Page 35 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“It was Jill’s idea, Rachel’s sister. Mariah was struggling with a pretty substantial depression—her mom dead, her career on hold—and Jill came up with the quest.”

Quest. Such a good word. A sense of purpose filled her. This was something she could do, right now. “I have Jill’s number,” she said, checking her watch to calculate the time difference. “We need those letters.”

Henry covered her hand. “Take a minute.”

It was a simple, quiet comment, one that tore a hole through her careful facade. Focusing on the bend of his brown thumb, she let the devastation of the shooting fill her up, then spill out in pity and compassion for her prickly boss. She remembered reading about it, obviously, a shooting so close to her own city. Another one. There’d been so many, which was part of the problem now. How could you find empathy for the enormity of endless, random violence?

No one could. But now this one was personal. Her empathy would not be wasted, flung into the red river of shattering news stories.

She opened the door to a picture of the mother and daughter being herself and Jenna, and it was almost more than she could bear.Stay with it,she told herself.Stay with it. It was terrifying and sad and impossibly horrific, to die violently while checking tomatoes for ripeness.

She wanted to text her daughter, but forced herself to stay with the intensity of feeling, the juxtaposition of clean white grocery store tiles, and—

Ugh.

After a minute, she blew her nose. Wiped her face. “Will she snowboard again?”

“Doubtful, but she’s got a lot of grit.”

Veronica nodded, took a long swallow of her cooling coffee, and looked up. “I’m glad she has a quest.”

“Me, too.”

Her phone buzzed a text alert, and it gave her an out to stop thinking about—all of this.

“Go ahead,” Henry said, turning his book back to the pages he’d been reading.

She picked up the phone and carried it toward the window. The message center had eleven new messages, and she frowned. Why so many? Was there some kind of trouble?

Okay, three from Spence, five from Jenna, one from each of the boys, and one from Mariah with Jill’s contact info. She opened the Jenna texts first, a series sent over the course of the morning about a section she’d figured out on her thesis, and a struggle she was having with her roommate over how to divide chores.

Their sweet ordinariness pierced her. Grounded her. Her daughter was alive and well and consumed with the mundane matters of life.

The final text was a long one.

Dad is being really weird about everything. He wants me to pay my rent starting next month!! And I get that he’s under pressure with a new baby, but he should have thought of that? And I can get a better job, but I might need to get some more roommates, and that’s fine, too, but I need a little time.

Veronica scowled, then texted:First of all, that is weird. A month isn’t long enough to spring something like that. You can make it work, though. I have faith in you.

A text came right back:Mom!! don’t take his side!!!!! this isn’t fair

It isn’t fair, but until I talk to your dad, which I don’t really want to do from here, I can’t figure it out.

Which wasn’t at all what she thought she would say, but she realized she meant it.I love you, though. I’ll send some pics from today.

Wow, thanks. Not.

For a moment, she looked at the text, her thumb hovering over the keypad. What if her daughter had been shot at a grocery store?

But the same could be said about almost anything. What if she was in a car accident? What if she was in a building that collapsed? What if she was kidnapped by a stranger? What if ... what if ... what if? A million things could happen at any moment.

What ifs had held her hostage as a young mom. She had exhausted herself trying to imagine all the disasters that could befall her babies, and scanned the horizon constantly trying to hold them off. Spence thought it ridiculous, but then he wasn’t a mother, was he? She covered wall sockets and hid sharp things and installed carbon monoxide detectors and never traveled in a car with them during a threatened blizzard in case of getting stranded.

And then a three-year-old at Jenna’s day care had tripped on an uneven sidewalk on the way home, cracked his head on a metal stake buried in the grass, anddied.It panicked her for a time. How could you possibly prevent that?

But then, the very randomness of the event finally came home. She couldn’t prevent everything. She settled into being a mother whocould only do her best. Now she had to employ the same sense of reason. Jenna had plenty of coping skills, at least for a couple of months. Veronica really did not want to deal with Spence, and would do what she could to avoid him.

Right now, Veronica was on a quest. The word filled her with resolve.