Page 36 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As she returned to the table, hoping her intense crying fit didn’t show, Veronica said, “That is the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever seen.”
“Should I go see it?” Mariah asked.
“You definitely should.”
“First, let’s figure out what to order. We have to have drinking chocolate and the Mont-Blanc ,” Mariah said.
“I’m going to waddle home, I swear,” Veronica said.
“No, we won’t! Remember, my mom’s method is to order a bunch of things and take bites of all of it.” She pointed to the bag Veronica looped over her shoulder. “You need to take notes. This will be a good chapter.”
“Right.”
Henry, perusing the menu, said, “Add the onion soup and eggs Benedict with avocado. And coffee.” His leg was close to hers under the table, and he nudged her knee with his. “What will you try, V?”
The arrowheads still jabbed her lungs, but she forced herself to look at the menu. What would she like to try? What would she like to try? “Okay, I’ll play. I want to taste the chocolate again, of course, but I’d also like to try the mille-feuille and, naturally, quiche Lorraine.”
“And what else?” Mariah said. “I’m adding the apple thing.”
“Not much else will fit on the table,” Veronica pointed out.
“We can ask to have them bring it out in rounds.”
Veronica wondered how it would feel to be so completely comfortable everywhere, all the time. Nothing put Mariah off. She believed she deserved to be wherever she was and didn’t question her choices once she made them.
It must be heaven to move through the world like that.
Henry probably felt that way, too, but he was a man, and he’d traveled all over the world. Was travel part of the secret?
What made a person comfortable in their own skin? She knew a lot of her discomfort upon going to college in Boulder had been that it seemed all the students were in a much higher social class than she.
But since then, she’d lived for years as the wife of a professor, by any measure a genteel world. That should have given her some cred, if only with herself.
The trouble was that she’d been hauled off to jail for criminal mischief and domestic violence (that second bit totally unfair, in her opinion), a scenario that had reinforced the image of herself as a working-class woman wearing the sheep’s clothing of a professor’s wife.
Piercing her drifting thoughts, Henry said, “Why don’t we take a look at the pastry case?”
“I’m going to stay,” Mariah said. “My leg gets tired standing in line. If you see anything else you think I might like, order it for me.”
The entire restaurant was decorated for Christmas, with garlands around doorways and along the railings.
On the pastry case were trees shaped from macarons, and lights winked in surprising colors—peach and lime green and gentle blues.
She hadn’t anticipated the layering of Christmas melancholy with the memory of her happy honeymoon.
As she stood with Henry, looking at pastries, she wished she could share the experience with Jenna, and took a handful of photos, something she would never have done if Henry had not been standing there with his very visible enormous camera.
A few people gave him the side-eye, but he didn’t pay any attention, and she supposed that a photographer would have to get used to people staring or not wanting him to shoot them.
“I’d love to see these shots,” she said.
“Sure. Anything you want me to get?”
She pointed to the Yule log, frosted in red, and the macaron trees. He took shots of them, and then more of her; she felt the lens focus on her face as she leaned in to read the little cards before the pastries. Her tongue swept over her teeth in anticipatory glee.
They returned to the table to order, and when the server hurried away, Mariah said, “My mom and I came here the first time when I was very little, maybe only four or five. She loved it here. We had hot chocolate and the pistachio Mont-Blanc every time, and took macarons back to the hotel.” She looked wistful. “I feel like I can see her here.”
“I came here on my honeymoon,” Veronica said, and the startling blue of Spence’s eyes that day rose in memory. “We sat right over there.” The arrowheads rustled, and she rubbed her breastbone. “I always hoped we’d come back eventually.”
“Why didn’t you?” Mariah asked, direct as ever.
Veronica shrugged. “Who knows? Life just ... takes you where it takes you.”
“True that. How about you, Henry?” Mariah asked. “Any memories of Angelina’s?”
“No,” he said, looking around, then back to them, “but I am making some now.”
A glimmer of a narrative flitted over Veronica’s mind. Places as points of time, or memory. She leaned forward. “So, cafés are places people visit, and return to. They can be touchstones, carry memories. Families, lives.”
“That’s good,” Henry said.
“I’m thinking of myself at twenty-two,” Veronica said, “and you’re thinking of yourself at four, and we’re all here together at the ages we are now, having a different experience than the ones we’ve had before—” She frowned.
“I’m not saying that very well, but I’m feeling it.
” She touched her belly. “Did your mom come here before she brought you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Jill would know.”
“I’ll ask her. But not now.” She pulled out her notebook and sketched the scene loosely, then made some notes about their orders. Twice she looked over to the table she had shared with Spence, but redirected quickly.
“I’m starting to see a kind of shape for this book,” she said as they sipped chocolate and coffee and sampled pastries, a napoleon that was the flakiest thing she’d ever tasted, the quiche creamy and salty with the layers of cheese and bacon. “I’ll draft an outline, and you can take a look.”
“I trust you,” Mariah said.
Veronica hesitated a moment, then decided to ask for what she needed, clearly and directly. “But I need to know you’re going to pay me properly for my time. We need to hammer that out.”
“Oh, snap. I forgot.” She wiped cream from her chin and fingers. “Why don’t you come up with what you think it should be, and draft out some kind of agreement, and we’ll go from there.”
Veronica straightened, feeling a sense of ... soft power. “I can do that.”