The Last Flight

by Julie Clark

  Liz looked at her. “What happened?”

  Carmen and Mark had been the closest Eva had ever come to having a family. When she was eight, the couple had come to St. Joe’s, interested in adopting a young girl. They were accompanied by her social worker, Mr. Henderson, a pasty man with wispy hair and a briefcase full of files. The woman, Carmen, was bright and vibrant. When Eva met her, she seemed to glow with energy. Carmen’s husband, Mark, was more reserved and deferred to his wife, keeping his eyes down. Eva wondered if he, too, knew that it was best to always hold a piece of himself separate from others.

  “Carmen and Mark,” she told Liz now. “At first, it was great. They pushed to get me into the gifted program at school. Bought me tons of books, clothes, took me to museums and the science center.”

  “They sound wonderful. What happened?”

  “I started stealing. First money, then a charm bracelet.”

  Liz gave her a sharp look. “What made you do that?”

  This was the tricky part. Eva wanted to explain it to Liz, to help her see an essential part of who she was. That she had depended, from a very early age, on being able to hide behind a curtain of lies, never trusting anyone enough to let them see who she really was.

  “Being unwanted is a heavy burden,” she said quietly. “You never fully learn how to engage with the world. To allow others to see you.”

  A large group of people walked toward them, laughing and talking over each other, and Eva waited for them to pass. How could she explain the way it made her feel, to listen to the way Carmen and Mark bragged about how smart she was, how lucky they were to have her? It had felt like they were covering her in plastic wrap. People could still see her, but the essence of who she was got trapped beneath their expectations, and she worried about what would happen when the truth seeped out. “It was easier to push them away,” Eva finally said. “When they looked at me, they saw the child of an addict. Everything I did—good or bad—was viewed through that lens, and as long as I was with them, that would always be my whispered story. It’s amazing how much Eva has overcome in such a short time, or You can hardly blame her, considering what she’s gone through. I needed to show them they couldn’t fix me. That I didn’t want to be fixed.”

  “You wanted to be the one to define who you were,” Liz said. She linked her arm through Eva’s, and Eva leaned into her, loving the solid feel of Liz’s shoulder against her own, wanting to drag that moment out until infinity, to never descend into the BART station, to never return across the bay to her old life, stale and rotten at the center. “And so you stayed at the convent until you graduated?” she asked.

  Eva nodded. “Until I turned eighteen and started at Cal.”

  Wind whipped up from the bay, growing stronger as it funneled between the tall buildings, and Eva hugged her other arm tight around her, thinking about the family she’d almost had, if she’d been a different person. A better person. But that possibility had fractured long before Carmen and Mark showed up. Cracked down its center, the pieces rough and jagged. She’d insulated herself from the sharpest parts, but Liz had reached in and gently unwrapped them, showing her she didn’t need to be afraid to think about her past. That she could hold the pieces in her hands without hurting herself. That she could do something with them if she wanted to.

  They were quiet as they descended the stairs and passed through the turnstile and onto the platform. The faint sound of a far-off train carried through the dark tunnel, and Eva pictured the people on the street above them, driving, walking, working in the high-rise buildings of the financial district. It was a miracle the whole thing didn’t come crashing down on top of them.

  “Have you ever thought about looking for your birth family?”

  Eva shook her head. “After things went down with Carmen and Mark, the nuns made another attempt to reunite me with them.” She looked down the tunnel, looking for their train, but all was quiet. “They said no.”

  “It’s possible they did the best thing they could for you.”

  Eva knew that was probably true, that she wouldn’t have had any kind of life growing up with an addict, but that knowledge sat alongside the rejection—it didn’t cancel it out. “I don’t know that I’ll ever truly forgive them,” she said.

  Liz shook her head. “You don’t know what they were dealing with at the time. Your mother’s problems probably took up every inch of space inside of them. I can only imagine what kind of hell that must have been.” She glanced down at the platform and then back at Eva. “You can’t blame them for knowing their limits. Even if those limits included you.”

