The Last Flight(80)
“And constantly be afraid, looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone to discover the truth.” Liz’s quiet voice landed hard in Eva’s ears. “You need to make a deal, and you need to do it now.” Liz set her glass down and put her finger under Eva’s chin, forcing Eva to look at her. “What happened to you was shitty and unfair. But you have to go back and own your part of it. Either Dex is going to jail for a long time, or you are. Who’s it going to be?”
“And what if Dex’s people get to me first? He has to know by now.” Panic began to swirl around inside of Eva, and she started to cry again.
Liz handed her a tissue and said, “You have to fly back before Castro knows you’ve left. Call him the minute you land, and wait for him at the airport. Do not leave until he comes in to get you. Understand?”
“Why can’t I just disappear?” Eva whispered. “Pretend I’ve never been here?”
Liz’s eyes softened. “You know they’ll come here eventually and ask me questions. I can’t lie for you.”
Maybe this was why Eva came. To be forced to do the right thing. To be held accountable by someone who loved her enough to not let her make any more mistakes. For Liz to be the mother she’d never had.
Relief melted through her, to be able to set everything down and let someone else—someone who cared about her—tell her what to do. “Okay,” she said.
They sat together, with only the faint ticking of a clock somewhere deep inside the house, the silence between them heavy with all that Eva still wanted to say.
All her life, she’d craved connection. Family. Friendship. Then Liz came along and gave it to her, without asking for anything in return. Eva wanted to ask Why me? But she wouldn’t, because there could never be enough words to fill the hole Eva had inside of her, the deepest part of the heart, where the most precious love and the truest friendships are stored.
She knew that walking out the door tomorrow would require an act of courage Eva wasn’t sure she possessed. To turn her back and leave this life, with all its sharp edges and hard knots, and trust that there would be something on the other side for her.
“Do you remember the day we met?” Liz’s voice was the same low tenor Eva remembered from their first meeting, and it passed through her like warm honey. “I was crumpled in a heap on the ground, and you walked over and lifted me up.” Eva started to speak, but Liz silenced her with an upheld hand. “Do not ever forget who you are and what you mean to me. In a world crowded with noise and selfishness, you are a brilliant flash of kindness.” Liz turned Eva so she was facing her and held her by the shoulders. “No matter where you go, no matter what happens, know I will be out here, loving you.”
Eva let her tears fall, the last of her walls crumbling beneath Liz’s words. Every regret, every disappointment, every heartache that Eva had ever endured seeped out of her, a slow leak of sadness, until she was empty.
*
After she’d booked her flight back to Oakland, they sat together on the couch, Eva trying to soak up every last moment with Liz, knowing it would never be enough. From the front of the house came the sound of a key in the lock, then the door opening and closing. “Mom?” a voice called. “Are you home?”
“Back here, honey.”
A young woman came through the kitchen, tossing her keys on the counter and dropping her heavy bag on the floor. She stopped suddenly when she saw Eva and Liz on the couch. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Eva, this is my daughter, Ellie.”
Ellie rolled her eyes and stepped forward to shake Eva’s hand. “I go by Danielle now. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Claire
Monday, February 28
I stare at Agent Castro, feeling as if the careful stitches holding my secrets together have been pulled apart. “I don’t know who that is.”
He flips his sunglasses on top of his head and says, “I think you do. You just finished a call on her phone.” My eyes dart toward Eva’s cell phone, sitting on the dresser, wondering how he’d know that. He continues. “So let’s try this a different way. Good afternoon, Mrs. Cook. It’s wonderful to see you looking so well. My name is Agent Castro, and I’m a federal DEA officer. I have some questions I’d like to ask you.” Beyond him in the parking lot is an anonymous sedan with government plates. “Maybe we should go inside and chat,” he suggests. His tone is friendly but firm, and I nod, opening the door wider to let him enter.
We sit at the small table by the window, two chairs facing each other. He pulls the curtains open, flooding the tiny room with light. “I’d like you to tell me how you know Eva James.”
“I don’t, really.”
“And yet, up until yesterday, you were staying in her house.” He gestures toward Eva’s green coat, tossed over a chair. “And wearing her clothes.” Then he holds up his own phone. “Mrs. Cook, we’ve had Ms. James under surveillance for several months. That includes having her phone cloned.”
“Cloned?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
He leans back and studies me, the weight of his gaze making me uncomfortable. Finally, he says, “It means that anything you do with that phone, we know about it. We get copies of all texts and emails. When that phone rings, we know it. Whatever is said on it, we hear it.”