Sam
The day Sam is supposed to meet her mother, she calls in the morning and no one answers. She lets it go, hops in the shower, and runs to get breakfast. Around noon, she calls again. No answer, no messages.
It’s a little strange. Her mother never ignores her calls. Sam tells herself that maybe she’s busy running errands. Or maybe it’s because she’s saving up what she needs to say.
Maybe this is a good thing, this meeting. Sam can convince her mother that her life is going in a good direction, that she doesn’t need to worry so much. Maybe they can find some common ground here, where she can explain to her mother why this, too, is the dream, that sometimes making it requires doing difficult things. Hadn’t her mother always taught her that good things require sacrifice?
Around 4:00P.M., Sam calls her mother again. Still no answer. There are only four hours left before they’re supposed to meet, and Sam is starting to get a bit anxious. Did something happen to her phone? Her mother does have a habit of misplacing it; Sam can still remember all her childhood hunts for it around the apartment.
Still, deep within her chest, a note of unease pulses. The last time Sam couldn’t reach her mother, she had been caught in the explosion at Mandarin Palace Chinese Food. The police had come to their door and taken Sam straight to the hospital to see her. Maybe it’s too much superstition to think that the same thing might be happening again this time.
Sam walks around the estate’s grounds, visits the Observatory, traces the courtyard tiles with her boots. The place is largely empty except for the groundskeepers and cleaning crew. No meetings until tomorrow. Sam hadn’t scheduled anything else to do.
Five. Six.
Discomfort churns in her belly. Sam continues to call, each time gettinga little more frantic. The calls are now spaced out only by a minute. Then, seconds. Hardly any space at all. Each time, as it gets to her mother’s voicemail message, Sam hangs up and tries again. The knot in her belly tells her that something has gone very wrong.
Seven o’clock comes, and still no message.
At last, Sam drives to the new house that she bought for her mother. No one is there. The gate’s code hasn’t even been set; her mother hasn’t been here since Sam gave her the house’s papers.
Sam drives away from the home, her stomach turning, and heads to her mother’s apartment. She peeks in through the window.
The curtains are drawn, so she can’t make out any details inside, but there is a row of tiny potted herbs sitting between the glass of the windowsill and the curtain. She stands there for a while, trying to locate a moving silhouette inside. But no one is there.
Sam turns away. She tries to steady her breathing and focus her mind on the task at hand. Her mother isn’t home—maybe something occupied her at work. Sam tries calling her one more time. This time, not only is there no answer after a half a dozen rings, but the message goes automatically to voicemail. Her mother’s phone has run out of battery life.
Sam sticks around for half an hour before she gets back into her car and closes her eyes. What to do? She knows she can’t go to the police and report a missing person, not as a member of Grand Central, not when Dominique’s death was so recent. Better not make herself vulnerable to questioning.
She opens her eyes, then makes a different call, not to her mother but to Will.
“What is it?” he says.
Sam tells him that her mother is missing, asks if he can put some feelers out in the city to try to find her.
“Done,” Will says. His calm authority makes her feel a little better.
She thanks him and hangs up. Paces a while longer. Waits in the car for another hour. The time for them to meet comes and goes. Her phone doesn’t ring. Her mother doesn’t show up.
She tries and tries to call for the rest of the night, then the next day. No answer.
It isn’t until the following day that she finally gets a message from Will, telling her to meet him in his office.
It’s about your mother.
They don’t even need a meeting. She already knows from those words, already feels a sickly, sinking darkness in her chest, but she goes anyway, in the hopes that maybe he’ll tell her something that surprises her. That her mother is alive.
He doesn’t.