  The sign above them flashed with their train number, and beneath her feet Eva could feel the rumbling of its arrival. Liz placed a hand on her arm and said, “Look. Obviously, you know what’s best for you. But I sense an unhappiness, a hole that makes you hold yourself apart from the rest of the world. And I hate to see you hurting. Seeking them out doesn’t mean expecting a happy ending. I don’t think that’s why you should do it. But information is power. And once you hold it, you get to decide what to do with it. That’s all I want for you.”

  They waited in silence as Eva considered her words, turning them over in her mind. She wondered what it would be like to know people who were related to her. Who looked like her. Who carried family memories and knew where they got their sharp noses or their blond hair. She’d never had that kind of connection with anyone.

  Liz continued, her voice low. “You aren’t the only adopted child to want answers from her biological family.”

  “I was never adopted.”

  Liz closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, turning to face Eva. “I’m sorry. You’re right, and this is none of my business.”

  “Look, I appreciate what you’re saying. I really do. But that kind of rejection does something to a person. It breaks you, all the way down to your core. And makes it impossible to be vulnerable. To open yourself up to anyone.”

  Liz looked at Eva, her gaze steady and knowing, forcing Eva to look away. Just then, the train pulled into the station and people pressed in on them from behind, pushing them forward and through the opening doors.

  * * *

  On their way back to Berkeley, she studied Liz next to her, the short white hair and regal set of her shoulders, and thought about what Liz was suggesting. Eva imagined her birth family out there, trying to forget what they’d left behind—the pain of an addict daughter, the granddaughter they’d sacrificed in order to save her. And what would they get if she showed up? More heartache. More pain. A reminder that they’d been right to give her up when they did.

  What Eva did was worse than anything her mother had ever done. Her mother had a disease. Eva was just a drug dealer who barely blinked at the idea of having a nineteen-year-old beaten to a bloody pulp over a few hundred dollars. Eva pictured her phone at home, waiting to yank her back down. Pulling her away from Liz, who had no idea what kind of a person Eva really was.

  The train rumbled and swayed, her ears popping as they dropped below the bay, the lights flickering and creating dim shadows around them, thinking about the next day when she’d have to roll the shelf in her kitchen aside and get back to work, and she felt the beginning tendrils of tension take root and start to spread outward. She wished she could turn back time, go back to that morning when Liz stood in her doorway infused with an excitement that nearly filled her up. Or maybe earlier. To that afternoon at Tilden waiting for Brittany. To have listened to her instincts and gone home. Gotten ready to work her shift at DuPree’s, far removed from Agent Castro and Brittany’s collaboration. Or maybe even further still, to the sidewalk outside her dorm, saying no thanks to Dex. Saying no thanks to Wade. That was the problem with wishes. They always led to others. Bigger ones. Trailing back in time, knot after knot needing to be untangled, never noticing how they wrapped around you until they pulled you down.

  But as she stared
at her dim reflection in the dark train window, Eva was struck with a thought so clear, so pure, it sent a shiver through her. I’m not going to do this anymore.

  An impossible wish. Fish and Dex would never let her walk away. Not just because of what she could do, but also what she knew. Even though she was compartmentalized, she still knew too much.

  Could I find out more?

  Castro’s presence had felt like a threat. But she saw now how it could also be an opportunity. The chance to become the person Liz saw when she looked at Eva. She fingered the photo of the two of them at the entrance to the stadium, already looking like a relic from another time. As the train rose again on the east side of the bay and outside light filled their car again, Eva felt it slip into her, creating space where there had been darkness, hope where there had been despair.

  Eva would do what was expected of her—she’d go back to work, she’d deliver the drugs—but underneath it all, she’d do what she did best: She’d watch. And wait. And exploit everyone’s complacency. Because she knew without a doubt Castro would be back. And this time Eva would be ready for him.

