Page 7 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

They made themselves at home around the dining room table.

All big discussions—which colleges to choose, what to do about the car Jenna had wrecked, boyfriend or girlfriend troubles, the announcement of Spence and Veronica’s divorce—took place around dining room tables.

“Must be serious,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “What’s up?”

“We’re worried about you taking this trip, Mom,” Jenna said. “It’s too long and too far, and you’ll be gone at Christmas!”

“What do you even know about this person?” Tim interjected.

Veronica frowned and started to speak, but—

“You’ve hardly traveled at all, and now you’re going off with somebody you don’t even know?” Jenna said, eyebrows raising in total horror.

“If this is a reaction to the boomer comment on turkey day, I’m sorry,” Tim said.

Only Ben was quiet. He was always the quiet one in the family, a graphic artist who had stuttered as a boy and even now had to focus to speak. She looked at him. “And you?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t seem that safe.”

“Hmm.” She folded her hands, feeling a dual sense of gratitude and annoyance. “Let me ask you all a question.”

“Okay.”

“If one of your friends was going to make this trip, would you be worried?” She looked at Tim, who was a carbon copy of his father, tall and blessed with thick blond hair, with cheekbones born of centuries of great genes.

“No,” he said, “but you’re not really ...”

“What?”

He glanced at Jenna. “Well traveled.”

“Oh, so I shouldn’t travel because I haven’t traveled?”

“Mom, you’re also a lot older than our friends.”

“True.”

“And there are the ... uh ... mental health things,” Jenna blurted out.

“Fair,” Veronica said, even if it wasn’t, not really. She was referring to the arrest and everything around it. Her—very temporary—madness. “Well, you and I both know there were extenuating circumstances, and I am as sane as anyone. It’s been over a year, and I’m fine.”

“But what if it gets stressful? What if ...” Jenna looked slightly teary, which softened Veronica’s stance. She covered Jenna’s hand with her own.

She tried never to cast blame, even indirectly, but she’d been suffering a desperately broken heart at the time. “I’m fine, as I think you know. And I really need this job.”

“Can’t you get something nearby?” Jenna asked.

Tim said, “It will be weird with you gone at the holidays.”

“I know, but I wouldn’t be with you guys in Breck anyway.”

“Come on, Mom,” Jenna pleaded. “Can’t you just stay here and find something after Christmas?”

The buoyant excitement she’d been feeling as she packed started to drain away. The clear, bright path ahead suddenly looked as gray and winter-dull as it had for months.

The plunge reminded her of the winter of her senior year, waiting for replies from colleges—the joy of being accepted, the potential inherent in each opening, followed by the reality of the enormous cost. They all offered aid packages, but nowhere near enough, and each time, her heart sank into the gray landscape of her future like a deflated balloon.

Only CU had finally offered enough aid to allow her to say yes.

But this time, she had some autonomy, some control over her situation. “I won’t even see you for a week.” She spoke honestly, clearly. “Last year was pretty awful for me.”

“I guess I get that,” Tim said.

“I don’t want to look for anything else.” She glanced at Jenna. “You said yourself it was right up my alley.”

Ben spoke. “Dad isn’t even talking to us all that much. The only thing he cares about right now is the b-baby.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked at each of them, cupped a hand around Ben’s face, which was starting to fur at the jawline as he grew a scraggly beard.

She understood the pain and confusion they felt, but she couldn’t do their grief work for them.

They had to work out their relationship with their dad on individual terms. “You guys know I love you so much, right?”

Nods.

“There’s nothing I can do about your dad, but your grandparents will be there at Christmas, and probably Aunt Ellen and Uncle Clint and your cousins. You won’t feel lonely.” She lifted a shoulder. “It’s not like I ever got on the slopes with you.”

“That’s true,” Ben said.

“On the rest of your concerns: First of all, it’s research. I’m traveling with a twenty-five-year-old, so she’s still got all her faculties, and I won’t be hoodwinked at a train station.”

Tim grinned in appreciation.

“I got all my shots and a prescription for antibiotics, so all of that is covered.” She took a breath and spread her hands. “Most of all, I’m really excited about it. Can you just be happy for me?”

“It’s almost too good to be true,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Veronica said. “Maybe it’s just my turn for something good.”

“Will you at least let me check the credentials and history of this person you’re traveling with?” Tim asked.

For a moment, Veronica considered it, but then she imagined how they’d react if she asked to google their friends.

“No. I’m an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of myself.

” She stood, hands on the table. “Now, if you want to discuss actual logistics of staying in touch and all that, I’m happy to do so, but otherwise, I need to get back to packing. ”

Veronica had just made her second cup of coffee the next morning when a knock sounded at her door. She glanced around automatically to see if one of the kids had forgotten something, but she didn’t see anything out of place. It was too early for solicitors. Maybe a neighbor, she thought.

