Page 18 of The Last Flight

Yesterday she was here, a beating and broken heart, a mind with secrets and desires she kept to herself. But today, every memory she’d accumulated across a lifetime has vanished. They simply don’t exist anymore.

And what about me? Claire Cook is also gone, lifted up in the memories of those who knew me, no longer walking among the living. And yet, I still get to carry everything that belonged to me. My joys, my heartaches, memories of people I loved. And I feel a sense of privilege I don’t deserve. That I get to keep it all and Eva does not.

I press my fists into my eyes, trying to stop my leaping thoughts, ping-ponging from moment to moment—the maid unpacking my suitcase. The phone call to the hotel in Detroit. Petra’s voice on the phone at JFK. And Eva in the bathroom stall, handing me her bag, believing I was the solution to her problems, as I believed she was the solution to mine.

I need to sleep, but I don’t think I can bring myself to pull back the covers and climb into the bed. Not tonight at least. Instead, I take the blanket and grab a pillow, carrying them back downstairs to the couch. I kick off my shoes and settle myself, turning the TV back on for company. I flip away from the news channels until I find a station showingI Love Lucyreruns and let the canned laughter carry me to sleep.

* * *

I’m yanked awake by the sound of Rory’s voice, speaking quietly in my ear. I leap off the couch, the dark room flickering in the blue light of the television screen, confused and disoriented, forgetting for a moment where I am and what happened.

And then I see him on the screen of the TV, smaller than in real life, but no less terrifying. A replay of the press conference. I collapse onto the couch again, fumbling for the remote to turn it off, letting the sounds of Eva’s house—the low hum of the refrigerator, a quiet dripping from the kitchen faucet—slow my heart rate. Reminding myself that there’s no way Rory could know where I am.

I stare at the ceiling, watching shadows from the streetlight dance across it, and realize how hard disappearing will be. It won’t matter where I hide or what name I use. Every time I turn on a television, open a newspaper, or flip through a magazine, Rory will still be hiding there, waiting to leap out at me. He will never go away.

Eva

Berkeley, California

August

Six Months before the Crash

Eva’s hands moved automatically under the bright lights, while high above, the fan whirred, a white noise that dulled her senses, venting the air from her basement lab into the backyard. She couldn’t seem to erase the image of that cat, how quietly it waited, how quickly things had ended for the bird.

She shook her head and forced herself to concentrate. She had to finish this batch before noon. She was meeting Dex at three to give him Fish’s portion and was meeting her new client shortly after that.

She measured ingredients, carefully weighing and adjusting, and felt herself relax. Even after all these years, after everything that had happened, it was still magic, that you could combine substances, add heat, and create something entirely new.

She brought the mixture to a thick, pasty consistency on the camping stove, immune now to the bitter chemical stench that burned the inside of her nose and clung to her hair and clothes, long after she’d finished. Because of this, she invested in expensive lotions and shampoo, the only things that could cover the smell of what she made.

When it was ready, she poured the liquid into the pill molds and set the timer again. Using various cough and cold medicines mixed with some common household items, what she made was similar to Adderall. However, it was much safer to make, avoiding the explosive nature of most methamphetamines. The result was a tiny pill, simple to produce, with a powerful punch that kept subpar students like Brett awake and sharp-minded for hours on end.

When she was done, she washed the equipment at the sink in the corner, loading the portable dishwasher she’d bought several years ago. Her chemistry professor’s voice floated through the years:A clean lab is the mark of a true professional.She was a professional by definition, but no one was going to come down here and make sure she was following standard lab protocol. She wiped the counters, making sure no traces of her work—or the ingredients she drove all over the Bay Area to purchase—were left out for prying eyes.

