Page 31 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth
“Exactly.” Mariah tried the Collins. “Ooh, that’s excellent!” She passed it across the table. “But if you were going to do whatever you wanted, what would it be?”
The question made her feel vulnerable. “Something to do with history? Writing? Travel?” She rubbed her hands on her thighs, realized her shoulders were at her ears, and forced herself to relax. “This whole thing, researching cafés and making connections to create a story, is fantastic.”
“Do it,” Mariah said, and then with a droll tone, “I hear the biggest name in the arena bit the dust.”
Veronica didn’t know how to react at first. Was she making a joke?
“Dude! It was supposed to be funny!”
Henry shook his head. “Too soon.”
“I think my mom would have laughed.”
“You’re probably right,” Henry said, and slapped Mariah’s hand on the table.
As they sampled the food, the tender cutlets, the lamb samosas, the fluffy buns, Veronica felt awash in some vague sense of nostalgia she couldn’t quite capture. She’d never eaten Parsi food, so what was this place reminding her of?
They ate so much that she felt like she might explode, but there was absolutely no way she wanted to skip the dessert course.
When it came, she was delighted by the strange, distinctive flavor of kala khatta gola ice, reveled in the combination of chili and chocolate in a pudding-and-ice-cream dish.
“Chocolate and chili is a big thing in New Mexico,” she said, and suddenly she realized why she felt nostalgic—the place reminded her in some weird way of a café she’d worked in as a teenager. Her mother had worked there for twenty-five years before she got sick, and helped Veronica get hired.
The Blue Dog was situated advantageously on the plaza in Taos, and it had been in operation for more than seventy years, serving tourists and locals New Mexican food—chile rellenos, sopapillas, hot chocolate made with chile, deep bowls of Hatch green chile served with fluffy white tortillas.
They made a red chile sauce with local chiles that was both hot and deeply layered, and the red chiles themselves hung on ristras around the room.
The specials had been chalked on a blackboard by the door, and they served Mexican beers with lime and salted glasses.
It was nothing like this, and yet—it was, kind of. More like Café Guli, but even that had felt too shiny clean and new. What was she picking up here?
She looked around, letting the memories surface. She’d kept them suppressed for the most part because she’d let her mother down in her final six months by having an affair with the charming and beautiful manager of the restaurant, Tomas.
Who happened to be married, a fact Veronica (who was then Brandi) had clearly known. She knew his wife, who’d been a couple of years ahead of her at school, and who was quite thoroughly pregnant at the time.
Tomas. She didn’t think about him very often anymore, but he had been one of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen, with liquid dark eyes and a ready smile, and a soulful depth of yearning she found impossible to resist. He longed for her .
And she, devastated by her mother’s diagnosis and her own fear that she’d never get out of New Mexico, fell prey to the wolf of the plaza.
She was a virgin when they met. By the time she left the restaurant under a cloud of scandal and pain, she was quite thoroughly initiated into her own lusty nature.
Her mother, finding out about the affair only a couple of months before she died, slapped Brandi for the first and only time in her life. She’d apologized profusely, but Brandi knew she deserved it. A lot of people had been hurt by her actions.
And of course, her shame had been renewed over that painful public breakup when she faced the humiliating breakup with Spence.
In the first instance, she’d been the mistress and vilified by her social group.
She reacted with intense emotion and fury, as might be expected from a sixteen-year-old girl breaking up with her first lover.
But in the second instance, she’d been the wife who was injured. And had reacted with intense emotion and fury.
It happens every day, her therapist said in her mind.
“Earth to Veronica,” Mariah said. “We lost you to New Mexico.”
“You did. I was remembering a job I had when I was a teenager—these cafés are reminding me of the Blue Dog.”
“The Blue Dog in Taos?” Henry said. “I’ve been there.”
“No kidding. Do you remember when?”
He gazed into the distance. “Must have been around the late eighties. I was on a road trip with some buddies.”
“You are so old,” Mariah said, laughing.
“It’s all perspective.”
“My mom probably worked there then,” Veronica said. “I got the job because she’d been there so long.” Something caught high in her throat. She had taken her mother’s position when she got sick.
“Small world,” Henry said. His arm was draped along the back of the booth, and he touched her shoulder with one finger. “If you’re tapping into something like that with the cafés, the emotion will be good for the book.”
She nodded, aware that the lusty girl she’d been still lurked inside of her, and was too easily triggered outside the confines of marriage, where she’d been free to indulge it as much as she wanted.
The thought startled her. Was she afraid of her desires?