Page 105 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

The trio sat along a high roofline, and the small brown creatures looked at them curiously. One munched something from his palm, his tail running down the side of the building. Veronica chortled. “How amazing!”

“Don’t ever feed them,” Henry warned. “They’re like seagulls.”

“I don’t really know about seagulls,” Mariah said. “Why are they like them?”

“Opportunistic. They won’t leave you alone once you feed them.”

“Have you been around them a lot?” Veronica asked.

“Here and there.” He laughed, and pointed as another one who popped over the edge of the roof grabbed something from the one who’d been eating and ran away. The first monkey squealed and gave chase. “Exhibit A.”

“It’s still amazing that they’re just ... out here.”

“It is,” Henry agreed. He flung an arm around Mariah’s shoulders. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. I think maybe I was hungry. That food poisoning was awful.”

“Good.”

“Ooh, look!” Mariah said and pointed at a fabric store. A dazzling variety of fabrics hung in the window, vivid reds and saturated blues, cotton prints Veronica vaguely remembered were called chintz.

Mariah pointed to a fern-green chintz printed with white branches. “You’d look awesome in that green.”

“Thanks. It’s really pretty.” Aware that she’d been marching toward her goal like a dog on a scent, she paused to give Mariah some focus. Maybe that was the main thing she needed, attention. “Which one would you choose for yourself?”

“Mmm. I think I look great in red,” she said without smugness. “But that blue and gold is killer.”

“You would look amazing,” Veronica said. And she wondered if maybe Rachel had shopped on this street, if the café had been along here. She kept the thought to herself, afraid to upset the equilibrium Mariah seemed to have found.

She also suddenly wondered whether Elsie had been on this street at some point, more than a century before. She’d been born in Mumbai, then called Bombay, and spent her formative years here, but Veronica had no idea where. She probably didn’t have time to track it down, but it suddenly seemed sad that she wouldn’t have a chance. When would she ever be back?

But maybe she was no longer the woman whose life she wanted to document. Maybe that was an idea left over from another time in her life.

Hmm. How did she feel about that? She nudged the spot where Elsie had lived for so long, and there wasn’t much left there. Elsie had fled to some other writer or scholar’s brain.

Interesting. Maybe Elsie had been like a coat she’d carried from her other life, a way to keep warm until she found new clothes. The idea carried a soft kindness.Thanks, Elsie,she thought.

“Maybe we can wander back here,” Henry suggested. “You could bring some fabric home and have something made.”

“Why don’t we just go in now?” Mariah asked.

“Of course,” Veronica responded, but she really wanted to keep going with her quest, find the shop owner who might remember Café Guli. She quelled her impatience.

They wandered, admiring, stopping at this or that fabric. Veronica found herself forgetting the quest, she was so immersed in beauty. Such color! So many gorgeous patterns. Her mind made pillows and skirts and bedspreads and curtains and wallpaper. When she realized she was envisioning them in her old house, it was deflating. She remembered she had no money, that she didn’t live there, that she actually didn’t have a home at all.

Mariah wanted to buy three different fabrics, and then asked Veronica if she was going to get one. “No, not now,” she said.

“Oh, let me buy you that green one. Please?”

She glanced back at the delicate print. Henry regarded her calmly, arms crossed. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

Purchases made, they headed back out. It was definitely getting hotter now, the sun hard and high overhead. The street bustled with humans and vehicles and animals, all weaving around each other easily. Dizzying.

They walked awhile longer, and then Veronica looked up. “I think this is the block.” It was a shady street with big trees. It was busy everywhere they’d walked, but this was more so, with lines of motorcycles parked, and shops offering paper products of many kinds. “Is this the stationery district?” She squelched a yearning to go inside and explore them all, one at a time. Then her attention caught on a building across the street. “Oh! It’s the Faravahar!”

Directly across from them was an impressive stone building with carved decorations and two massive, beautiful silver statues of the man with wings behind him.

“It must be anagayris,” Henry said. “A fire temple.” He shot a series of photos. “That’s a good sign for the café being close.”