Page 22 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

She dropped the umbrella in a stand by the door and wandered in, just looking curiously until she got the hang of it, then climbed a set of stairs and wandered that level, too, then headed back down to history and local history, which of course showcased titles from the Bloomsbury group.

Despite her study of Elsie, she hadn’t read much by the rest of the group, so she browsed several books—poetry and criticism and novels and gardening.

She picked up a slender copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own , which she probably should already have read, but hadn’t, and a travel book by Vita Sackville-West, Passenger to Tehran , which seemed appropriate.

Her body settled as she wandered. Her breath slowed, her joints loosened.

In the coffee shop, she bought a flat white and took it to a table by the window, where she leafed through Country Living , pages and pages and pages of genteel rustic beauty—gardens and farmhouse tables set with linens and old plates and fat candles. Such a relief!

Magazines had been a lifeline for her as a teen.

In those pages, she spied a different kind of life, one with healthy food and kindly light and flowers snipped from the garden.

Of course she’d fallen hard for Spence’s family home!

Drinking her coffee, she thought about the home she’d created there, the garden beds she’d planted.

They’d been worthy renditions, and she could take some pride in that.

She considered Elsie, who’d been forced to leave a home she loved in India, then another she loved in England, and finally was forced into a role she didn’t want in a country that never felt like home.

But she’d made the best of it. Only a handful of her paintings survived, but they were widely acknowledged to be masterful. She’d done her best with what she had.

Veronica sat back in her seat, sipping milky coffee as she watched people hurry by in the rain. The life she had loved so much was gone. Really and truly gone. She would never have it back.

So what now? She didn’t have some wild artistic talent to pour her loss into. She might be able to write the thesis, finally, but was that what she really wanted?

She had no idea. What in the world was she going to do with the next thirty or forty years?

A sense of someone nearby made her look up, thinking she would have to share the table. She pulled her bag closer to her side, and looked up with a distracted smile, remembering that maybe Americans smiled too much and she should do that less.

Except that she was American, and maybe that was okay.

It was Henry. Surprised and more pleased than she would have admitted, she offered a genuine smile. “Hello!”

“May I join you?” Henry said in his distinctive voice. “Or is this a rare moment of peace?”

Milky light spilled over his lean form, the worn-thin chambray shirt with its rolled sleeves showing tanned arms, his craggy face with wide mouth and aggressive nose.

He carried a worn leather jacket over one arm.

It crossed her mind that she found him attractive, that the scent of him rustled her skin.

“Please,” she said, gesturing toward the open chair.

He carried a solid stack of books he settled on the table. “What did you find?” he asked, pointing to the books at her elbow.

She showed him. “I’ve been walking around the neighborhood of some of the Bloomsbury set, and I realized that I’d never read A Room of One’s Own .”

“I haven’t, either. You’ll have to let me know how it is.”

“I will. What did you get?”

He turned the spines toward her. “More Mughal history. I seem to be on a kick.”

“That’s a lot of weight to drag around on a trip.”

“Yeah, but I like used history books.” He opened one and flipped through the pages, showing her the notes someone had written in the margins, blue ink in a spiky hand. “I like seeing what somebody else thought about the material.”

In this light, she could see silvery threads in his dark hair. “That’s a good way to look at it.” She closed her magazine, placed a hand on the glossy cover. “I was just contemplating the question of what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

“Pretty weighty question for a rainy day.”

“I guess.” She showed her palm, which had marks from the pavement. “I slipped, a couple of girls rescued me, and I felt about four hundred years old.” She laughed at herself. “I mean, it brings home thoughts of mortality.”

“Maybe you could ask Mariah where she got her cane.”

She laughed again. “I’ll do that.”

“Maybe,” he said calmly, “the question to ask is, What do you want?”

“I wanted the life I had,” she said, aware of the bubble of grief expanding again. She cleared her throat, forcing the tears back.

He nodded. “What was that?”

“It’s hard to capture in a sentence or two. And I’m afraid it will sound unbearably suburban.”

“Try.”

She took a breath. “Okay. I miss my garden. I planted this massive garden over twenty years, and it was one of the most beautiful things I ever made.”

“I’m sorry.”

His quiet manner gave her courage. “I miss my beautiful kitchen. And when my kids were little, and when I thought I’d just live in that house until I died.”

“None of that is suburban.”

“It is, though. The house is in a nice little leafy neighborhood in Boulder, and my ex was a professor, and we had dinner party rounds once a quarter, and—” Tears gathered in the back of her throat, and she paused to let them recede. “And it’s all ... gone. I have no idea what’s next.”

He nodded. “It’s hard to make a transition like that. Mariah is right there, too.”

“I guess she is.” Veronica gave him a rueful expression. “Hers is so much worse than mine.”

“It’s not a competition,” he said kindly. “You’ve lost the life you loved, and so has she.”

She closed her eyes, breathing slowly. Nodded.

“Maybe you just need to look at it in a different way. You’re free in a way that you probably never will be again. Maybe freer than you ever have been.”

“Well, except for that pesky little money thing.”

He shrugged ever so slightly. “Money isn’t the same thing as your life.”

“That’s a very privileged point of view. Money is at the core of everything. You can’t do anything without it.”

“I mean, sure, to a degree, but you’re a woman of some education and resources. You can make money.” He gestured to the shelves. “What about a bookstore?”

A puff of possibility blew away some of her despair. She raised her eyebrows. “I might like that.”

“I thought so. There might be lots of things like that. You don’t have to get it all figured out in the next five minutes. There’s some freedom in not knowing the next step.”

“That has honestly never occurred to me,” she said. “Thank you.”

As they walked out, Henry having offered a ride, he said, “I went back to the café this morning, to see if I could get any more information.” He opened the car door for her, waiting in the drizzle for her to climb in.

“And?” she asked as he came around.

“No dice. I waited to get the son alone, but he was so jumpy about getting caught, I took pity on the guy.”

“Too bad.”

“Did the letters have anything?”

“I haven’t got them yet.”

A nod. “How’s Mariah?”

“Still hiding in her room. I think it might be time to make her get up.”

“Agreed. She’s gotta face it all, her grief and the lost dreams.”

A sympathetic arrow pierced her chest, and she pressed her hand against it. “Ow.”

“I know. But it’s time.”

“Have you ever had to make a new life?”

“Yeah,” he said, but offered no embroidery.

“Oh, come on, you can’t be all stoic and mysterious now.”

He grinned. “Is that what I am, stoic and mysterious?”

“Don’t try to get out of it.”

“It’s pretty dark.”

“And a mother murdered in a grocery store isn’t?”

“Fair.” He smoothly turned onto the street alongside the hotel. “But now isn’t the best time.”

“All right,” she said, gathering up her packages. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

“Anytime.”