Sam
No one finds any fingerprints in their dusting of Dominique St. Clair’s body. No one notices Sam in security camera footage. They are always convinced that she is just an innocent bystander—another patron visiting the bathroom, a guest heading out through the lobby, a customer getting their car at the valet. The police add her to lists of witnesses and bystanders and then skim right past her name. They assume they’ve already questioned her. Medical examiners puzzle over the cause of Dominique’s death, wondering if it was a heart attack or an aneurysm, some undiagnosed medical condition. They shake their heads and say she was too young.
But word spreads like wildfire of a philosopher’s death. Every syndicate is on edge. When she and Will return to Angel City, she can sense the potential for violence hanging heavy in the air.
She wonders what Ari must be thinking, how close he must have been with Dominique, how deeply her death might have hurt him. Perhaps he’s guessed that Sam was responsible. He must hate her. Will he even meet her again at the secret beach, at the next full moon? It’s coming up; it must be on his mind.
She doesn’t want to think about it. Most of her feels numb. Expose the mind repeatedly to the same trauma, again and again and again, and it will learn to protect itself by normalizing the extraordinary. The details grow fuzzy; the heart, exhausted, searches for something else to occupy itself. So whenever she thinks back on the night at Oxford, she thinks instead of Will, his necktie wound around her eyes, his hands sliding along her body, making her feel incredible, making her forget. And when she feels like she can’t bear the pressure, she goes knocking on Will’s door again, and he lets her in, working on her until she can’t remember anything.
Meanwhile, another bonus of a million dollars appears in Sam’s account. It’s like magic. She thinks back to when every dollar felt like it was cut fromthe skin of her and her mother. Now there is so much that she doesn’t know what to do with it. It is like watching a ghost grow and grow, haunting her each time she looks, and yet she can’t stop staring at it, can’t stop counting the rising numbers. It looks like it’s going to spill over, and what happens then?
Sam stares at it until she can’t stand it anymore. She has to get rid of it somehow. But what can she spend it on? How much does it cost to heal a soul?
When Sam visits her mother right after she returns, she arrives bearing a red envelope and a paper bag.
The door is unlocked, the way it usually is when her mother is expecting her to show up. In the kitchen, her mother is tenderizing chicken breasts with a mallet. Sam puts the paper bag on the kitchen counter and then heads over where her mother stands, apron cloudy with flour, and gives her mother a quick kiss on the cheek.
Her mother stiffens at her touch. It’s a warning, and Sam freezes for a heartbeat, frowning. Something is bothering her mother, but she hasn’t said what yet. Her mother’s eyes skip briefly to the sharp cut of Sam’s new clothes, her designer shoes and leather purse.
“I brought you star anise,” Sam says. She stares at the ingredients sprawled out. “You’re making katsu?”
Her mother glances up at her. Her gaze is cold and distant, ready to pick something apart. This is Sam’s second warning.
Her mother returns to pounding the meat. “How was Berlin?”
“Berlin was good,” Sam says. “Really crowded and a little hot, for this time of year.”
Her mother’s expression doesn’t change. “You were working the entire time?”
“Most of it.” Sam pulls out the envelope and puts it on the counter. “But while I was gone, I secured a surprise for you.”
This, at least, gets a bit of reaction from her mother, who pauses in her kitchen preparation to look at the envelope. She glances at her daughter. “What is it?”
Sam tears it open for her so that she doesn’t have to remove her food gloves. “Read it,” she says.
Inside is a title, along with a thick stack of other paperwork. Sam looks on as her mother reads through it, the crease between her brow deepening, then disappearing as her eyes widen.
“Mom,” Sam says, “I bought you a house.”
Her mother stops cooking. She looks quickly at her. “A house?”
Sam nods, and breaks into her first genuine smile in a long time. This was the solution, of course, doing a good thing with her money, spending it on her mother, gifting her everything she deserves and more. And for a moment, it seems to work—her mother seems to forget everything as she stares down at the paper. “It’s on a hill,” Sam continues. “Floor-to-ceiling glass panels, so you can see a view of the entire city.” She leans forward eagerly to point at the photos, proud of herself, her voice growing more animated. “And look at the size of this lot. There’s a swimming pool and hot tub in the backyard, and a vegetable garden, and fruit trees.”
“You’ve bought it already?” Her mother looks at her again.
“Yes. It’s all done.”
“What’s the mortgage?”
“There is none. I bought it in cash.”
In cash. Her mother looks at the title again. Tightens her grip on the paper. Sam sees the expression shift on her face, stretching tight her scarred skin, and for a moment, she tries to remember what her mother used to look like before the fire. It’s hard to see that woman here. She searches for joy on her mother’s face, but all she sees is something unreadable.
Sam’s smile wavers, the feeling of satisfaction she’d expected to get now eluding her.
“Do you like it?” Sam asks.
“I love it.” But there is something else in her mother’s voice that Sam tries to guess.
