Page 43 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Thirty-Five

At some point in the middle of the night, Mariah awakened. She limped to the bathroom, feeling the not-unpleasant sense of having worked her leg a bit. In the mirror, she thought she looked better than she had for a while. Maybe Paris agreed with her.

Maybe it was fresh air and moving her body.

But, wow, it was so quiet! The world felt as empty as an apocalypse.

It was the thing she hated the most about life right now.

She’d never really been alone much, like, ever.

She’d either been with her mom or her coaches or traveling in a pack with other athletes in a dozen variations, training or in dorms for an event or in a house with slopes somewhere nearby.

Often there was a man in her bed, or she was asleep but somebody else had a lover in a bed nearby.

In short, her former life had been communal.

Now it was solitary. Sleeping alone, awake in the middle of the night alone.

She knew Henry and Veronica were close by, but she didn’t feel like she could wander into one of their rooms and curl up next to them or jump on the bed to wake them up, both of which she would do if her mom was still here.

Here. As if she was in another room and could come back.

Loneliness left a hollow in her lungs, making it hard to settle.

She scrolled through the offerings on all her streaming services, and couldn’t find anything interesting.

She wasn’t a big reader, but she’d downloaded some books recommended on BookTok, and went through them, reading a few pages here, then another, but she was too restless for that, too.

She got up and went to the window. The silence in the room was deafening, and even outside, very little moved. A taxi drove by. A traffic light flashed in the distance. A lone person crossed the street and disappeared. The whole world was asleep.

Or not. Across the alleyway, she saw a kitchen with a light on, hands taking a kettle from the stove.

Higher up was a living room with a TV flickering.

She scanned the buildings for other signs of life, and found them.

Lights on. Movement against curtains. She wished there was some magic way to contact anyone who was awake and lonely. Look out your window, she’d say. Wave!

She laughed at herself. That probably already existed; it was called the internet. But had anyone ever written a program where you could contact people nearby?

That would probably be weird.

With a sigh, she headed back to her seat on the bed and scrolled TikTok for live reels. “Hello, Mariah,” said a woman with enormous arms chopping onions.

Not her speed. She clicked another and another, and finally found a woman in a turquoise blouse reading oracle cards.

“Loneliness is rampant,” she said in her heavily accented English.

Mariah halted. “But it does not need to be. The Mother tells us to lean on each other.” She turned over another card, held it up to the camera.

“This is for Mariah. The Wise Woman wants you to reach out, baby. Reach out.”

Electrified, Mariah typed in, “I miss my mother so much.”

The woman nodded sagely. She closed her eyes, shuffled the cards in her hands, her red nails glistening in her ring lights.

“Mmm. Mmm,” she said. “She misses you, too. She wants you to know you’re on the right track.

” She showed the card she’d drawn, a stylized drawing of a physician.

“She wants you to go to medical school. Is that right?”

Stung, Mariah just stared. She’d never wanted to go to medical school, or at least not since she was six and playing doctor like every other kid on the planet.

She was so disappointed that she closed the app and then her tablet, aching with the desire to believe in people who just wanted to take her money.

Medical school.

As if.

In the morning, she felt aggravated. Henry snapped at her when she got up late, but she’d been up in the middle of the night! What did he expect?

They headed to the airport at midmorning for the trip to Marrakech.

At the airport, waiting at their gate, both Henry and Veronica were distracted, typing into their phones.

Veronica had some issue going on at home, and Henry was deep into his book.

He’d always been like that, able to switch off with a book at the drop of a hat.

She wished she liked reading fiction. She had been leafing through the plague book, which was fascinating, but it was hard to read for more than an hour or so.

She started feeling dizzy and tired. The doctors had told her that it was a side effect of her brain injury.

It would heal in time, almost certainly.

In the meantime, she needed a transportable hobby.

She was bored. Restless. She peered over at Veronica’s phone and saw that she wasn’t texting—duh, it was the middle of the night in Colorado—but playing a game. “What are you playing?”

“Hue,” she said. “It’s really aggravating, but it’s also really fun.”

“It’s pretty. You just move the squares?” She watched as Veronica shifted a block that looked blue to a section of other blues, and it was quite green in comparison.

“ Just makes it sound easy, but it will occupy my brain for ages.”

Mariah looked it up and downloaded it to her phone.

“You’ll like it better on your tablet,” Veronica said, and swore. “I’m actually pretty terrible at it, but it’s weirdly relaxing anyway.”

Mariah opened the app and started a game, moving squares. “What’s happening with the book and my mom’s letters and all that stuff?”

“Well, it’s still a bit of a question mark.

We’ve tracked down some people, but I don’t have any more of your mom’s letters, which is where the real help will be, I think.

” She swore as she dropped a square and had to pick it up again.

“Do you remember anything she talked about with the book, what she wanted to do with it?”

“No. I wish I had paid attention,” she said, slumping into the chair. “I mean, she didn’t really talk all that much about it, but she was excited about café culture.”

“Do you know if she was under contract for this book?”

“No. She wasn’t. Jill checked into all that with her agent, so that the royalty checks can all come to my bank account now.”

Veronica nodded. She glanced up, and her eyes were the color of a turquoise bracelet Mariah had bought in Spain a long time ago.

