Page 58 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Chapter Forty-Nine

Mariah agreed to take the train back to their apartment.

It was busy and crowded, but Henry used his body to block the women from the press, and they had a view through the windows.

Veronica thought about Rachel’s letters and how she’d spoken of being squished together on trains, of the magic she found in the city.

But she also gave herself up to the sights and sounds along the way, the splendor of office buildings and coffee shops and bridges, and shantytown settlements made with cardboard and plywood.

Like homeless camps, she thought with a start, and it was such a surprising thought, with so many levels of meaning, that she had to put it aside for later.

When they emerged and walked the three blocks to the apartment, it was like entering another world. Leafy trees and balconies filled with plants, and less foot traffic, most everyone wearing western dress. “This must be rich-people land,” Mariah said. “So many designer bags.”

“How can you tell?” Veronica asked.

Mariah twisted her lips. “What planet do you live on?”

Veronica shrugged.

They retreated to separate corners when they arrived in the apartment. Henry insisted Veronica take the bedroom, and she gratefully closed herself into the cool. She stripped off her blouse and jeans, resolving to dig out her skirt before they left again, and stretched out on the bed.

But of course she couldn’t sleep. A thousand images and snippets of interest and sounds and impressions crowded into her mind. Fabric melded with the walls of the café, which melded with a rickshaw rushing by mixed with an old woman begging, her face implacable.

So much, she thought. So much. Her phone was silent, because the time difference was twelve hours, and no one in her world would be awake at three in the morning.

What a relief!

On that relief, she dozed, and when she reemerged, she found a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went to find Henry. He was stretched out on the couch, which was a little too short for him, so his ankles hit the armrest. “Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you come where it’s more comfortable?”

“Did you nap?” He sat up, shaking his shoulders.

“A little.” She found herself eyeing the tanned skin at the open neckline of his shirt, and the buttons. “It’s hard to let go of all the”—she gestured around her head—“everything in my head.”

“Anything I can do?”

She looked over her shoulder at the other closed door. “Maybe.”

He stood gracefully and held out his hand. “Happy to help.”

Two hours later, she awakened to sweaty nakedness.

Henry was still asleep, sprawled out on the bed like a starfish, a sight that gave her a soft buzz of pleasure.

Long limbs and not too much hair, his skin a warm olive she liked very much.

Everything about him was appealing, honestly, the way it was when anyone was in the first rush of infatuation.

In time, he wouldn’t be so perfect. In time, the sight of his wrists wouldn’t send sex vibes to all the parts of her.

In time, seeing him wholly naked would lose its force.

But for now, right now, it was as potent as an elixir from a genie’s bottle, and she leaned in to touch the round of his biceps, the edge of his chest, his side.

They’d made love only an hour ago, and she wanted to do it again, and that shamed her in some distant place.

Until she realized he was watching her, and judging by the evidence, he wouldn’t mind another round.

She straddled him boldly and bent to kiss him, fiercely glad to be right here, in this room, right now.

He captured her head and kissed her back, and she thought he was glad, too.

When they emerged later to find something to eat and drink, Mariah was still in her room. Veronica frowned and knocked quietly.

“Come in!”

“We’re going to sample the cookies and snacks. You want to check them out?”

Mariah hurriedly gathered a bunch of papers. “Yes! I’ll be right there.”

Veronica paused. Was she hiding something?

But Mariah gave her the big blue eyes, and Veronica shut the door and came back into the dining area.

They’d picked up some bananas and oatmeal on the way back to the hotel, but then had hit gold with a small market close by—the snack shelves had been overflowing with possibilities, cookies (biscuits) she knew, many she didn’t, the usual chips in odd flavors she’d seen in the UK, and many kinds of salty snacks she’d never heard of. They’d purchased a selection.

Mariah emerged, and again her color was looking better and better. Maybe the rage had just been a leftover from her bout of food poisoning.

Veronica brought all the packages to the table. “Should we start with sweet or salty?”

“All of them!” She grabbed a bag of bhel mix. “I’m so curious about this.”

On her side of the table, Veronica grabbed Happy Happy biscuits. “I can’t resist the name.” She tasted it, a kind of chocolate chip cookie. “Ooh, really sweet.” She pointed. “How about you, Henry? Don’t you want some junk food?”

“I was enjoying the show.”

