Page 4 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Three

It was snowing again the next afternoon when Veronica pulled up in front of a Victorian house in a well-tended Denver neighborhood.

As she got out of the car, she peered upward at three stories, painted in a subdued but very pretty palette of plum, pink, and gray.

As a history buff, she knew the mansions had almost all been built by gold and silver barons, and no expense had been spared on this beauty.

The thought of those vast, empty days made her skin shrivel.

On the wide wooden porch, she stomped her feet lightly to clear the snow and rang the bell. Through the frosted glass of the door, she saw a figure with an uneven gait coming forward. She’d imagined a slightly elderly woman, possibly a bit frail.

Instead, the woman who opened the door was in her mid-twenties, with long, blond hair and a pale face. She leaned on a carved-teak cane with a lion’s head at the top. “I thought you’d be younger.”

“And I thought you’d be older.”

For one more moment, Mariah stared at her, then stepped back. “Come in.” She pointed to a doorway to the left. “We’ll be in there.”

The foyer was a circle with stairs rising at one end, and it must have gone to the top of the house, because light fell into the area.

A fern bloomed on a stand. Wide doors faced each other, east and west, and a hallway opened at the side of the stairs, likely leading to the kitchen.

In the dark day, lamps burned in various spots.

Veronica followed Mariah’s limping gait into a room that would once have been called a parlor.

The walls were papered in a tasteful violet stripe, and the furniture was wine-colored velvet, modern but appropriately oversize, settled around a vintage Moroccan rug in pinks and blues.

Veronica, a house-design devotee, mentally clocked the cost of the room, and her eyebrows rose slightly.

Mariah perched on a wingback chair. Veronica sat kitty-corner on the velvet couch. Between them was a table set with tea, clearly too low for Mariah to reach without another adjustment. “Shall I pour?” Veronica asked.

With some relief, Mariah nodded. “Thanks. Three sugars for me,” she said, and then, as so many people did these days, explained her choice. “I’m—or I was —a full-time athlete. Can’t quite break the habit.”

The tea was fragrant, deep caramel in color. “I am no athlete, but I still like three sugars,” she said with a smile, carefully handing the tea over. As Veronica poured her own, she asked, “What sport?”

“Snowboarding,” Mariah said, glancing toward the windows, where snow floated by. “Not anymore.” She pointed to her leg. “Messed it up pretty bad this time.”

Veronica nodded. “Sorry to hear that.”

“That’s actually why I need help for this trip.

I thought I could do it on my own, but .

..” She looked down, paused. “I can’t carry or drag a suitcase.

My aunt has talked me into hiring someone to help.

” She frowned and blurted out, “I really thought you’d be a grad student or something. It’s not really a job for a—”

“A woman who should be further along in life?” Veronica said.

“No, that’s not what I meant. Sorry. It’s just ... this is all weird and new to me.”

Taking pity on her, Veronica said, “I’m newly divorced, and the alimony isn’t enough to support me.” She shrugged. “So.”

“Okay. I get that. What have you done for work during your marriage?”

“Managed the life of a busy professor and our children. I’ve done some nonprofit work, grant writing and that kind of thing, but mainly that was my job.”

Mariah frowned. “I need research help, not just the ... physical help.”

“As I said in my email, I have undergrad degrees in women’s studies and history. Most of a master’s thesis on one of the outliers of the Bloomsbury Group.”

“You didn’t finish?”

Veronica shook her head. “No. Got married, started having children. Always said I’d go back to it.” Suddenly, it sounded so conventional, especially to a woman who’d lived as a snowboarder, taking chances.

Mariah seemed to pick up on her insecurity. “Are you sure this is the right job for you? I mean, it’s not like being a nurse or anything, but you’ll be kind of ... a servant.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ve got the servant thing down pat.” She made a wry face. “My whole job was making his life easier and my kids’ lives easier, and maybe that’s cliché—I get that it is, kind of, but to tell you the truth, I really need a job, and I really love the sound of this. I do speak French.”

The torrent came out without her permission, but sitting there in that well-appointed room, Veronica just wanted something for herself. The manual parts of the job would be annoying—hauling and whatever—but it wasn’t like she hadn’t been doing that for her family for twenty-five years.