Purple shadows slung below them. “That’s good.

” She sighed as the screen lit up with soft music and rewarded her for placing the last square.

“I sent you an email about an agreement for the book. It might not make any money if it’s ghostwritten. Have you thought of that?”

“Not really, but it’s kind of about finishing the project for her, you know?”

“That’s fine, and it’s a good idea for you.”

“Dope. I’ll have Jill hammer something out. She’s a lawyer. We don’t need anything super detailed at the moment, right?”

“Right. Honestly, I just need to get paid.”

“I get it.”

Veronica closed her tablet and looked at Mariah. “This is delicate, but I worry about you a little. Are you going to have enough money, going forward?”

“Oh!” Mariah gave a hooting laugh. “I’m super good.”

Henry chuckled. “Understatement. Rachel and Jill’s father was Alexander Ellsworth, of Ellsworth Manufacturing. He had something like two hundred and forty-two patents.”

“Seriously?” Veronica shook her head. “How do I keep finding this stuff out?”

“Well, we really haven’t known each other that long. And probably not that many people know who he is.”

“Okay, I guess I don’t have to worry about you financially anymore.”

“Just financially?” Mariah echoed, almost flirtatiously. It felt good to have somebody actually worry. Jill did, of course, but her hands were full right now.

“No, I worry about your future, but I’m trying to mind my own business.

” Veronica raised a finger. “Back to the book, ghostwriting, all of that. You should know that I’ve done a lot of writing, but I haven’t written a book.

You might want someone more experienced when it comes time. Or the publisher will.”

Mariah cocked her head. “I already know you’re a good writer.

You’ve written me a ton of emails.” She leaned on her knees.

“Nobody needs to know what you’ve done before—you just do this, and then we’ll get some money for both of us.

Henry’s photos will be a big part, too, so naturally we have to pay him.

Worth it, though. Wait until you see the pics. ”

She looked at Henry, and Mariah saw that he looked back, something loud moving between them. “I believe it,” Veronica said. She drew in a breath. “Okay. Would you ask Jill to take care of the contract when she can?”

“’Course. Do you need an advance now?”

Veronica blushed a cherry shade, all the way down her neck. “No, I’m good. But it would be nice to get this going.” She picked up her paper cup, realized it was empty. “Actually, that’s a lie. I do need some money.”

“Cool. We can work it out.”

“Great.” As if she needed something to do, she popped up. “Want a cup of tea?”

“The plane will board in just a few minutes,” Henry said.

“I’m okay.” Mariah sat up straight, then sank back to the chair, rubbing her temple as if to make the dizziness disappear.

Veronica said, “Have you given much thought to what you might do now?”

“What do you think?” she snapped, and then straightened.

“Sorry. I think about it all the time, and I’m just blank.

I’ve been an athlete my whole life, and I thought I’d be doing it for a lot longer.

” She snorted. “A psychic told me I should go to medical school. What a joke. I don’t even like to read. ”

“Does it interest you? Medicine? I saw the book on diseases.”

“Well, it’s one thing to think about diseases, epidemics and all that.

Who hasn’t thought about that, after the pandemic?

It was super interesting when they talked about why it was so bad, and how come people died, and then the big race to find a way to keep it from killing us, and then the virus started like, fighting back, mutating like a video-game monster. ”

“Yeah, it was interesting.”

Warming to the subject, Mariah looked at her leg, touched the scars beneath her jeans.

“And then, you know, all the stuff that happened with my body after”—a rippling twist of memory, quickly shoved aside—“everything. There was a lot of damage. I was really fucked up. This whole piece of bone was pulverized, and they managed to put enough of it back together that I can walk. That’s crazy, right? ”

“It is.” Veronica eyed the leg, but, of course, it looked normal in clothes. “Reading isn’t the most important thing for studying medicine. Especially now, I’m sure, with so much available in audio and all that. Have you ever been tested for eye issues or maybe dyslexia?”

“Why would you ask me that?” She suddenly felt stupid, like she’d given something away.

Veronica waved a hand, dismissing the irritation in almost the same way her mom used to do.

“Don’t get in your head about it. I’m just asking because you do like thinking and you’re interested in everything.

My oldest son is dyslexic, and he has such bad astigmatism that it took two years to figure out it wasn’t the glasses, it was his brain. ”

“Yeah?” Something moved in her heart, a flutter like a wing. “So I don’t have to be a big reader to go to medical school?”

“Well, you’ll have to figure out how to study, but there are a lot of things around to help all kinds of learning differences.”

“Huh.” She narrowed her eyes, peering into a possible future. “I don’t think I want to be a doctor, exactly. Kind of ... too many fluids, you know?”

Veronica laughed. “Yes. Medicine is a big field, and you don’t have to decide anything. Now or ever. But if you want help with the practicalities eventually, I’m your woman.”

Mariah nodded. “Thanks.”

The man behind the desk announced their flight. As they got in line, Henry and Veronica pretended to ignore each other, and Mariah rolled her eyes. “I want to sit by myself this time,” she said, knowing they’d want to sit together but would pretend they didn’t.

“Fine,” Veronica said. She didn’t look at Henry, but he looked at her. And smiled.