“Do I have crumbs on my face?” Mariah asked.

Veronica brushed her own face. “No fun if you don’t get involved.”

So Henry dived in, too.

As they sampled, Mariah said, “I read the letters.”

Veronica halted with a banana chip halfway to her mouth. “And?”

“I mean, obviously something terrible happened, but we don’t know if it had anything to do with my mom, right?”

“Right,” Veronica said. “But if she had nothing to do with it, why was she working on the book?”

“Maybe she didn’t realize anything happened after she left. Or somebody wrote to her about it, or ...” Mariah shrugged, chewing thoughtfully and looking into the bag of mixed snacks. “This is really good.”

“I hear you,” Veronica said slowly, “but why the big outline? It seemed like your mom was on a quest.”

“Or she just wanted to visit everybody.”

“Maybe.”

“The only people who will really know are the sisters,” Mariah said. “I think we have to go to Delhi and find them.”

“A big task,” Henry said, “since no one wants to talk about it.”

“Well,” Veronica said, “we know that Darshan died, and I’m guessing that’s what caused the big ... whatever. Maybe we can find an obituary for him.”

“Yeah,” Henry said, “but that’s not getting us any closer to the sisters.”

“I think we should look on Facebook and Instagram,” Veronica said.

“Whoa, brilliant,” Mariah said. “We can run their names.”

“Or we can find the Paris Café Farroukh and see if either of the sisters follows it.”

“Huh,” Mariah said. “You’re kind of good at this, aren’t you?”

Pleased, Veronica shrugged one shoulder. “Research is research. The tools are different now, but it’s still the same process.”

“Maybe Jill knows something, too,” Mariah offered. “Ever since we started, it felt like she wasn’t telling me everything.” She plucked one more cookie from a bag of Hobnobs. “Did she send all the letters?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask her.”

“I can do that.” She sighed and put the bag down, brushing her fingers together. “I hereby pronounce Indian snacks the top of the junk food chain. But I’m going to explode if I eat any more. We should take a walk.”

“Wait. Isn’t that my line?”

She grinned. “I know. We switched. Somebody worked up an appetite.”

Veronica refused the bait. “Maybe we could look up where the Chowpatty beach is. Your mom went there with her friends, and it sounds kind of interesting. A lot of art deco buildings.”

“I’m down.”

Henry said, “I’ll find out where it is.”

In the meantime, Veronica opened Facebook and found Café Farroukh. “Bingo.”

“That was easy.”

She nodded, pulling up her notes and the names of the sisters. The sister who’d opened the Paris café, Chamani, and Zoish, who’d opened the bookstore on Brick Lane.

Both had responded to many posts for Café Farroukh.

Some responses she could read in French; others, written in Hindi, she could not.

Her heart sped up a little as she clicked on their pages.

Hufriya was there, too—which of course she would have been.

Why hadn’t Veronica started with Café Guli in London? Oh well.

Both Hufriya and Chamani’s pages were private, but Zoish’s had the banner of a bookstore and a business address.

“Here it is,” she said, and turned the computer around for them to see it. “She came back to Delhi and opened another bookstore.”

Mariah looked pale. “A bookstore?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, nothing.” But she looked unsettled.

“Chowpatty is barely a mile,” Henry said. “Let’s do it.”

“Wait,” Veronica said. “Let me see what Google has to say about Darshan Irani.” She ran the name. “Oh. That’s not helpful.” She turned the screen to show it to the others. A long line of results with the same name showed up.

“We don’t know when he died,” Mariah said.

“Let me try another way.” She ran the name and the name of the café together and got three hits, all showing the same dry paragraph. “Darshan Irani, son of Farroukh Irani, owner of the Café Guli, died tragically on June 1, 1996.”

The end of Rachel’s time in India.

No one said anything. Finally, Mariah said, “I wonder what happened. And I wonder why my mother never talked about this, ever.”

“Sure you want to keep going?”

“Can’t stop now, can we?”

Henry stood. “Let’s go check out the beach. We’re here. We might as well catch a sunset.”

They arrived as the sun was lowering over the Arabian Sea, and people were collecting rocks or shells on the beach in the long red-gold light.

They walked in the sand, Henry taking pictures with a kind of glee—photos of the people, of the signs and buildings, of the water and the curve of buildings framing it.