Mariah just looked at her, and for the first time, Veronica saw that her mouth turned down on the right side. A thin white scar led to her temple under her hair.

That must have been some accident, which was exactly why Veronica didn’t ski or snowboard.

Her whole family thought it was a waste—living in Colorado and not partaking—and they’d spend days on skis or boards, depending on the generation.

All their vacations were taken in the mountains over winter breaks.

Veronica happily packed up, cooked for them, made sure everyone had what they needed, but she had no desire to hurtle at high speeds down a mountain.

Every single one of them had been rushed to the ER with injuries of greater and lesser degrees, ranging from a broken ankle to a torn rotator cuff and two knee surgeries, to a concussion and twenty-seven stitches across the back of the skull.

She’d never tried it, so she’d never gotten hurt.

Instead, she spent her ski days curled up in some warm spot by a fire, drinking cider in a cozy sweater and reading a book. So many books. Such good memories.

“It doesn’t pay a ton,” Mariah said. This must have been a sticking point with other applicants, Veronica thought, and braced herself.

“I’ll cover your travel expenses, of course, all the meals and everything that goes with it, but the pay is minimum wage, calculated on a forty-hour week.

It might end up being more than forty hours, but that’s what I can pay. ”

For a minute, Veronica felt an acute sense of disappointment. The sum would barely cover her rent, although that was technically being paid by alimony. A buzzy sense of panic sent her nerves into high alert. What if something went wrong? She had zero cushion.

She found herself biting her thumbnail and forced her hand into her lap. “How often will you pay me?”

This had not crossed Mariah’s mind, obviously. “Oh, I don’t know. What works for you? Every week? The first payment on the second Friday after we leave?”

“I can live with that. What is the job, exactly?”

Mariah picked up a sheaf of papers and handed it over. “I’m finishing some work my mom had assembled for her next book on cafés around the world. She’d already done a lot of writing, but there are big gaps where she needed on-the-ground research to fill in the details.”

Veronica looked at the notes, and a little bubble of excitement pushed itself into her anxiety.

The sheaf of papers held a list of cafés, each with low-grade printout photos, bare facts, and addresses.

Veronica had never heard of any of them except one, Angelina in Paris.

Long, long ago, on one of her two trips abroad, she’d drunk hot chocolate there with Spence on their honeymoon.

A wash of memory—gilt and mirrors and the musical sound of French—lit up her heart.

The other cafés were in London and Morocco, and a handful was in India.

“It’s a lot of ground to cover,” Veronica said, tucking her gnawed thumbnail out of reach into her palm. “How long are you planning to be on the road?”

“About three or four weeks. Through the holidays, just so you know.”

“That makes me want it more,” Veronica said.

“A photographer will meet us in London,” Mariah continued. “A family friend who wants to help finish this book in memory of my mom.”

Veronica nodded.

“Mainly I need help with the research and how to organize it—and I need you to sign a release assuring me that you won’t try to write the book yourself.”

“Of course! I’m happy to sign anything.”

“Good.”

“Related to that,” Veronica said, “there are a couple of sites in both London and Mumbai that I might want to visit. Will there be any downtime for my own research?”

Mariah’s mouth turned down in consideration. “I don’t see why not. We can make that happen as long as you make the cafés your first priority.”

“Great.”

A small silence fell into the room. Mariah drank her tea and eyed the snow outside.

Veronica pretended to read the notes, but her brain was buzzing too much to take it in.

She noticed her hands were shaking a little, and to bring down the level of pure want , she asked, “When would we need to leave?”

“Two weeks from today. You’ll need some immunizations. Can you get those done next week?”

Veronica straightened. “I have a few. We’d been planning a trip to Africa when COVID hit.” And then Spence fell in love with a visiting professor, and Veronica lost her mind. “But I’ll need to check to see what’s recommended.”

“Cool. I’ll send you the list, and you can make sure you have what you need.”

“What about visas?”

“Won’t need it for Morocco, but you do need one for India. You should apply right away so we have some time, though mine only took a couple of days.”

A swell of possibility rose through Veronica’s body. “Does that mean the job is mine?”

“After I check your references ... if you want it, it’s yours. Please say yes.”

Veronica touched her heart. “Yes, please.”