The Last Flight(20)
Another Brett, not yet happened. How many months would it take before the pressure of Berkeley began to crack this girl in half? How long until her first failed test, or her first C on a paper? Eva pictured someone sliding a scrap of paper with Dex’s name and number across a wooden study carrel in the library. How long until Eva was meeting her outside of Campbell Hall?
“Do you know where it is?” the girl asked again.
Eva was so fucking tired of it all. “No hablo inglés,” Eva said, pretending she didn’t speak English, wanting only to be rid of this girl and her questions.
The girl stepped back, surprised, and Eva slipped past her and up the path. Let someone else help her. Eva wasn’t ready to take her turn yet.
*
The unexpected appearance of Dex that morning was still bothering her several hours later, as she stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes. As she rotated a glass under the hot water, it slipped from her fingers and shattered, sending shards flying into the porcelain basin.
“Shit,” she said, turning off the faucet and drying her hands on a dishtowel before carefully picking up the larger pieces and dropping them in the trash. She could feel things rearranging and shifting, the way animals could sense an earthquake, tiny tremors deep beneath the earth’s crust, warning her to pay attention. Seek safety.
She grabbed some paper towels and swept up the rest before checking the timer she’d brought up from the basement. Five minutes left.
She tossed her empty Diet Coke can into the recycling and stared out the kitchen window overlooking the backyard. The green shrubbery and roses were overgrown and in need of pruning. In the far corner, she spotted a cat, crouched and motionless, beneath a low-hanging bush, eyes locked on a small bird splashing in a shady puddle left from the morning sprinklers. Eva held her breath and watched, silently urging the bird to look around, to leave the danger of the yard behind.
Suddenly, the cat lunged. In a silent flurry of wings and feathers, it grabbed the bird, pummeling it to the ground and stunning it with a few swift blows. Eva watched as the cat slunk off carrying the bird in its mouth and felt as if the universe was sending her some kind of message. The only problem was, she didn’t know whether she was the cat or the bird.
The timer rang, jolting Eva from her reverie. She looked at the clock on the stove, then glanced one more time through the window at the backyard, empty except for a scattering of feathers on the brick walkway.
She pushed herself off the counter, past the rolling shelving unit filled with things she never used, a prop to obscure the door hidden behind it, and slipped down to the basement to finish up.
Claire
Tuesday, February 22
Eva’s house is so still, I feel as if it’s watching me, waiting to see if I’ll reveal who I am and why I’m here. When I open the fridge, the top shelf is crowded with cans of Diet Coke and not much else, just a misshapen take-out container shoved to the back. “Diet Coke anyone?” I mutter before closing it again, my gaze sliding over the shelves that line one wall, filled with cookbooks and mixing bowls, to the cupboards on the left of the sink. I begin opening them, revealing glasses, plates, and bowls, finally finding where Eva kept her dry goods. Ritz Crackers and a Diet Coke will have to be good enough for tonight.
When I’ve eaten enough to quiet my growling stomach, I move back to the living room. The clock on the wall reads six. I pick up the remote, trying not to think about Eva and her husband, snuggled under a blanket watching a movie or sitting in companionable silence scrolling through their phones, and I scan the room, looking for the evidence of a happy marriage. Photographs. Mementos from vacations. But none of it is visible.
I find the Power button and flip past the networks, finally landing on CNN.
The screen shows a close-up of the airport in New York, with an inset of the search and recovery team, a bobbing Coast Guard boat surrounded by dark water illuminated with floodlights. I turn up the volume. Kate Lane, political commentator, host of the show Politics Today, is speaking, her voice low and somber as the screen fills with an image of me and Rory at a gala function last year. My hair is swept up in an elaborate french twist, and I’m laughing into the camera, my face heavy with makeup. Kate Lane’s voice says, “Authorities have confirmed the wife of philanthropist Rory Cook, son of Senator Marjorie Cook and the executive director of the Cook Family Foundation, was traveling to Puerto Rico on a humanitarian trip and was a confirmed passenger on Flight 477.”
And then my picture is replaced with a live shot of the exterior of the airport, the camera panning in on what looks like a restricted area behind large, plate glass windows. “Representatives from Vista Airlines are meeting with family members this evening, while off the coast of Florida, search and recovery teams work late into the night. NTSB officials have been quick to dismiss terrorism as a cause of the crash, citing unstable weather and the fact that this particular plane had been grounded just four months ago.”
The camera zooms in to show people hugging and crying, consoling each other. I move closer to the television, straining my eyes to see if Rory’s there. But I needn’t have bothered. As if on cue, the scene cuts to a bank of microphones, and Rory emerges from the room, stepping behind them. “I’ve been told we’ll be getting a brief statement from Mr. Cook on behalf of the families.”
I pause the TV and study him. He’s wearing an expensive pair of jeans and one of his button-down shirts in a shade of blue that looks good on camera. But his face is etched with grief, his eyes hollow and red. I sit back on my heels, wondering if he’s truly devastated or if this is all an elaborate act, that far beneath the surface he’s livid, having surely discovered the truth by now.