  Claire

  Friday, February 25

  At the coffee shop Friday morning, I wander over to the job board while I wait for my coffee. My tentative plan is to take Eva’s social security card, her birth certificate, and any other relevant documents and move somewhere else. Which will require more money than the three hundred fifty dollars I have left.

  There are plenty of minimum wage jobs I’m qualified to do—data entry, waiting tables, or even working in a coffee shop—but I feel paralyzed with fear, constantly weighing the risks against the benefits of applying. It would mean committing to being Eva in a very real and public way. There’s a difference between using her name to order a coffee and writing her name and social security number on a W-2 form.

  And whatever Eva was running from tumbles around in my mind, a riptide of questions that pull me in unforeseeable directions. I can never work a job requiring a background check. I will always have to be on the move, never settling, always wondering when Eva’s past will finally crash into me.

  Through the window, students are beginning to make their way to class. A crowd of them emerges from a bus, some carrying coffee cups and wearing earbuds, while others look tired and drawn, up too early on a Friday morning.

  When they’ve dispersed, I see him again. The man from yesterday, standing on the corner, waiting to cross the street. He wears the same long wool coat, with a paper tucked under his arm, as if he’s heading to work. I stare at him, trying to figure out what it is about him that bothers me. He’s just a man on his way somewhere. The longer I stay at Eva’s, the more familiar the people in the neighborhood will become.

  But as the light changes, he looks over his shoulder, directly at me, as if he knew I would be here, watching him. Our eyes lock, and I feel the weight of his gaze, curious and searching. He lifts his hand in a silent salute, meant just for me, before he crosses the street, disappearing onto campus.

  “Eva?” the barista says.

  I turn, still surprised I had the nerve to give her the name. It felt low stakes, to use it on a coffee barista who seemed more in tune with the local bands than the national news.

  “Looking for a job?” She passes me my drip coffee, the cheapest item on the menu.

  “Sort of,” I say, handing her two dollars.

  She raises her eyebrows as she gives me my change. “You either are or you aren’t.”

  “I am.” I turn away from her, doctoring my coffee with enough cream and sugar to fill me up for a few hours. I don’t know how to tell her that I’m desperate for work, that I’m terrified I will run out of money and be stuck here forever.

  “I work part-time for a caterer,” she says, wiping down the counter next to the coffee machine. “He’s always looking for extra people to be servers. You interested?”

  I hesitate, trying to decide whether I have the nerve to say yes or not.

  She glances at me and continues her cleaning. “It pays twenty dollars an hour. And”—she gives me a sly grin—“he pays under the table.”

  I take a sip of coffee, feeling the hot liquid scald the back of my throat. “He would hire someone he never met?”

  “He’s actually desperate for bodies. He’s got a huge party this weekend and two of his servers flaked because they have some kind of sorority meeting.” She rolls her eyes and tosses the rag into the sink behind her. “If it goes well, it could be a regular thing.”

  I’ve organized hundreds of catered events—both big and small—and wonder what it would feel like to work behind the scenes. To be one of the anonymous people I barely noticed when I was hosting an event. “What would I have to do?”

  “Set tables. Carry trays of food. Smile at bad jokes. And clean everything up. The event begins at seven, but we start at four. Meet me here on Saturday at three thirty. Wear black pants and a white top.”

  I quickly do the math. Twenty dollars an hour, under the table, will earn me close to two hundred dollars for one night’s work.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “My name’s Kelly,” she says, holding her hand out to shake. Her grip is firm and cool.

  “Nice to meet you, Kelly. And thanks.”

  She smiles. “No thanks necessary. You seem like someone who could use a break. I know a little something about that.”

  Before I can say anything else, she passes through the swinging doors into the back and I’m left standing there, amazed at my good fortune.

