The Last Flight(18)
I take the stairs slowly, listening hard. Only three rooms—a bathroom, an office, and a bedroom, clothes dropped on the bed and floor as if someone had left in a hurry. But I’m alone in the house, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
Back downstairs, I collapse onto the couch and tip my head forward, resting it in my hands, and finally allow the day’s events to catch up to me. The panic I felt, followed by the thrill of having slipped past everyone.
And then I think of Eva somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Whether it hurt when the plane hit the water, if the moments leading up to impact were long, filled with terror-filled screams and crying, or if they were cut short by lack of oxygen. I take several deep breaths, trying to calm down. I’m safe. I am okay. Outside, a car passes through the silent neighborhood. In the distance, some bells chime.
I lift my head and take in the framed abstract prints on the wall and the soft armchairs flanking the couch. The room is small but cozy, the furniture high quality but not extravagant. Exactly the opposite of the home I just left behind.
There is a well-worn groove in the armchair angled toward the television, but the rest of the furniture looks pristine, as if no one has ever sat there. Something about the room nags at me, and I try to put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the way it was left, as if someone had just stepped away for a few minutes. I scan the space, trying to figure out where her husband’s hospital bed might have been. Where the hospice workers might have counted pills, measured medication, washed their hands. But all evidence is gone. Not even a divot in the carpet.
Against the far wall, a bookshelf is crammed with books, and I wander over and see titles about biology and chemistry, with a few textbooks on the very bottom shelf. I quit my job to take care of him. Perhaps she was a professor at Berkeley. Or maybe he was.
From the kitchen comes a buzzing sound, loud and jarring in the silent house. When I get to the doorway, I notice the black cell phone on the counter, tucked between two canisters. I pick it up, confused, remembering the one Eva used at the airport in New York. The push notification is from one of those text apps that disappear after a set amount of time, from a contact named D.
Why didn’t you show up? Did something happen?
The phone buzzes in my hand with another message, nearly making me jump.
Call me immediately.
I toss it back on the counter and stare at it, waiting for another text, but it remains silent, and I hope whoever D is, they’re done asking questions for the night.
I step toward the sink and look through the small window overlooking a tiny backyard. It’s surrounded by shrubs and bisected by a brick walkway leading to a gate in the back fence. I imagine Eva standing here, watching twilight fall as it is now, coloring the shadows in deep purples and blues as the sky darkens, while her husband lay dying.
The phone buzzes again, the sound reverberating around the empty kitchen, and a sense of foreboding descends. The empty house offers itself up to me, yet reveals nothing.
Eva
Berkeley, California
August
Six Months before the Crash
Eva waited for him outside his dorm. It wasn’t the same one she’d lived in, so many years ago, but a newer one, with softer edges and dark wood trim, as if they wanted students to feel like they were living in an Italian villa instead of student housing. Her gaze traveled upward, over windows that were open to catch the cool morning air, posters of bands she’d never heard of, taped picture-side out. From the center of campus, the Campanile chimed the hour, and students with early-morning classes passed by her as she stood on the sidewalk, leaning against a car that didn’t belong to her. No one looked at Eva. They never did.
Finally, he exited, his backpack slung across one shoulder, his nose buried in his phone. He didn’t notice Eva until she fell into step beside him.
“Hi, Brett,” she said.
He looked up, startled, and a flash of worry crossed his face when he saw who it was. But then he plastered on a smile and said, “Eva. Hey.”
Across the street, two men eased out of a parked car and started walking in their same direction, slow and silent. Trailing them.
Eva began. “I’m sure you know why I’m here.”
They crossed the street, past coffee shops and bookstores, and skirted the southern edge of campus. She stepped in front of Brett to stop him when they’d reached the opening of a narrow brick walkway that led to the entrance of a small art gallery that wouldn’t open until eleven o’clock. The men behind them stopped too, waiting.
“Look, Eva,” Brett said. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t have your money yet.” As he spoke, he searched the faces of the few people on the street this early, looking for a friend. Someone to step in and help him. But Eva wasn’t worried. To anyone who might be watching, Brett was just a student, chatting with a woman on the sidewalk.
“That’s what you said the last time,” Eva said. “And the time before that.”
“It’s my parents,” Brett explained. “They’re getting a divorce. They cut my allowance by half. I can barely afford beer.”
Eva tilted her head sympathetically, as if she could relate to a problem like that. As if she hadn’t been forced to live on a minuscule per diem in her three short years at Berkeley, pocketing extra food from the dining hall to tide her over long weekends. No one gave her an allowance. Paying for beer had never been on Eva’s long list of worries.