Page 23 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Nineteen

In her bedroom, Mariah was frozen. Physically, but mostly mentally.

She couldn’t seem to shake the swells of despair.

She huddled under her blankets, shunning anything but tea and sandwiches.

She watched Tyler Henry on her iPad and wished she could believe there might be something on the other side.

She’d found Tyler while she was still in the hospital, those first weeks when she was deeply drugged and unable to come to terms with anything that had happened, not the death of her mother or the wounds of her own body.

She lay in a gray miasma of pain, day in, day out, unable to focus on anything.

One day, she discovered the streaming world of psychic mediums. So many of them!

She loved the seat-belt guy, and the loud but somehow trustworthy Long Island lady, but it was Tyler Henry, a young psychic with kind eyes who helped people episode after episode, who caught her.

A delicately made gay man whose mother accompanied him on many of his journeys, he had made a giant name for himself, and she loved to watch him, endlessly.

She’d seen every episode a half dozen times, and sometimes liked to imagine what he would say if she could get an audience with him.

“Did someone close to you die violently?” he’d ask, scribbling on the paper he always had. “Was it your mother?”

But she didn’t even know if he was doing that anymore. And he was so famous she wouldn’t be able to get anywhere close.

She’d been a little famous, too, once upon a time.

Her mother would be appalled that Mariah wanted to use a psychic to talk to her, but that didn’t matter in the slightest. It didn’t actually matter that she’d never be able to see Tyler herself. Just knowing that other people talked to the dead helped.

By the fourth day, Mariah knew she should get up, but she couldn’t seem to find the will.

The encounter at the café had derailed her so badly because it made plain there were things about her mother’s life that she had never shared.

And now, Mariah would never know about them, would never know why it was important.

It brought home the truth that Rachel was dead , and would stay dead no matter what quest Mariah engaged in.

Aching, she searched the internet and TikTok for more psychic readers. She could always watch Medium , based on a woman in Arizona who really had solved crimes with her abilities, but as she scrolled through the episodes, Veronica burst into the room.

“Okay, enough,” she said, and briskly pulled open the curtains. Milky sunshine poured in through the windows. Mariah blinked at the brightness.

“What are you doing?” she protested, holding up a hand.

Veronica tugged the covers off Mariah’s legs. “Time to get up. It’s an absolutely gorgeous day, and we need to get out in it.” She tossed the duvet onto a chair. “The cleaners need to get in here and fumigate, too.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Mmm. If you say so.” She turned and opened her bag. “What do you want to wear? Do you want me to pick something?”

“No, for God’s sake. I’ll do it. Get out of here and let me shower.”

“I’ll order some breakfast for a half hour.”

The light penetrated the cave of her soul, fingering life. “Fine. Now, go.”

Sitting up, she looked out the window. Thin sunshine warmed the landscape, and just the sight of it was somehow uplifting. She stood and stretched, then limped into the bathroom. Her leg was stiff, but not sore.

As she turned on the hot water, she ranked the depressive episode as a six.

Sometimes they were much worse and lasted a lot longer—a week, sometimes two or three—where she fell into the pit, an unrelentingly dark warren where every thought was a monster or a harridan, making fun of her, reminding her of all the things she’d never do again—fly down a slope covered in fresh powder, lose herself in training for an event she was almost sure she couldn’t accomplish, meet her mom for lunch in some ski resort or see her in the waiting area of the Denver airport when she came home for a brief stint.

The monsters told her that her life was worth nothing. Worse, that no one’s lives were worth anything.

Lost in those dark halls, she wanted only to slide into the abyss completely, disappear. And yet, her body stubbornly reminded her to eat, to drink water, to go to the toilet. Her skin itched and she scratched.

Now steam filled the room and she stripped down, breathing in the softness. The mirror, some modern fancy thing, didn’t get steamed up, and she leaned in to look at her pores, seeing that she’d slept away the rings below her eyes. Her shoulders were thin, and she needed to get back to lifting—

Or ... fuck. Memory reminded her that she didn’t do that anymore.

Stepping into the hot shower, she reached for the tricks her therapist taught her.

One long breath in, her hands on her belly, feeling her lungs expand.

She let it go, feeling her belly move. Her body.

This body, in this minute, was okay. Her mind, this minute, in this shower, was okay.

The water felt good on her skin, her face, her hair. The shampoo smelled of nectarines.

She remembered that Veronica had probably looked her up on Google and now knew what had happened. It caused a hiccup in assembling peace. Would she get all weird about it, be solicitous, her eyes getting all gooey with pity? Resistance zigzagged down her neck, bringing her shoulders up to her ears.

Is it true? One of the coping questions. Is it true, or are you telling a story? Is there a better one?

She didn’t know yet. Shaking out her shoulders, she let water pour over her face, over her throat and breasts. Veronica had been pretty ordinary when she came into the room, and actually, she’d done exactly the right thing. Got her up out of her bed. Henry must have helped. Or maybe Jill.

Whatever.

As she dressed, she felt clean and hungry, and maybe even curious about what might happen today.

Veronica had ordered a massive breakfast, eggs and bacon and toast, fruit and yogurt with granola and berries, coffee and juice and even a glass of milk. Mariah’s stomach growled, and she sat down to feast. “Jeez, this is delicious,” she said. “Aren’t you eating any of it?”

“It’s ten o’clock. I ate hours ago.”

“Yeah, what’d you have? A piece of toast? A section of orange?” She gulped the milk, which was not usually her favorite, but it tasted great, cold and refreshing. She was probably dehydrated.

Veronica raised a brow. “Toast and oatmeal, as if it’s any of your business.”

“True,” Mariah said. “You’re just so thin. A little more food wouldn’t kill you.”

She perked up. “Really? You think I’m thin?”

Mariah pushed a plate of bacon over. “Why do divorced women get so thin, anyway?”

“What do you know about divorced women?”

“My coach got divorced and lost about thirty pounds. You could see her bones.” She grabbed her wrists in illustration.

Veronica eyed the bacon, then suddenly pulled a slice onto a plate. “Maybe we stop cooking for other people and cook for ourselves,” she said, cutting the meat into small pieces.

“Maybe.” Mariah devoured a mouthful of eggs. They were so good here! She realized she was feeling really excellent. Nothing hurt this morning. Maybe she’d needed that long rest. “I think for my coach, she had this idea that if she was thin enough, he’d, like, see her and want her again.”

Veronica visibly flinched. “Well, I did get kind of overweight the past few years.”

“So what?”

“Well, that’s part of the marriage contract, that you’ll watch your figure.”

Mariah snorted. “‘Watch your figure?’ Is this 1952?”

“It’s not the same for your generation,” Veronica said, bristling. “Girls now are mighty; they get to be who they are. Men of my generation still want women to be a certain way.”

“All of them?” Mariah didn’t know why she was pushing into an arena that obviously made Veronica uncomfortable. Maybe it was just interesting. The part of her brain who liked stirring things up was awakening. “Or just your husband?”

“I don’t know,” Veronica said with irritation.

“Let me guess. Your husband found a younger woman and blamed it on you.”

Veronica tossed the fork down. “Not exactly.” She stood. “I’m going to get ready. Henry will be here soon.”

“Either way, he’s probably a dick.”

Veronica lifted her shoulders. “Which makes me an idiot, right?”

“No—”

Veronica left the table and closed her bedroom door. Hard.

Mariah ate some more bacon, pondering. There was life in the old Gen Xer after all.