Page 37 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Thirty

Mariah stretched mightily out on the street, feeling an easy happiness over the memories of her mother and herself drinking chocolate and gorging on pastries. It was a good memory, one she wanted to carry with her forever. Maybe noticing that was a good sign.

“After that feast, maybe we should walk to Café Farroukh,” Henry said, consulting the maps on his phone.

“Feast!” Veronica echoed. “More like gluttony. I will not be able to eat a single bite at a new café, I don’t care how far we walk.”

“We don’t have to eat there,” Henry said. “This one isn’t about the café so much as the connection to India.”

“You read the notes!” Veronica exclaimed. “Thank you.”

“Of course. This café is a good lead,” he said, directing them toward a busy intersection. “Looks like it’s too far to walk all the way, but let’s head down the Seine and get the metro from a bit farther down.”

“I love the name,” Mariah said. “I can eat for all of us if you guys are wimps.”

Veronica laughed. “You eat more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Good metabolism, thank God.”

“Are you up for the walk?” Veronica asked Mariah.

Her leg was fine this morning, and so was her heart. “I’m good! Great, actually.”

They made decent progress until Veronica and Henry were snared by the booksellers along the river, the stalls ready to cover the books at the first drops of rain.

Veronica and Henry both picked up book after book after book, but Mariah didn’t read French well, so she stuck to the English titles.

It was cold, but not horrifically so, and her long coat helped cover the metal in her leg.

A collection of stories about women athletes caught her eye, and she stopped to flip through it, then felt that swelling sadness about the loss of her career, and put it down again. No point in torturing herself.

Another one called her name, The Fireside Book of Deadly Diseases .

The pandemic had revived a childhood passion for viruses, triggered by a documentary on the Black Death she’d seen at the age of eight.

This one chronicled smallpox and leprosy and AIDS along with many others. She tucked it under her arm.

She’d aways been somewhat interested in the processes of the body and healing, because a person didn’t participate daily in such a physically challenging sport without the odd injury.

Knowing why and how the body mended itself was something she’d studied.

In truth, she’d always known an injury could eventually end her career. She just hadn’t seen this angle.

In the hospital after the shooting, it had taken many weeks to get to a place where she could even think about her own healing.

Thanks to Jill, who showed up every single day, and then some, she had never despaired, exactly, but she hadn’t taken much interest in her own healing until she saw the X-rays of her original injury.

The damage delivered by the bullet that struck her thigh was tremendous, leaving shards of bone and shredded muscles.

The surgeons had pieced what they could back together, using cadaver bone and plates and screws and metal rods to reconstruct her leg.

“Holy shit,” she’d breathed upon seeing it.

“I can’t believe I can actually use this leg. ”

The surgeon, a woman in her fifties, said, “We worked our asses off. Nobody was sure you would even live.”

“I thought I died,” she confessed. “In the grocery store, on the floor, I saw my leg and how much it was bleeding and just—” She shook her head.

“Lucky for you that somebody knew how to tie a tourniquet.”

She frowned. “Who?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“You said it was an angel when they brought you in.”

Mariah winced. “An angel? That doesn’t sound like me.”

The doctor shrugged, looked at the chart. “That’s what the ER nurse wrote down. She said you were holding your mother’s hand.”

She looked away. “Since my mother was dead at the time, I’m pretty sure she didn’t rise up and tie a tourniquet.”

“Well, count your blessings. Without that angel, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

That made her stomach twist. But the memory of someone tying up her leg to stop the bleed never returned.

Browsing the titles on the table on a booth by the Seine, she wondered why that person hadn’t come forward. Why hadn’t they stayed until the ambulance came? Maybe she or he had just gone through the store saving the lives of injured people?

Another book caught her eye, Epidemics of the World.

She picked that up, too. Would she like being a doctor?

It seemed like a hard course of study, and she hadn’t had the best grades in the world.

She cast her mind forward and tried to imagine herself in a white coat, in a hospital, looking into somebody’s mouth.

Ew. No. She still wanted to read the book about plagues, but being a doctor—no.

But she did have to start thinking about what was next.

For a while, she’d been invested in the idea that she could make a comeback.

People did, even after terrible accidents.

But since she still couldn’t really walk without limping, the chances she could even get on a board were looking slim.

At this rate, she’d be thirty before she could compete, and that was getting pretty old for an Olympic run.

Lindsey Jacobellis had been in her thirties, but she hadn’t suffered a shattered femur.

A hole opened in her chest. To never stand at the top of a mountain again, pausing to take in the high-altitude sky, the slope dropping away beneath her, the swoosh of boards and skis and nylon clothing brushing against itself—how could she bear it?

And yet, it seemed she had no choice.

She paid for the books and looked for Henry and Veronica, who stood side by side at a table, Henry holding a book in his hand, Veronica with her head tilted up. He was reading to her! He finished and handed the book over. She shrugged with a smile, apparently convinced it was a good book.

Again Mariah realized that V had begun to look a little different.

The makeup she always wore like a mask was washed away from the crying she pretended she hadn’t done in the bathroom, leaving her fresh faced and younger looking.

In the damp, her tidy bob was demolished, curling around her face, her bangs getting long now.

She wore a flowered scarf she’d picked up somewhere in London.

Her thighs were still skinny twigs, but that wouldn’t last long the way Mariah was feeding her.

She looked back to Henry. He was more relaxed and chatty than she’d seen him in a decade. Maybe a lot of that had to do with leaving the harsh job behind, but Mariah thought it might also be that he liked Veronica. It gave her an odd feeling, not quite jealousy, but not not jealousy.

Weird. She wasn’t jealous in a romantic way ( ew ) but maybe she didn’t want to share his attention. He was the closest thing she’d ever had to a dad. Of all Rachel’s boyfriends, he’d been around the longest, almost five years, and he’d been a good influence on Rachel, but also on Mariah.

Despite the fact that it had been years since he’d been with her mother, he’d shown up a month after the shooting, and moved to Denver to be with her. What if she lost him to a girlfriend?

A red cover caught her eye as she passed a stall, and she paused.

Mediumship for the Masses . She hesitated, telling herself she didn’t believe in all that stuff.

Since she didn’t believe in it, then it wouldn’t matter if she indulged her interest, right?

Looking over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t observed, she flipped through a few pages, and before Henry and Veronica could come back, she purchased it and tucked it into her carrier bag, feeling both foolish and excited.