The Last Flight(66)
She pulled up outside a faded green house with a broken window in the garage door. Someone had taped a piece of cardboard over it, though the tape looked old and brittle, the cardboard warped from water damage and edged with mold. Across the street, a dog chained in the yard split the silence with its barks.
As she walked up the cracked cement path, her eyes scanned the brown lawn and tattered shrubbery and tried to see herself playing there, but none of it matched what she’d spent so many years picturing. Where were the flower beds she’d imagined her grandmother tending? The well-maintained car in the driveway? Where were the ironed curtains in the windows, the driveway her grandfather power-washed once a year? What she saw was so unexpected, like an out-of-tune piano hitting all the wrong notes, loud and jarring.
Eva stood on the shady porch, trying to breathe through her mouth, the stench of cigarette smoke seeping through the closed door. She knocked, and inside, the sound of footsteps approached, causing her to want to turn around and walk away. She no longer wanted to see what was behind that door.
But before she could move, it was pulled open. An older man stood in loose-fitting jeans and an old T-shirt, his ropy arms covered in tattoos. “Help you?” he asked, looking past her, toward her car parked at the curb. She was struck immediately by his eyes. They were hers. Same shape, same shade, and for a moment, she felt a breathless recognition, like the center piece of a puzzle snapping into place, completing the picture.
“Who is it?” a voice called from inside.
Over the man’s shoulder, Eva could just make out a large, lumpy figure in a chair. The smell of cigarette smoke was overwhelming, and underneath it something else—unwashed bodies and overcooked food.
“Sorry,” Eva said, backing down the steps. “I have the wrong house.”
The man stared at her, and she held her breath, waiting for a flash of recognition in his eyes, to see something shake loose—perhaps he’d see the ghost of her mother—his dead sister—standing before him. But he just shrugged, said “Suit yourself,” and swung the door closed.
She turned and walked down the walkway, her legs and arms uncoordinated and jerking, lurching her from the front path to the sidewalk and into her car. As she started the engine, she chastised herself for ever thinking they might be more than this, angry that she’d believed anything but the lowest possible denominator.
And yet, as she navigated the streets back to the freeway and headed south toward Berkeley, she realized she’d spent her whole life wishing for something she never would have had. All these years, she’d believed that if only they had loved her enough to raise her, she somehow could have avoided what happened to her at Berkeley. She could have finished her degree and built a legitimate life for herself. But now she knew that had she grown up there, she never would have made it to Berkeley in the first place.
Information is power.
Eva could walk away with no regrets, knowing for certain the past held nothing of value for her. That sometimes, the death of a dream can finally set you free.
*
When she arrived home, the moving truck was gone, Liz’s apartment empty. The windows were uncovered, revealing bare rooms, the red accent wall almost glowing, and a cold and heavy sadness settled over her.
She stepped onto the porch and unlocked her door, keeping her eyes trained forward, trying not to notice that Liz had left the flowerpots she’d tended so carefully. She glanced to her right, to the tree they’d planted together, the only thing left of their friendship, where it would continue to stand, a quiet sentinel, keeping her secrets.
Eva
Berkeley, California
February
One Week before the Crash
Jeremy’s text came fifteen minutes before Eva was to leave to meet Dex at a basketball game.
I’m failing my classes. I have a paper due on Tuesday and I need something to help me get an A on it. Please.
Of all her clients, Jeremy had been the most persistent, badgering her for weeks to sell him something. She’d managed to put him off, offered to connect him with someone else, but he’d refused. He wanted her. He trusted her. In the past, she would have rolled her eyes at his loyalty, but now she knew he was smart to be cautious.
She texted back.
Going to men’s basketball game at Haas. Meet me at entrance to section ten at halftime.
She would hand off with Dex in the club room and then find Jeremy. She pulled four from her discards—pills that had an odd shape or were broken—and slid them into a plain white envelope. They weren’t pretty, but they’d get the job done.
Two days earlier, Castro had slid up next to her in the frozen-food aisle at the supermarket. He’d only been there for a second, just long enough to give a location and a time, and say that she’d soon have her answer. Eva felt the hours, the minutes, slipping away, carrying her forward to an unknown outcome. She looked around her house and wondered if she’d miss it. Her gaze trailed across the familiar walls of the living room—her favorite chair she’d sat in millions of times, to watch TV or read. The prints on the wall, chosen because she wanted to infuse her dark and lonely life with splashes of color. Her old textbooks, the only reminder of who she’d hoped to become. And yet, the pieces didn’t add up to a life. Eva felt a clarity as she stood there, as if she’d already left, and realized none of it mattered. Nothing would be missed. The only person she’d ever cared about was already gone.