Using her phone as a source, Mariah narrated their journey. “‘Chowpatty Beach is known for a Ganesha celebration every autumn,’” she read. “That would be cool to see.”

“It would be. A lot of things would be great to explore,” Veronica said, again feeling that pinch of yearning. “It’s a big world.”

“I like thinking of my mom here,” Mariah said. “Hanging out with her friends.” She paused. “I feel close to her here.” She pointed to a bank of buildings. “Those must be some of the apartments she talked about, right?”

“Probably,” Veronica agreed.

“It seems weird that the buildings are still here and she’s not.” She looked at her feet on the sand. “Like maybe she walked right here. How strange is that?”

“It is. The restaurant my mom worked in is still there on Taos Plaza.” Veronica snorted. “And Tomas is probably still making moves on unsuspecting young women.”

“Did he make moves on you?”

Veronica gave her a rueful grin. “Oh, yeah. I fell hook, line, and sinker.” For the first time, she realized she’d been sixteen and her boss nearly thirty, and the person in charge was the bad guy, not her.

Not her.

Henry walked backward as he took shots of their conversation.

Veronica felt the moment acutely—Henry looking so dashing that women cast looks his way under their lashes, the sense of a moment in time she’d never forget, and again that feeling of being here now and remembering it later, the sweetness of being here, the fleeting sense of it already flying away.

“I think we all knew somebody like that,” Mariah said. “I had a really shitty boyfriend when I was sixteen. He was so jealous of my ability, and he was honestly just a dick, but I couldn’t think of anything except him.”

“I remember that guy,” Henry said. “What was his name, Georgio or Davido or something?”

Mariah laughed. “Sergio.”

“How about you, Henry?” Veronica tossed out. “Any bad girlfriends at sixteen?”

“God, no.” He turned the camera vertical and took a series of shots. “I was the worst geek in my neighborhood. Big camera, big glasses, feet like a Great Dane. Girls ran the other way.”

Both women laughed. Veronica then said, “You’ve grown into your feet now.”

“Thanks.”

“I think we might have to have one more thing,” Mariah said, pointing to a food stall with a line of customers. “Isn’t kulfi a thing here?”

Veronica laughed, clutching her belly. “I am so stuffed.”

“I agree with Mariah,” Henry said, taking photos of the stall. “How can we resist? We can just take a couple of bites.”

So they stood in line. It felt easy, an evening out on the beach, a place where people could come and let go of the day. Children ran around in circles, chasing each other while adults licked ice-cream cones and laughed at the stories they told. “I’m so glad I’m here right now,” she said.

“Me, too,” Mariah said, bumping her in a friendly way.

“Me, too,” Henry said, taking their photo.

They took their pastel-colored dish to a clear spot on the beach and sat down. The sun was just touching the horizon, and the sky around was softly gray, the edges of the beach picking up orange. Veronica sat between the other two.

“This reminds me of my childhood,” Henry said. “My grandparents had a shack in a little Jersey Shore town, and we’d spend as many weekends and summer days there as we could. Sunset was always the best.” He leaned into Veronica, touching arms.

She pressed back subtly. “Do they still have it?”

“Somebody does. I’m not sure who actually owns it, but the family shares it, and once a year, as many people as possible go, renting all the shacks along the shore—which are not really shacks anymore—and have a big end-of-summer blowout.”

“I would love to have that kind of family.” Veronica sighed. “Cousins and aunts and siblings and all of it.”

“Me, too,” Mariah said.

“It has its upsides,” he admitted.

“How long since you went?” Mariah asked. “God, I’m going to be sick from eating, but this is delicious.”

“Long time,” Henry said.

“You should go.”

He nodded, looking at the families around them, all watching the sun perform its nightly ritual. “I should.” He brushed his hands off. “I have a suggestion.”

“Okay.” Despite her protests, Mariah finished the dish for all of them.

“There’s nothing else in Mumbai, so maybe we should just grab a night train to Delhi, get there tomorrow.”

Veronica felt a quickening. “How long does it take?”

“I looked it up. About fifteen hours.”

“Can’t we just fly?”

“We could,” he said. “But when will we pass this way again?”

Veronica heard a song in her head, and deeply wanted the train.

Mariah eyed the sun, a tiny sliver that was then swallowed by the horizon. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”