The Last Flight(29)

*

Two hours later, I sit on the floor of the office, papers strewn around me. I’ve emptied the desk and gone through everything in it. Bank statements. Paid utility and cable bills. All of them in Eva’s name. I’d found a box in the closet containing files with more important documents. Her car registration. Her social security card. But I’m struck by what’s missing. No marriage license. No insurance paperwork you’d expect after a long illness and a death. What had been nagging me about Eva’s house yesterday returns, this time in sharp focus. There aren’t any personal touches. No photographs or sentimental pieces anywhere. There is absolutely no evidence that anyone other than Eva lived here. For someone who couldn’t bear to face all the belongings of a deceased and beloved husband, there are zero reminders of him to have left behind.

I work hard to find explanations for what’s missing. Maybe her husband had bad credit and all the bills had to be in her name. Maybe everything related to him is boxed up in the garage, too painful to even have inside the house. But these feel flimsy, half-color fabrications that are simply not true.

I pull out the last file in the box and open it. It’s escrow paperwork for an all-cash purchase of this side of the duplex, dated two years ago. At the top, her name only. Eva Marie James. And underneath it, the box next to Single is checked.

I can still hear her voice in my mind, the way she spoke of her husband. High school sweethearts. Together for eighteen years. The emotion in her voice when she described her decision to help him die, the way it broke, the tears in her eyes.

She lied. She fucking lied. About all of it.





Eva


Berkeley, California

August

Six Months before the Crash

Ten minutes before her scheduled meeting with Brittany, Eva parked her car in a lot at the outer edge of Tilden Park, rather than driving into the interior. She preferred to walk in and out, arrive and leave silently. Tucking the package into her coat pocket, she turned toward a path that would take her to a tiny clearing where she used to come and study, a lifetime ago.

The full trees cast a dappled shade on the path, yet a cool wind kicked up from the bay, despite it being the last month of summer. Even though the sky above was clear, Eva caught glimpses of San Francisco Bay in the distance, of the marine layer gathering over the Pacific, and knew in a few hours that would change. She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her favorite coat—army green with several zippered pockets—and felt the outline of the pills through their wrapping paper.

The trees that surrounded Eva were old friends. She recognized them individually, the shape of their trunks and the reach of their branches. She tried to place herself back in time, coming here after classes were over, spreading her books across the picnic table or on the grass if the weather was warm. Sometimes Eva caught flashes of that girl, like images from a passing train. Glimpses into a different life, with a regular job and friends, and she’d feel unsettled for days.

When she arrived at the clearing, she was relieved to see she was alone. The scarred wooden picnic table still stood beneath a giant oak tree, a concrete trash can chained to it. She wandered over to the table and sat on it, checking the time again, the familiar location drawing her mind back in time.

*

Fish ran the drug underworld in Berkeley and Oakland, and Dex worked for him. “Most drug dealers get picked up quickly,” Dex had warned her at the very beginning. He’d taken her to lunch at a waterfront restaurant in Sausalito, so he could explain what she’d be doing. Across the bay, San Francisco had been swathed in a deep fog, only the tops of the tallest buildings visible. She’d thought of St. Joseph’s and the nuns who’d raised her, buried under the fog and the assumption that Eva was still enrolled in school, still on track to graduate with full honors in chemistry, instead of where she was—three days post expulsion, sleeping in Dex’s spare bedroom and getting a crash course on drug selling and distribution. Eva tore her eyes away and focused back on Dex.

“What you make has a very specific market,” Dex continued. “You will only sell to people referred to you by me. This is how you’ll stay safe.”

“I’m confused,” Eva had said. “Am I making or selling?”

Dex folded his hands on top of the table. They’d finished eating, and the server had tucked the check next to Dex’s water glass and then disappeared. “Historically, Fish has struggled to keep good chemists for long. They always think they can do better on their own and then things get complicated. So we’re going to try something different with you,” he’d said. “You will produce three hundred pills a week. As compensation for this work, you will keep half and Fish will let you sell them yourself, keeping one hundred percent of those profits.”

“Who will I sell them to?” she’d asked, suddenly uncomfortable, imagining herself face-to-face with strung-out addicts. People who might grow violent. People like her mother.

Dex smiled. “You will provide an important service to a very specific clientele—students, professors, and athletes. Five pills should sell for about two hundred dollars,” Dex had told her. “You can clear $300,000 per year, easy.” He smiled at her stunned expression. “This only works if you follow the rules,” he’d warned. “If we hear you’re branching out, or selling to addicts, you put everything and everyone at risk. Understand?”