She opened the door a crack. It was Spence standing there, looking as smooth and handsome as always; honestly, he was almost a caricature of a handsome professor—his blond hair going gray but still wavy, the high cheekbones her children had inherited, the full-cut mouth.

He wore a tweed jacket over jeans without an ounce of irony.

He turned when she swung the door wide. “Veronica! Good morning!”

She kept her hand on the doorknob. “What’s up, Spence?” But she knew. It wasn’t the first time.

“Can we chat for a few minutes?”

She folded her arms. “About?”

“The kids told me you’re going on a long trip.”

“Mmm. I was going to text you today.”

“Can’t we just sit down for a few minutes? Talk?”

“I’m not changing my mind about the alimony,” she said.

He raised his hands, palms facing her. “I know. The kids wanted me to talk to you about India.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?”

“I just have to say I did,” he said with a half grin. That disarming boyish expression that had always worked.

Nor did it fail now. She knew what she should do—send him away and get back to her morning. “I’d rather not,” she said. “There’s not really anything to talk about.”

“We are still coparents,” he said. “We should discuss anything that impacts the kids.”

He ran a hand through his hair, touched his chin. An answering rustle of awareness moved over her shoulders. “Fine, come in.” She left the door open and walked into the kitchen, reaching to get a cup out of the cupboard, automatically pouring coffee for him. Black coffee, stringent and bitter.

Before she could turn, he came up behind her. Veronica did not move as he swept the hair off her neck and bent in to press a kiss to her nape, his lips brushing the small hair there in a way he knew aroused her.

“Spence,” she protested. But weakly. She missed sex. Missed his body, even if the man himself had lost appeal.

That body pressed against her lightly, invitation rather than aggression. His mouth moved to her ear, and she softened backward, opening to his hands pushing under her top.

It had started only a couple of months into the separation, not long after she moved out. He came to her in the dark cold one night, weeping and sorrowful, and she’d been moved to open her arms. Her legs.

And then he came back, sporadically. Not every week, but often—sometimes during the day, sometimes late.

She thought the episodes meant that they would get back together.

And then there’d been the mess of Veronica’s arrest. The sex stopped.

For a while.

Now Spence moved against her, sparking desire, his hands familiar with every inch of her. When he lifted his hands to her breasts, she knew she should stop him, a married man with a pregnant wife.

But she didn’t. In some way, it felt like he still belonged to her.

When he tugged the hem of her top, she lifted her arms and let him take it off.

He unbuttoned his jeans, and she shimmied out of her pj bottoms, and they had sex right there on the counter, the same sudden, intense sex that had overtaken them thousands of times since the first night of their meeting, when they’d had sex in a rose garden off-campus beneath a full moon.

When they were clinging to each other, sweaty, she said quietly, “I’m still not going to sign anything.”

“That’s not what this is,” he said in his coaxing voice, low and persuasive. “I just thought about you leaving, and it made me ... hot.”

“Mmm.” She lingered a few more seconds, then decoupled and picked up her pajamas from the floor, aware that the sun was striking her still-naked body in ways that were probably unflattering. “I have a lot to do. You need to go.”

“Just like that?”

She met his eyes. “Why not? You got your fuck. That’s what you came here for, right?”

He winced at the profanity, yanking up his pants. “You can’t go traipsing all over the world, Ronny.”

“Veronica,” she said. “And it’s not ‘traipsing.’ It’s a job.” She kept heading for her room. “A job I desperately need.”

He followed her, standing in the doorway as if they were still married, his hands on the doorjamb on either side. “And I’ve got a new baby on the way.”

“Not my problem.” She tugged a T-shirt dress over her nakedness. “You need to go.”

He came into the room, all six foot one of him, and stood over her. “I miss you,” he said in a raw voice. “The sex between us has always been—”

“Hot,” she agreed. “But that’s the last time.”

“Is it?” He started to press himself into her. “You say that every time.”

“I mean it this time,” she said, pushing him away. “Now go.”

As soon as he left, she collapsed onto the edge of the bed, flooded with shame.

She did keep saying it was the last time, and she kept letting him in.

Her therapist called it grief sex . Storm sex , she called it, like storm eating.

Her friend Amber said she was just horny and should find another guy to have sex with—but how did you do that when you were in your fifties?

She thought of Fiona with remorse and not a little anger. Her mind flashed images of herself, exaggerating her leering at the door, flinging off her shirt, crying out so noisily.

Never again. Never again. Never again.