Page 75 of The Towering Sky
Leda remembered lying on the sand in Dubai, shivering and dizzy; Mariel’s face etched eerily against the darkness as she announced that Eris had been Leda’s sister. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “But it wasn’t until after Eris died. I wish I had known earlier. It would have... changed things, between us.”
Her dad leaned forward, his hands gripped tightly around his knees. “I didn’t know for years, Leda. I had only just found out; Eris’s mom told me a few months before Eris died.” He spoke with a rapid urgency, as if it were critical that Leda believe him in this.
“You should havetoldme, before—”Before I misjudged things and pushed Eris away, too hard. Before I lost my chance to actually get to know her—as a sister.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, helplessly. Leda saw the grief in his eyes. It was real.
Her throat felt swollen. “I miss her,” Leda said quietly. “Or at least, I miss the chance with her I never had. I wish I could remember something more personal than her smile, but I don’t have much else. So I try to concentrate on that. Eris smiled all the time, not fake smiling the way most people do, but a real smile.”
Leda lifted her eyes to her dad. He was very still and quiet. “Or the way she used to dance. Eris was a terrible dancer, you know, all arms and elbows—a complete klutz, with no rhythm. It should have been funny, but it wasn’t, because it was Eris. When she was on the dance floor, no one could look away.”
Her dad’s face was ashen, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears.
“I hold on to these memories,” Leda forced herself to continue. “The easy, superficial ones, because those are all I have. That, and the memory of how she died.”
“Leda,” her dad said brokenly, throwing his arms open; and Leda moved forward into the hug. They stayed like that for a while in a silence that was thick with regret. Leda felt her dad’s tears, which startled her; she wasn’t sure if she had ever seen her father cry. It struck something deep within her.
She let him cry like that, his tears soaking her sweater, feelingas if she had become the parent, as if she were the one taking care of him. A strange catch released in her chest. At least they were no longer pretending to be okay when they weren’t.
“Does your mother know?” her father asked at last.
“I haven’t told her, if that’s what you mean. It isn’t my secret to tell.” Leda looked piercingly into her dad’s eyes. “I think you should, though.”
“Why? It will just hurt your mom, and it won’t change anything. Eris is gone. And Caroline and I—we were over a long time ago,” he hurried to say, naming Eris’s mom.
Leda understood the impulse. It was devastating, showing the worst parts of yourself to the people you cared about. Knowing that they would never look at you the same again. And yet—“Doesn’t it weigh on you, keeping a secret like that?”
“There are times, Leda, when the truth can do more harm than good. When sharing a secret is much more selfish than keeping it,” her dad insisted. “I know it’s not fair to put you in the middle like this, and I’m sorry. Someday, when you do something you wish you could undo—something you regret, something that changes you forever—you’ll understand what I mean.”
Leda knew exactly what her father meant, far more than he could ever guess.
CALLIOPE
IT WAS VERYearly on Monday, and already Calliope was slipping out of the Mizrahis’ apartment.
She couldn’t take another morning there. Elise and Nadav had come back from their honeymoon last week, in a show of hand-holding, smothering affection. Calliope was happy that her mom had found love, she really was, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be witness to that love all the freaking time. But Nadav was obsessed with family togetherness, even more now that they were officially a family. Every meal, every conversation, every last school function—they all suddenly became family events, which meant that Calliope was expected to be there, smiling that dumb pasted-on smile. She felt stifled beneath it all.
Her only escape was going out with Brice. Calliope knew she shouldn’t be seeing him anymore, yet she couldn’tnotsee him. She told Elise and Nadav that she was continuing her volunteer work at the hospital. So far it seemed to be working as an excuse,even if Nadav did occasionally insist on dropping her off there. Calliope would just smile and walk inside, then slip out a few minutes later.
Still, every time she came home from seeing Brice—after those brief few hours of actually being herself—Calliope would return to the Mizrahis’, to the role she hated so much. At least now she was sleeping in her own room again, even if there was that creepy painting of the dead deer hanging on the wall.
This morning, when she woke up hours before her alarm, Calliope felt a sudden, almost panicked desire to get out. She needed a morning to herself, to hell with the consequences. She messaged her mom and Nadav that she had to meet a classmate early for a school project, then slid into raspberry-colored jeans, a thin black top, and dangly earrings, weaving her hair into a messy fishtail braid. Like hell was she wearing her school uniform right now.
She went straight down the E line to Grand Central, and felt better the moment she walked through its massive carved archway.
Calliope had always loved train stations. There was something inherently soothing about them, especially this early in the morning, when they were inhabited by a strange, almost subdued silence. Vacuum-bots moved across the floor in stately isolation. Warm muffins began to emerge from bakeshops, the scent of them wafting out into the corridors. Calliope headed to a coffee dispenser and placed her order for an iced hazelnut latte, her footsteps echoing in the vast space.
As in the original Grand Central, the floors were laid with a creamy, distinguished-looking Italian travertine. Doric columns soared up at the corners of every intersection. Directional holograms flickered throughout, helping travelers find their way to the countless lift lines, monorails, helipads, Hyperloop subseatrains that all met here, in a ruthlessly efficient tangle. This was the center of the spiderweb knitting the city, the entireworld, together.
Calliope realized that she was just in time for the sunrise. She took a seat in the Metro-North corridor, turning expectantly toward the massive windows along the eastern wall.
It had been a long time since she saw the sun rise, even longer since she’d actually woken up for it. Usually when Calliope witnessed the dawn of a new day, it was because the previous day hadn’t actually ended.
She leaned back in her chair, watching the sunrise as if it were a private performance intended just for her. And for a moment it felt that way: as if the sun, or perhaps the city, was showing off for her benefit, reminding her how wonderful it was to be young and alive and in New York. There was something delicious about being awake while most of the city was still asleep. It was as if Calliope alone presided over the sacred mysteries of the city.
The station began to stir to life around her. The first trains were arriving from the European seaboard, the early morning commuter trains for people who’d wanted to squeeze the last few hours out of their weekends in Paris or London. Announcements began booming louder and more frequently over the speakers, creating a sense of continually cresting excitement. An indefinable magic seemed to cling about it all—but then, transportation was the only real magic left on earth, wasn’t it? The ability to go anywhere, become anyone, simply by purchasing a ticket.
Maybe Calliope loved train stations because for most of her life, they had been her escape mechanism.
