Julie Clark - The Last Flight

And hundreds of images of Rory doing the bidding of the Cook Family Foundation, his mother’s dying gift to the world. People loved Rory because of who he almost was. And he’d spent his entire adult life trying to step out from behind her long shadow.

* * *

I click off the CNN home page and toggle over to take a look at Rory’s inbox, careful not to open anything that isn’t already read. He has at least fifty folders on the left-hand side, one for each of the organizations the foundation contributes to . Buried in that long list is one labeled Claire . I click on it and scan the condolence emails. Hundreds of them, page after page, from family friends, Senate colleagues of his mother’s. People who have worked with the foundation, quick to offer their sympathy. Let us know if there’s anything you need .

I open an email Bruce sent to Danielle several hours after the initial reports emerged about the crash, but before I’d been publicly named as one of the victims. He’d cc’d Rory. The subject line reads Details .

I’m already drafting the statement and should have it ready well before any scheduled press conferences. Danielle, please handle the staff in New York. They are not to speak to anyone. Remind them that they all have active non-disclosure agreements.

Another folder, Google Alerts , is filled with mostly unread notifications. Every time Rory’s name appears online, he gets an email about it. Danielle also gets them in her inbox, because it’s her job to sort through them and brief Rory on anything important he might have missed. My mind leaps back to last week, Danielle and I on our way home from a Friends of the Library event, me staring out the window at the slushy streets of Manhattan while Danielle flipped through that day’s alerts. “A fluff piece in HuffPo ,” she said, almost to herself. “Trash.” I turned to see her deleting the alerts, one after the other, only opening the ones from major media outlets. She caught my eye and said, “We’re going to need to hire an intern for this once the campaign starts. Hundreds a day are going to turn into thousands.”

Now I scan the long list of unread notifications in the wake of the crash and smirk. Too bad, Danielle.

I click over to the Doc. Blank. At the top it now reads Last edit made by Bruce Corcoran 36 hours ago .

I take a sip of Diet Coke, the carbonation tickling my nose. No one would ever imagine I wasn’t on that plane.

The sun is fully up now, and I study the room. The hardwood floor is covered with a deep red area rug, which contrasts beautifully with walls painted a warm shade of yellow that reminds me of the color of my mother’s living room, and in this moment, I feel protected, like a hibernating bear. While the world races on without me, I’m tucked up here, invisible, waiting until it’s safe to emerge again.

I ease open the top drawer of Eva’s desk, curious. I’m living in her house. Wearing her clothes. I’m going to have to use her name—at least for a little while. It would help to know who she was.

I start tentatively at first, as if I’m afraid if I move things around too much, someone will know I was here. Most of what I find is generic—faded receipts I can’t read. A few dried-out pens, a couple pads of paper from local real estate agents. As I begin to grow more comfortable, I reach my hand to the back, sliding the jumble of pushpins, paper clips, and a tiny blue flashlight to the front, trying to peer beneath the mess to the person who threw these items into the drawer, believing she’d have time to sort them out.

* * *

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.