The Last Flight(43)

“You wanted to be the one to define who you were,” Liz said. She linked her arm through Eva’s, and Eva leaned into her, loving the solid feel of Liz’s shoulder against her own, wanting to drag that moment out until infinity, to never descend into the BART station, to never return across the bay to her old life, stale and rotten at the center. “And so you stayed at the convent until you graduated?” she asked.

Eva nodded. “Until I turned eighteen and started at Cal.”

Wind whipped up from the bay, growing stronger as it funneled between the tall buildings, and Eva hugged her other arm tight around her, thinking about the family she’d almost had, if she’d been a different person. A better person. But that possibility had fractured long before Carmen and Mark showed up. Cracked down its center, the pieces rough and jagged. She’d insulated herself from the sharpest parts, but Liz had reached in and gently unwrapped them, showing her she didn’t need to be afraid to think about her past. That she could hold the pieces in her hands without hurting herself. That she could do something with them if she wanted to.

They were quiet as they descended the stairs and passed through the turnstile and onto the platform. The faint sound of a far-off train carried through the dark tunnel, and Eva pictured the people on the street above them, driving, walking, working in the high-rise buildings of the financial district. It was a miracle the whole thing didn’t come crashing down on top of them.

“Have you ever thought about looking for your birth family?”

Eva shook her head. “After things went down with Carmen and Mark, the nuns made another attempt to reunite me with them.” She looked down the tunnel, looking for their train, but all was quiet. “They said no.”

“It’s possible they did the best thing they could for you.”

Eva knew that was probably true, that she wouldn’t have had any kind of life growing up with an addict, but that knowledge sat alongside the rejection—it didn’t cancel it out. “I don’t know that I’ll ever truly forgive them,” she said.

Liz shook her head. “You don’t know what they were dealing with at the time. Your mother’s problems probably took up every inch of space inside of them. I can only imagine what kind of hell that must have been.” She glanced down at the platform and then back at Eva. “You can’t blame them for knowing their limits. Even if those limits included you.”

The sign above them flashed with their train number, and beneath her feet Eva could feel the rumbling of its arrival. Liz placed a hand on her arm and said, “Look. Obviously, you know what’s best for you. But I sense an unhappiness, a hole that makes you hold yourself apart from the rest of the world. And I hate to see you hurting. Seeking them out doesn’t mean expecting a happy ending. I don’t think that’s why you should do it. But information is power. And once you hold it, you get to decide what to do with it. That’s all I want for you.”

They waited in silence as Eva considered her words, turning them over in her mind. She wondered what it would be like to know people who were related to her. Who looked like her. Who carried family memories and knew where they got their sharp noses or their blond hair. She’d never had that kind of connection with anyone.

Liz continued, her voice low. “You aren’t the only adopted child to want answers from her biological family.”

“I was never adopted.”

Liz closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, turning to face Eva. “I’m sorry. You’re right, and this is none of my business.”

“Look, I appreciate what you’re saying. I really do. But that kind of rejection does something to a person. It breaks you, all the way down to your core. And makes it impossible to be vulnerable. To open yourself up to anyone.”

Liz looked at Eva, her gaze steady and knowing, forcing Eva to look away. Just then, the train pulled into the station and people pressed in on them from behind, pushing them forward and through the opening doors.

*

On their way back to Berkeley, she studied Liz next to her, the short white hair and regal set of her shoulders, and thought about what Liz was suggesting. Eva imagined her birth family out there, trying to forget what they’d left behind—the pain of an addict daughter, the granddaughter they’d sacrificed in order to save her. And what would they get if she showed up? More heartache. More pain. A reminder that they’d been right to give her up when they did.

What Eva did was worse than anything her mother had ever done. Her mother had a disease. Eva was just a drug dealer who barely blinked at the idea of having a nineteen-year-old beaten to a bloody pulp over a few hundred dollars. Eva pictured her phone at home, waiting to yank her back down. Pulling her away from Liz, who had no idea what kind of a person Eva really was.

The train rumbled and swayed, her ears popping as they dropped below the bay, the lights flickering and creating dim shadows around them, thinking about the next day when she’d have to roll the shelf in her kitchen aside and get back to work, and she felt the beginning tendrils of tension take root and start to spread outward. She wished she could turn back time, go back to that morning when Liz stood in her doorway infused with an excitement that nearly filled her up. Or maybe earlier. To that afternoon at Tilden waiting for Brittany. To have listened to her instincts and gone home. Gotten ready to work her shift at DuPree’s, far removed from Agent Castro and Brittany’s collaboration. Or maybe even further still, to the sidewalk outside her dorm, saying no thanks to Dex. Saying no thanks to Wade. That was the problem with wishes. They always led to others. Bigger ones. Trailing back in time, knot after knot needing to be untangled, never noticing how they wrapped around you until they pulled you down.