Page 103 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“I’m not seeing things,” she snapped.

“I didn’t think you were. I just thought you might be hungry.”

“I’ll wait,” she said darkly, leaning on the arm rest. “Don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

Veronica laughed. “Is that even possible?”

She knew it was a joke, but it irritated her. “Athletes need a lot of fuel.”

Veronica took the hint and tucked the bar back in her purse. She was quiet for a long time, and that was aggravating, too.

But Mariah didn’t want to go home until she finished this quest, so she swallowed her annoyance and said, “Sorry. I’m a little jet-lagged.”

Veronica nodded, but her attention was really on the sights beyond their windows. Mariah had faded to nothing.

Chapter Forty-Eight

The Parsi café was on a quiet street. It crouched on the block like an old man, shirt pressed but thin. The signs were bright and clean, but the walls were grimy with the density of time and city dirt.

Veronica felt a little thrill as they walked through the doors, seeing the roots of the places they’d visited in London and Paris, the original checkerboard tablecloths, the chalkboard with specials for the day. The windows were covered with grillwork, and a mezzanine looked over the dining room.

It was busy. Students and businessmen, tourists with backpacks in one corner, a mother and father and child in another. “Good morning!” said the host, a tidy man in his late sixties. “Three of you?”

“Yes,” Henry said.

Veronica drifted behind them, devouring details—the peeling paint on the walls, the exposed wires, the kitchen with cooks visible behind a pass-through window. The specials of the day were prawns berrypulao, and mutton biryani.Mutton,she thought. She’d eaten lots of lamb but couldn’t remember if she’d ever tried mutton.

But probably not today, either. It was early, and she wanted the classic breakfast, thebun maskaand chai, as she’d read about. As she sat, still gathering details, she said, “This isgreat.I feel like I’m seeing through Rachel’s eyes for real.”

Mariah looked a bit sour at that, and Veronica tried to tamp down her effusiveness. But this was the real thing, the cafés they’d been tracking, and she hoped she could tap into whatever it was that Rachel had been meaning to express.

She could see that the other cafés had been much too shiny, but of course you couldn’t import this level of time. Taking out her phone, she started tapping in her notes, and noticed a sign that had the rules of the place, including at the bottom, “No Photography.”

“No photography,” she said aloud.

“We probably have to pay a licensing fee,” Henry said. “I’ll find out once we order.”

“What do you think you’re going to get?” Veronica asked Mariah. “What’s the game plan?”

“I don’t know. You can decide today. I’m going to find the toilet.”

She flung her menu on the table and strode to the host, who pointed her to the back. Veronica stared after her. “She is not doing well.”

“Agreed.”

“I don’t know how to proceed,” she confessed. “I’m not her mother, but if I were, I’d want to get her back home ASAP and get some help.”

“We can just try to wrap it up as fast as we can. Maybe skip Delhi.”

“I think that’s where the sisters are, though. They’re the ones who can tell us what happened.”

“Is there still a mystery, though?” Henry asked.

“I think there is. I mean, why did the sisters leave Bombay? Why open the restaurants in London and Paris?” Veronica covered her heart with both hands. “Not solve the mystery! How can you just walk away?”

He smiled, slow and easy, and she loved that he looked completely at home even here, a place he’d never been. “I see you do not agree.”

The server came to their table, a friendly man in his fifties. “Americans?” he guessed.