Not that anyone would come down here. Long ago she’d figured out the best way to hide the door to this old laundry room was to roll a shelf in front of it. From the outside, you’d never know it was there. At least six feet tall with a solid back, the shelves were filled with the tools of an amateur chef—cookbooks, mixing bowls, canisters that held flour and sugar, and several large utensil holders stuffed thick with spatulas and oversized spoons that Eva never used. She moved through the world similarly—appearing to be a bland, thirtysomething server who worked hard to make ends meet, who lived in a North Berkeley duplex and drove a fifteen-year-old Honda. When in reality she was the opposite, singlehandedly responsible for keeping the students at Berkeley awake and on track to graduate in four years. And dealing quickly with the ones who caused problems.

Grabbing the timer off the counter, she headed up the basement stairs, flipping the light and fan off behind her. The silence folded over her, and she paused in the kitchen, waiting for the sounds of the neighborhood to settle into the space between her ears.

Next door, she heard her new neighbor, an older woman with close-cropped white hair, unlocking her front door. When she’d moved in a few weeks ago, Eva could tell she wanted to be friendly. Her eyes would linger on Eva, and though Eva was polite, with one- and two-word greetings, she could feel the woman’s gaze, heavy and waiting for a deeper interaction.

Mr. Cosatino, the old man who’d lived there since the beginning of time, had been so much easier. They’d only spoken once, last year when she’d paid him cash to purchase her half of the duplex. She wondered what happened to him, whether he got sick or if he died. One day he was there, the next day, he was gone. And now this woman, with her friendly smiles and eye contact.

Eva left the bookshelf pushed aside and took the stairs two at a time, up to her home office. A tiny room overlooking the front yard, it wasn’t used by Eva for much except paying bills and storing her cold-weather coats. But she’d decorated it like the rest of the house—warm tones of yellow and red that were a far cry from the institutional gray walls of the group home she’d grown up in. She’d picked each piece—the pine desk, the deep red rug, the small table and lamp that sat under the window—as an antidote to the coldness that had embedded itself inside of her as a child.

She settled in front of her laptop, pulling up the Singaporean bank log-in page, and entered her account information by memory. She was diligent about checking her balances, watching the number steadily increase over the past twelve years, going from five figures to six figures to a comfortable seven. The financial district in San Francisco was filled with handsome men who knew how to bend the law to suit their purposes, and it had been easy to find a tax attorney who was willing to set up a fake LLC, who knew which banks abroad would look the other way and not ask too many questions, and who could help her funnel her illegal income somewhere safe.

At some point, she was going to have to stop. No one could do this forever. And when that time came, she’d buy a plane ticket to somewhere far away and simply disappear. She’d leave everything behind. The house. Her things. Her clothes. Dex and Fish. She’d shed this life like an old skin, emerging newer. Better. She’d done it before, and she would do it again.

* * *

When the pills were ready, she popped them from their molds and into separate bags. She wrapped the ones for Dex in blue paper, tied a ribbon around them, and drove to the park in North Berkeley where they were supposed to meet. She’d learned over the years how to be invisible. How to slip between the layers of the outside world, just a woman on a walk or meeting a friend in the park with a beautifully wrapped present. This wasn’t a hard job, if you were smart. And Eva had always been smarter than most.

She found him sitting at a picnic table overlooking a small, dingy play area. Young kids were scattered across the equipment, each minded by a parent or nanny. Eva paused, still outside of Dex’s line of sight, and watched the kids. That might have been her, if her mother had been a different person. Maybe she would have brought Eva to a park like this to blow off steam after school or to kill a few hours on a weekend. Over the years, Eva had searched her memory for an image, any memory at all from the short time she lived with her birth family, but her first two years were blank.

As a child, Eva had imagined them so many times and in so many ways, the images almost seemed like real memories. Her mother, with long blond hair, looking over her shoulder at Eva, laughing. Her grandparents, old and frail, worried about their wild daughter, scraping their pennies together to pay for another trip to rehab. A quiet family with a big problem. She tried to feel something for them, but she felt removed, like an unplugged lamp. There was no power behind it. No connection. No light.

But mothers and daughters always caught Eva’s eye, snagging her attention like a sharp fingernail, scraping her in places that should have healed over long ago.

---