Page 46 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Thirty-Eight

In Mariah’s absence, Henry slipped his big foot out of his sandal, and covered Veronica’s arch with his own. In the candlelight, he looked rakish, his thick hair curling against his neck, that full lower lip inviting.

She felt awash in a mingling of things she’d forgotten existed. Anticipation, for sure, but also simply pleasure. Pleasure in looking at him, in feeling his skin against hers, in imagining how it would be to kiss him again.

What would it feel like to simply enjoy the moment at hand?

Her phone buzzed on the table, and he covered her hand. “Don’t look. It will only make you upset.”

She laughed and turned the phone face down. “You’re right. Imagine what it was like to travel before the ubiquitousness of phones.”

“Oh, I did. Internet cafés. Phone calls from obscure places at weird times to try to connect. You didn’t travel as a student?”

“God, no. I was about as broke as it is possible to be. I had a scholarship that paid tuition and books, but I had to work for everything else—rent, food, beer.”

He inclined his head slightly. “That’s not the background I imagined for you when we first met.”

“Really?” She tried not to care, but she did. “What did you think?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “More upper middle class, I guess.”

“That’s two decades of life in a university town. I’m a good mimic,” she said, and for the first time, it made her laugh. She was a good mimic. It wasn’t a flaw; it was a survival skill. “I lived in a trailer. Not even a double-wide.”

He held up his hands in mock horror. “Not single wide! The horror.” He picked up a piece of melon with his fingers. “Do you still have family back there?”

“Two brothers, but they’re a lot younger. We don’t really talk. Christmas cards, the odd email.”

“Sounds lonely.”

The word landed. She looked at the candle, recognizing that aside from her kids, she didn’t really have a life or a community at all these days.

“You know, once my mom died, it felt like the world was an empty place, that there would never again be someone in my corner the way she was.” She looked in the direction where Mariah had disappeared.

“And it’s really true. No one loves you like your mother does. ”

He touched his chest with an open palm. “My mom died a few years ago, but it wasn’t really the same as losing one young.”

“And I didn’t lose mine violently, like Mariah.”

“Still,” he said, touching her hand lightly. “You lost her. And then your family lost its center.”

“Yeah.” Memories of the early winter dark came back, the trailer somehow a hundred times emptier than when her mother had just been at work, her struggle to keep making dinners of Hamburger Helper and spaghetti while her brothers played Nintendo and her stepdad checked out in his tool shed. “And I got out.”

“Good for you.” He moved his hand away, lifting his chin toward Mariah, who limped through the tables toward them. Veronica realized that she hadn’t been using her cane as much.

She sat down breathlessly. “I think we might have a ghost on our patio,” she said, handing Veronica her sweater.

“A ghost?”

“I know, I know, everyone thinks it’s stupid, but I swear I always feel them. I feel them in my mom’s house all the time, and it’s fucking creepy, man.”

Veronica weighed her response. She knew that some people who were grieving wanted to believe in the afterlife. Should she take it at face value? Reassure her that it was nothing?

She opted for a question. “What do they feel like?”

Mariah pulled her sweater around her. “It’s like a cold spot, really cold, like black-hole cold. And”—she picked up some bread and took a big tear out of it—“there’s an emotion to it.”

Despite her disbelief, Veronica felt a sweep of goose bumps up the back of her arms. “What kind of emotion?”

“It’s always different,” she said, relaxing enough now to lean forward and fill her plate with apricots and dates and nuts.

“Every time, it feels like something else. The one in the downstairs bathroom at my mom’s house is a little sad, but it’s okay.

There’s something in the basement that feels way worse.

” She ate an apricot, staring at the flickering candle.

“The one in our rooms is sad—no, like, inconsolable .” She looked up at Veronica, her pale eyes vulnerable.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? I don’t blame you. ”

“I don’t know if there are ghosts or not, but you’re definitely giving me some feels,” she said, laughing and rubbing her arms. “Haven’t you stayed in these rooms before?”

“Yeah, but I never ran into this ghost before.”

Across the table, Henry had been silent. “Are you watching mediums on TikTok again?”

Mariah lifted a shoulder. “Maybe once in a while. And— ImighthaveseenapsychicinLondon .”

Veronica looked between them, very sure that it was none of her business this time.

Henry folded his hands, thumbs meeting. “Did it help?”

Mariah lowered her eyes. Shook her head. “No. She didn’t even want to deal with me because there was too much around me.” She put the last phrase in quotation marks. “I mean, that’s probably all the people who were suddenly murdered, right?”

“Maybe,” he said, and the rolling depth of his voice rumbled right through Veronica’s body. Why did a deep voice sound so wise? “But the point is that it upsets you in the long term. And it doesn’t help you heal.”

Mariah leaned forward earnestly, gesturing with an almond. “I think maybe that I just might need the right psychic. I mean it probably costs a fortune to get one of the celebrity people, but—”

“No,” Henry said.

“You’re not my dad, dude. You can’t tell me no.”

His gaze was as solid as granite. “True.”

She ducked her head. “Sorry.”

As if called, the server arrived with food. Veronica covered Mariah’s hand with her own, offering comfort without having to make a judgment. Mariah allowed it.

They talked about other things over dinner, swimming back to the more polite versions of themselves—memory and depth and raw bits covered over with discussions of food and plans for the following day.

The lamb tagine was tender and sweet, and so delicious that Veronica found herself eating every single bite, down to the last grain of rice.

“So good!” she pronounced. “I will never understand why people don’t like lamb. ”

“It’s a principle,” Mariah began, but Veronica held up her hand. “No lectures tonight.”

“I’d gamble most animals here are not raised on factory farms,” Henry said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Mariah said, holding up her third glass of wine. She glittered as brightly as one of the lamps throwing stars on the walls.

The courtyard reminded her again of New Mexico, the water and the glow of lamps, the reddish color of the walls. An unexpected longing for the plaza in Taos struck her, a place she had not returned to for over twenty years.

When Henry got up to shoot some photos of the swimming pool and courtyard, Mariah leaned over. “Can I sleep with you in your room?”

Veronica, startled, said the first thing that came to her mind. “There’s only one bed.”

“I know, but it’s big. We can both fit. Or I can call for a cot.”

The luxurious imaginings she’d been entertaining about Henry’s skin popped like a cartoon balloon. It was almost Christmas, Mariah was spooked, and what was her job here? To be a companion.

To a young woman, not her hot ex-almost stepdad. “Of course. I vote for the cot, however, nothing personal.”

“Sure, no, I get it. Thank you.”

“Can you forgo the TikTok psychics for a night?”

She grinned. “Yes. Netflix psychics only.” At Veronica’s expression, she said, “Just kidding.”

Veronica studied Mariah’s face for a long moment, and for a little while, the young woman met her gaze with an amiable mask.

Then she looked away, the mask dropped, and the depth of grief washed her face with gray loss.

She was lost, this one, a motherless child. Veronica touched her arm. “Whatever gets you through the night.”