Page 34 of The Last Flight

The idea of resuming work—the hiding, the lying, the vigilance that accompanied her every time she left the house—descended, pressing her into a tight knot, and a grief she hadn’t felt since her expulsion from Berkeley swirled around inside of her, as a part of her brain began to map out what needed to be done. Buy more ingredients. Clean the equipment. Start setting the stage for her withdrawal from Liz. She’d have to start talking about picking up more shifts at the restaurant, or perhaps invent a boyfriend who would soon consume her free time.

But there, in the darkening twilight, the water of the bay lapping against the pier pilings, the lights of the Bay Bridge sparkling in a graceful arc above them, shooting like an arrow into the dark, Eva felt the urge to reveal something more of herself. To tell Liz something completely true. “My last foster home was just on the other side of that hill,” Eva told Liz, pointing west, toward Nob Hill.

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,orYou 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.

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