  * * *

  It’s only seven in the morning, and the idea of going straight back to Eva’s and hiding out for the rest of the day makes me feel twitchy. So instead, I walk across campus and over to Telegraph Avenue. I stand outside the student union, watching people move through the intersection and toward wherever it is they’re going, unaware of how lucky they are to have the privilege of easy conversation with others. To debate, or laugh together at a joke. To share a meal, and maybe later, a pillow. And I feel the tug to be one of them, just for a little while.

  I cross the street, keeping my head angled down and my hands shoved deep into Eva’s coat pockets. Around me, panhandlers ask for money, people try to hand me flyers advertising bands, but I shake my head and keep walking.

  I catch flashes of my reflection in shop windows as I walk, and I stop in front of a clothing store and stare at myself. With my short blond hair poking out of the bottom of my cap and Eva’s coat, it’s like looking at a ghost. People swirl on the sidewalk behind me—laughing students, homeless people, aging hippies—but all I see are strangers I can never know. I will never have the freedom to sit down and open myself up to someone else, never be able to talk freely about my mother and Violet, about who I am and where I’m from. This is the life I have ahead of me. Always being alert. Aware. Holding the most important parts of myself back.

  I wait for a large group of students heading back toward campus and join them, walking close enough to give myself the illusion that I’m a part of them. That I’m not stranded in this new life alone. I follow them across the busy street that borders campus, peeling off as they make their way into the student union. I can walk among them, but I will never be one of them again.

  * * *

  On my way back to the house, I stop off at a supermarket to pick up a few basics. I grab a hand basket and find the cheap staples my mother used to buy—off-brand bread and peanut butter, a large grape jelly. I skip her other favorites—rice, beans simmered in water with onion and garlic. I don’t want to be here long enough for leftovers.

  In the checkout line, my eyes drift toward the magazine rack, and there it is on the cover of Stars Like Us magazine—a glossy tabloid somewhere between People and Us Weekly. “The Crash of Flight 477: Heartbreak as Families Try to Pick Up the Pieces.” And in the upper right corner, surrounded by others who were on the
flight, is my picture. The caption reads Wife of philanthropist Rory Cook among the victims.

  The photo had been taken at a gala at the Met a couple years ago. I was laughing at something someone had said off camera. But even though there’s a smile on my face, my eyes look empty. I understand better than most how secrets can live on your skin and how hard they are to hide, because the truth is always visible somehow.

  I lay the magazine facedown on the conveyor belt and read the covers of the more scandalous tabloids. Rory hasn’t been covered like this since Maggie Moretti. “Rory Ravaged by Grief Seeks Solace in Mystery Woman” reads one, with a picture of Rory and a woman I’ve never seen before. With a jolt, I realize that someday, Rory will fall in love again, and a part of me feels guilty for walking away and leaving that trap open for someone else.

  “How you doing today?” the checker asks as she begins scanning my groceries.

  “Great, thanks,” I say, my voice quiet and strained, hoping to pay quickly before she takes too much notice of me. I hold my breath as she finishes and begins to bag everything, tossing the magazine in without a second glance. I remind myself that I don’t look like that woman anymore. Someone would have to study my features closely, the shape of my eyes, the freckle patterns across my cheeks, in order to see it. I look like Eva. I wear her clothes. Carry her purse. Live in her house. The woman on the cover of that magazine doesn’t exist anymore.

  * * *

  Back home again, I set the groceries down and dive into the magazine. A rolling unease passes through me as I look at the smiling faces of people who weren’t as lucky as I was. I force myself to imagine a picture of Eva, staring back at me from the page, the way she appears in my memory, frozen in time, determined, hopeful. And duplicitous.

  It’s a four-page spread, with full-color photographs of the crash site. The article is almost all human interest, dissecting the victims’ lives, interviewing bereft loved ones. A newlywed couple embarking on their honeymoon. A family of six—the youngest only four years old—taking a long-awaited trip home. Two teachers on their way somewhere warmer for their annual February break. All of them lovely, vibrant souls extinguished in what was probably a long and terrifying descent into the ocean.