It won’t take long.”
Sam closes her eyes. She pictures them sitting together, this broken couple, how awkward it will be for them to find the right words around each other. A lifetime of missed opportunities. Sam tries to make up her mind.
“Please, Sam.” Her mother’s voice is so quiet now that she can barely hear her. “It will be different.” Underneath the words, she hears an urgency that frightens her.
Sam stares out into the night and says, “When?”
There is silence on the other end, and Sam thinks she hears a small intake of breath. Then her mother says, “Tomorrow night.”
Then there is nothing more to say. Sam lets her mother hang up first, then stays against the balcony railing a moment longer. At last, she returns to bed, her back turned to Will, and closes her eyes.
Beside her, Will’s breathing stays rhythmic and even.