Page 18 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Fifteen

As the trio headed out into the slightly drizzly day, Mariah realized she felt okay.

Better than okay, honestly. Her body was rested, and the sex had given her a sense of normality and ease.

As they exited the hotel, sirens whooped toward them, pushing through the traffic backing up thanks to the accident.

Sometimes sirens could set off her PTSD, but the pattern of the English sirens was not the same as the ones in the US.

The only reaction was a slight prickle down her arms.

It buoyed her. Maybe she was getting better.

The crowds were thick, rubberneckers slowing the usual foot traffic.

Mariah used her cane mainly as a steadying tool, weaving along with Henry and Veronica to the tube station down the block.

As she passed the pub, she looked in the window and smiled to herself, thinking of hands sliding over her body, the solid deliciousness of an actual human man.

In the station, she tripped a bit over a threshold, but they boarded the tube without incident.

They sat side by side, Mariah at the end, Veronica between her and Henry.

She wore an emerald-green sweater that made her look brighter and younger, but the hair was just so staid—smoothed to her shoulders, the bangs brushed sideways over her sunglasses.

The lip color was understated, but Mariah thought she had put something on.

Her mother had always worn full makeup out of the house, and Veronica was somewhere less than that.

Smugly, she was glad that she didn’t need makeup.

At Southall station, they emerged into a bustling street.

Mariah blinked happily. A woman in a blue tunic and pants bustled by, her black hair braided away from her face.

Teenagers spilled out of a bus, laughing and jostling each other.

A sign across the street was in Hindi. An older man in a pressed muslin tunic and a kufi regally moved by them.

Quietly, Veronica asked, “Is this Brick Lane?”

Mariah just avoided snorting. Luckily, Henry said, “Good guess. But no. This is Southall.” He directed them to turn left, and they joined the people on the sidewalk. Mariah peered in the windows of the shops they passed.

Henry had his camera in his hand, and they wandered awhile.

He took shots of various things, as he always did, his camera an extension of his hand.

Veronica came alive, exchanging pleasantries with vendors offering fruit and trinkets, making one man with an enormous mustache laugh outright and offer her a free slice of watermelon, which she accepted with a smile.

Mariah watched Henry shoot photos of the exchange and wondered what he was seeing.

In the damp day, Veronica’s hair had lost its smooth finish and started to frizz a bit, and her expression was open, curious, and for lack of a better word, bright. Mariah liked this side of her more.

“I think the café is down this close,” Henry said, and they ducked into a narrow alleyway, where the footing was slippery enough that Mariah reached for his elbow. “You okay?” he asked.

“Good,” she answered, holding on to the crook of his elbow. In the cold damp, her knee and all the bits of metal holding her femur together ached. She wished she’d brought a puffer jacket that reached her knees.

But she wasn’t into regret. It was what it was. They passed a shop crowded with fabric, and flowerpots empty with the season. Overhead, someone spoke in a dizzying tumble of syllables Mariah didn’t recognize, and someone else answered in English, “Ma, leave me alone! I’m doing it.”

She laughed and Veronica glanced over, grinning in agreement. “Some things are always the same.”

“So you have kids?” Mariah asked.

“Yes. Three. A twenty-six-year-old son, a twenty-five-year-old daughter, and a twenty-year-old son.”

“Your daughter is the same age as me. Where is she?”

“In Boulder. She’s finishing a master’s in ecology and environmental biology.”

“Whoa. Smart. Does she live with you?”

Veronica shook her head slowly, looking distant or maybe sad. “She has an apartment with a friend.”

“That’s cool.”

Veronica nodded. “They all came home during COVID. I miss them now.”

“Well, but if they still lived with you,” Mariah said, “you wouldn’t be doing this, right?”

“True.”

Henry said, “Are the boys in school, too?”

“Ben is. Tim’s applying for doctoral programs.”

“Another smarty,” Mariah said.

“They didn’t get it from me,” she said wryly. “Their dad is a philosophy professor.”

“Wow, that sounds like a blast,” Mariah said with a roll of her eyes. “Debating philosophy at every meal.”

Veronica laughed. “Yeah, just that much fun.” She shook her head. “They outtalked me all the time. I’m the person who thinks of the comeback three hours later.”

“Not everybody likes verbal sparring,” Henry said. “My family liked that, too, and I didn’t.”

The talk of families didn’t make her sad, Mariah realized. She just wanted to be part of the conversation. “My mom’s thing was appreciation ,” she said. “We should appreciate this apple! We should appreciate our shoes! We should appreciate buttons!”

Henry patted her hand on his arm, smiling, then looked up. “This is it.”

The café was not what she’d expected, a simple small storefront with big windows on either side of the door. A sign overhead said “Café Guli” in English, and presumably the same thing in Hindi. The window said, “Authentic Parsi cuisine.”

“Let’s check it out,” Veronica said, already opening the door.

But Mariah suddenly hesitated, swamped by a sense of foreboding as she spied a big chalkboard and tables filled with customers. A scent of bread escaped into the day. It was like some weird force was holding her back. “Wait. What are we looking for here?”

Veronica stepped back, letting a man and a woman in jeans enter in front of her. “You tell me.”

