The Last Flight(15)
Eva slid her arms into the pink cashmere sweater, feeling her escape drawing nearer, hoping Claire wouldn’t lose her nerve. In ninety minutes she’d be in the air, on her way to Puerto Rico. Once on the ground, Eva knew a hundred ways she could disappear. Alter her appearance, then get off the island as fast as possible. Charter a boat. Charter a plane. She had enough money to do whatever she needed. She didn’t care what Claire ended up doing.
A conversation she’d had with Dex a week ago floated back to her, spoken offhand at a basketball game. The only way to get a fake ID is to find someone who’s willing to give you theirs. Eva nearly laughed aloud, Dex’s words manifesting before her eyes in the handicapped stall at JFK’s Terminal 4.
Claire fiddled with one of the zippers on the coat she now wore, and Eva thought about who might be waiting for her on the ground in Oakland. They might pause for a moment when they saw Claire exit the airport wearing Eva’s familiar coat. But that’s where the similarities ended.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Eva said, pressing her prepaid phone to her chest, “but this has all my pictures. A few saved voicemails from my husband…” She couldn’t risk Claire discovering that it had no contacts, no photos, and only one number in her call history. She held up Claire’s. “But I’ll need you to disable your password so I can scan the e-ticket. Unless you want to print a ticket and keep your phone?”
“And let him track me that way? No thanks,” Claire said, swiping through her settings and disabling her password. “But I do need to grab a number first.”
Eva watched as Claire took a pen from her purse and scribbled something on the back of an old receipt.
Just then, the flight to Oakland was announced. Boarding had begun. They looked at each other, fear and excitement mingling on their faces.
“I guess this is it,” Claire said.
Eva imagined Claire boarding the flight to California and getting off at the other end. Walking out into the bright sunshine without a clue of what she might find there, and she tried not to feel guilty. But Claire seemed scrappy. Smart. She’d figure something out. “Thank you for helping me start over,” Eva said.
Claire pulled her into a hug and whispered, “You saved me. And I won’t forget it.”
And then she was gone. Out of the stall, disappeared back into the busy airport, security cameras recording a woman in a green coat and NYU baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, walking toward a different life.
Eva locked the door again, leaning against the cool tile wall, and let all of the adrenaline from the morning leak out of her, leaving her limbs weak and her head fuzzy. She wasn’t free yet, but she was closer than she’d ever been.
*
Eva waited inside the locked stall as long as she could, imagining Claire flying west, racing the sun toward freedom.
“Boarding for Flight 477 with service to Puerto Rico has begun,” a voice announced overhead, and she stepped out and strode past the long line of women waiting. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her reflection in the mirror and marveled at how calm she appeared, when inside she felt like dancing. She pushed up the sleeves of Claire’s pink cashmere sweater, washed her hands quickly, and hitched her new purse over her shoulder before exiting back onto the concourse.
At the gate, she waited on the periphery, her eyes scanning the crowd out of habit, and wondered if she’d ever learn how to be in a space without having to assess it for risks and danger. But everyone around her seemed to be absorbed in their own thoughts, anxious to escape the frigid New York temperatures for a warmer climate.
A harried gate attendant pulled a speaker close to her mouth and said, “Our flight this morning isn’t full, so any travelers wishing to fly standby should check in at the counter.”
People in vacation clothes jockeyed for spots in line, wanting to be first in their boarding group, but with only one gate attendant on duty, things were chaotic and slow to begin. Eva made sure to position herself on the edge of a loud family of six. Inside her purse, Claire’s phone buzzed. Curious, she pulled it out.
What the fuck have you done?
It wasn’t the words that stopped her, but the vitriol behind them, poisonous and familiar. Then the phone rang, jolting her nerves and making her nearly drop it. She let it go to voicemail. It rang again. And then again after that. She peered toward the Jetway, counting the people ahead of her, urging the line to move faster. To board and get into the air, to be on her way.
“What’s the holdup?” a woman behind her asked.
“I heard the hatch wasn’t opening right.”
“Great,” the woman said.
When it was Eva’s turn, she handed the phone to the flight attendant, who scanned her e-ticket without even glancing at the name. She handed it back to Eva, who promptly turned it off and dropped it back into Claire’s purse. The line crept forward, Eva on the threshold of the Jetway, buried in a long line of impatient travelers. Someone’s bag bumped her from behind, knocking her purse to the ground and sending Claire’s things skittering in different directions.
As she bent down to gather everything, she glanced back toward the concourse. Above her, the line had closed around her, blocking her from the gate agent’s view, and she realized how easy it would be to slip away. The flight wasn’t full. They might not notice her empty seat. She was scanned onto the flight, and Claire was already on her way to Oakland.