The Last Flight(87)
I walked to the window. A blanket of green treetops swooped down the hill, with the university buildings tucked in between them, glowing like half-buried treasures in the late afternoon light. Beyond that, San Francisco Bay shimmered, the sun casting the city skyline and bridge in the distance as a silhouette. “I love it,” I said, turning to face Kelly and Mrs. Crespi.
A smile illuminated Mrs. Crespi’s wrinkled face. “I’m so glad.” She opened the file she was holding and handed me a lease agreement. “You can move in whenever you’re ready.”
I took the paperwork from her and grinned. “I’m ready now,” I said, and turned back to the view again.
*
“Do you want me to pack up everything in the bathroom, or do you want to go through the drawers yourself?” Petra stands in the doorway to my office, and I turn from the box I’ve been sorting through to face her. When I’d returned to New York, she had been the one to pick me up from the airport. She’d waited until we were safely in the back of the town car she’d hired before falling apart.
“This feels like a dream,” she said through her tears. “When I saw that the plane had crashed…” She trailed off and pressed her fingers to her eyes, taking a deep breath. “And then you show up on CNN and eviscerate that motherfucker.”
It turned out, I hadn’t copied her phone number down wrong. “I had it disconnected,” Petra had explained when I’d asked why it didn’t work. “After I talked to you at the airport, I worried Rory might do some kind of reverse directory assistance and figure out who it belonged to. So I got a new one. But then the news…” She’d shrugged, unable to continue, tears tumbling down her cheeks again.
I close the lid on one box and slide another one toward me. “Pack it all,” I tell her now. “The lotions and makeup are expensive. It’d be stupid to throw them away.”
“I still think you should stay here,” Petra says. “This is your home and you’re entitled to it. Maybe not all the contents.” She glances at the Rodin statue. “But you should fight for what’s yours.”
“I don’t want it,” I say, turning back to the box and sealing it closed. “I don’t need all this space.”
“It’s not about the space,” Petra argues. “It’s about what belongs to you.”
“Then we’ll sell it and I’ll get half.”
“I want you to stay in New York.”
I walk toward her and give her a hug. “I know,” I say, pulling back. “But you know why I can’t. I need to start over somewhere new. You should come to California. The light, the air…they’re different there. You’d love it.”
Petra looks skeptical. “I’d better finish that bathroom. We’re almost out of time.”
She leaves and I open the last box, sorting through it quickly, discarding most of it. The money from my jewelry will allow me time to explore my options in California. Maybe I’ll keep working events with Kelly. Or I’ll go back to school. I imagine myself taking the BART into San Francisco, perhaps working at the museum there, going out to dinner with the friends I hope to finally make.
After I’d finished the CNN interview, Agent Castro had taken me back to Eva’s house to walk him through my time there. I wasn’t sure what more I could tell him that he didn’t already know. They’d submitted Eva’s DNA to the NTSB and were waiting to see if it matched any of the remains they’d recovered so far.
“It’s possible we’ll never know,” he says. “They tell me there are any number of reasons why she might not have been in your seat. Maybe she traded with someone, or perhaps the impact of the crash caused her to get thrown from the wreckage and carried away with the current. If that’s the case, we may never recover her body.” He shrugged and looked out the window, as if the answer to what happened to Eva might be out there somewhere, visible only to him.
“What about the drug dealer?”
“Dex,” Agent Castro said. “Also known as Felix Argyros, or Fish. We have a lead on him up in Sacramento.”
An agent passed through the living room, carrying Eva’s camping stove bagged in a clear plastic evidence bag. “She must have been so desperate, to have chosen a life like this.”
“I think Eva would argue that this life chose her.” Agent Castro sighed. “She was a hard person to know. I’m not really sure I ever had a good handle on her. But even though she ran, she still tried to do the right thing. What she left behind will be critical in indicting Fish.”
“She sounds complicated,” I said.
“She was. But I liked her. I wish I could have done more for her.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, that Eva didn’t need anyone. She’d done just fine on her own.
*
I pick up a pile of clothes and carry it into the living room, setting it alongside the rest of the things I’ll be taking with me. I check the time. We only have about thirty more minutes. I hear Petra closing drawers in the bathroom upstairs, muttering something to herself, and I smile.
My work mostly done, I walk down the hallway that leads to Rory’s office and peek inside. It’s been completely cleared out. His desk, Bruce’s, even the books on the shelves are gone, all of it confiscated by the attorney general. I cross over to the empty bookshelves, reaching up and engaging the button, and the drawer below opens. As I suspected, it’s empty.