Page 10 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth
Chapter Eight
Mariah curled into her window seat, pulling a blanket she’d carried on around her.
It was extra soft, the kind of blanket her mother loved to drape over the side of couches and armchairs.
Buckled in, complimentary mimosa at her elbow, she scrolled through the downloaded podcasts on her phone, and double-checked the TV and movies on her tablet.
In her ears, Taylor Swift sang about a broken heart.
Weirdly, Taylor had been her mother’s favorite, not Mariah’s, but the young pop star had grown on her. Mariah had made sure the funeral music was Taylor heavy.
Not that she’d been able to attend. She’d been far too badly injured to leave the hospital at that point.
Aunt Jill had taped every minute of it for her, the packed church, the speeches, the procession out through the front doors.
Mariah had been unable to watch it, but she had it. Eventually, she would get to it.
The flight attendant paused beside her. Mariah had taken a pain killer just before they boarded, and it was kicking in nicely now, blurring the edges of her emotions as well as the ever-present ache in her thigh and hip. She watched Veronica setting up her space, creating a little room.
She saw Mariah watching her. “I’ve never had such a great seat before,” she said quietly. “So cool!”
So cool. It was exactly what her mother would have said. The drugs in her system blunted the sting of the echo, said in almost the same tone of voice. She was able to smile, at least halfway. “Makes it a lot easier to sleep.”
“I’m sure.” She waved a paperback book, a thick one, with worn pages. “But I’m also looking forward to a serious reading session.”
“Who reads paper books anymore?” Mariah said without thinking. The drugs also lowered her social inhibitions, and she wasn’t exactly known for biting her tongue. A woman in a man’s sport couldn’t afford to play nice.
To her credit, Veronica chuckled and picked up a small, leather-covered e-reader. “I read both ways, but sometimes there’s just something comforting about paper.” She held it to her nose and sniffed, nodding. “Do you like to read?”
“Sometimes. I haven’t had the best concentration since—” She gestured at her leg. “A year of surgeries, basically.”
“I can’t imagine,” Veronica said, and Mariah liked her for saying it that way, that she couldn’t imagine, rather than she could imagine. “What did you like before that?”
“Um. Lots of things, really. Stories about adventure, you know, like the Iditarod and stuff like that.” She sought more detail, and the titles floated around her mind like they were cushioned in clouds.
“My favorite book as a kid was The Call of the Wild . I still like novels, sometimes, but they have to move fast.”
“That tracks,” she said. “I read a couple of things recently I can recommend, if you like.”
“Thanks. I’m going to be pretty doped up within an hour, so maybe not today.”
“Okay. Is there anything you need from me?”
“No. I’ll just sleep, probably.”
“Well, I’m right here.”
The flight attendant brought the water, and Veronica worked her eyebrows, whispering dramatically, “It’s real glass.”
She didn’t laugh, but she could feel the sides of her mouth lift.
Mariah waited until the lights were all the way down and pulled out her flask, a carved silver beauty she’d stolen from a boyfriend who’d dumped her after she won a race and he lost. Petty bastard.
She showed him. The flask was loaded with cinnamon vodka, and a few sips killed the pain in her leg and back a lot faster than oxy.
Still, a person had to be sure not to OD or something stupid like that, and she paced herself.
It wasn’t her first major injury. Three times before, she’d faced a stretch of injury, pain, and recovery, starting with a torn ACL at the age of thirteen.
The others had all been repairable with surgery and physical therapy, but there was no coming back from this one. Not with a three-inch rod in her thigh.
Still, the process was the same, the mental process and the physical process.
Her team, her former team now that she’d fired them officially, poor saps, had tried to get her to go to trauma counseling, but she didn’t need any of that shit.
She was an athlete with plenty of time in the trenches.
It would take longer this time, but it had really only been sixteen months.
By the time she hit the two-year mark next August, she’d be over it.
Physically, probably not. She hated that, but you didn’t get anywhere making up stories. Her body would never again be up to the feats of athleticism that had marked her life before.
Mentally, she had more to do. She saw that.
This trip was part of the process. It was her aunt Jill’s idea to complete the research her mom had been doing on cafés and then maybe pull the research together into what?
A book? That was what her mom had planned, but that wasn’t really Mariah’s forte.
Maybe she’d hire someone to ghostwrite it.
She glanced across the aisle at her companion, tidy even at rest, her blanket pulled up to her neck as she leafed through the book in her lap. Maybe she’d be good enough at writing to want the job.
But Mariah didn’t have to decide that part right now.
As the warmth of the vodka and oxy spread through her body, she opened the file with her mother’s notes.
Several cafés had been documented by Rachel already, the iconic Russian Tea Room in NYC, and in Mariah’s opinion, the overly touristy Sally Lunn’s in Bath.
She’d visited with her mother on a trip when she’d graduated high school on time, a bribe because Mariah wanted to quit school and hit the circuit.
Her mother had adamantly refused—citing the stats on injuries and washed-up athletes until Mariah finally gave in.
And look who’d turned out to be right.
She refocused on the list of cafés, but the pills and booze had done their work, and she fell asleep, to dream of a trip when nothing had yet gone wrong, and her mother was still alive, and the whole world spread in front of her like a yellow-brick road.