Henry said, “This is the first café on the list. One of the only Parsi cafés in England.” He pulled up his phone and held it out, squinting, then handed it to Veronica. “I forgot my glasses. Can you read that?”

“Established in 1997 by a family from Mumbai who carried the tradition from India. Enjoy the house specialties of bun maska and keema pattice .”

Mariah stood in the narrow alley, feeling her leg start to ache loudly, and couldn’t quite pinpoint her worry. “Did you contact them ahead of time?”

“Nope. That’s up to you.” Patiently, he added, “We don’t have to do any of this. It’s an adventure. Your mom wouldn’t care one way or another.”

Except Mariah thought she would. She thought her mom would want her to do this, finish her last project.

Standing there, eyeing the café, Mariah wondered how she’d missed her mother’s love of India. Had she talked about it, and Mariah, as self-centered as every athlete in training, had just missed it?

In some ways, the threading of Indian motifs—bright colors and patterned cotton dresses and a love of well-spiced food—made up a core part of Rachel’s style, but it wasn’t unusual. Lots of people had Lakshmi and Ganesha statues in their gardens.

Suddenly, she was irritated with herself. It was unlike her to be so nervous. “Let’s go in.”

Henry and Veronica led the way. Mariah hung back, trying to be invisible with her limp and her very visible Americanness, which felt awkward in some way she couldn’t identify.

Nobody looked at them at all, so she was just being a jerk, and yet, she still felt stupidly self-conscious, leaning on her cane.

She hardly knew where to look in case people were staring at her.

“Welcome,” said a man in his thirties, taking menus from the counter. “Three of you for lunch?” His accent was pure London, with swallowed vowels.

“Please,” Henry said.

He led them to a table right in the middle of the room. Mariah hesitated, but a voice in her head said, What the hell are you so worked up about? so she sat down, facing the open window into the kitchen, where a crew of three worked at a counter. She pulled her braid over her shoulder as a shield.

The photos she’d seen of Parsi cafés always looked slightly worn and grimy, but this was not.

The walls were painted white, the tables covered with blue gingham and fitted with glass.

On the walls were black-and-white photos of what she assumed were Indian scenes, family shots in front of another café, and vintage signs advertising NESCAFé and Brahmi Oil and Campa Cola, some in English, some in Hindi.

A graphic of a man with bird wings around him hung over the door to the kitchen.

She recognized it and suddenly remembered a yellowed notebook in her mother’s things with this on the cover.

Her ears burned a little. What was she missing? And what if it was something bad? Maybe sometimes it was better to leave things alone. “Wow, maybe this isn’t a great idea. I mean, if my mom had wanted me to know everything about her life, she would have told me.”

Henry looked up. “Again, we don’t have to do anything you are uncomfortable with. We can pull the plug anytime.”

Veronica said calmly, “The worst that happens today is that we have a good meal.”

“Right.” The words took the heat out of her sudden weird worry. Mariah rubbed her palms down her thighs, wincing when she caught the knob of scar tissue that always bugged her. “I guess I just want to get it right. For my mom, you know.”

“You won’t get it wrong,” Veronica said. Her certainty was reassuring. “Let’s just have some drinks to start.” She pointed to the menu. “Fresh lime soda sounds delicious, but maybe on such a cold day some chai?”

“Okay.” Mariah was annoyed with herself. When had she become this shrinking-violet weirdo? It was like she and Veronica had traded personalities for the day. “My mom always ordered a bunch of dishes when we tried a new restaurant.”

“Let’s do that, then,” Henry said. “I’m as hungry as a wolverine.”

Veronica laughed. “Haven’t heard that one.”

Mariah scowled. The two of them were like old friends already, all cozy and comfortable. Which made sense, because they were of a similar age and all, but she couldn’t quite shake the old kid-longing of wishing for Henry to be her dad.

She liked him so much better than any of her mother’s other boyfriends.

But none of her mother’s boyfriends lasted. She didn’t want anything to do with marriage or settling down or any of those things.

But Henry had remained Rachel’s lifelong friend, and so he was part of Mariah’s life, too. “Henry,” she said, “why did you and my mom break up?” Until the words landed, she didn’t realize how out-of-the-blue they would be.

He raised his head, holding the menu lightly, and met her gaze. He didn’t say anything for a minute, just measured her, as if trying to decide what she was really asking.

Finally, he touched his jaw. “I don’t know, really. It just got to be pretty hard to get around the work problems—I was always somewhere; she was always somewhere. I guess we didn’t spend enough time together.” He tilted his head. “We were better as friends. Why?”

She shrugged, and honestly didn’t have the answer. “I was bummed, really. I think you were her best boyfriend.”

He grinned and leaned back, touching his chest with his open palm. “Well, you know I agree with you.”

Veronica didn’t engage, keeping her eyes on the menu.

Mollified over something she couldn’t identify, Mariah tried to settle and examine the menu, but she still felt something off, something odd. A warning, maybe. She looked around the room, but there was nothing.

Jeez. Get yourself together. “I would like some chai,” she said to focus herself. “And whatever is making the room smell so good.”