Page 6 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Mariah frowned. “I need research help, not just the ... physical help.”

“As I said in my email, I have undergrad degrees in women’s studies and history. Most of a master’s thesis on one of the outliers of the Bloomsbury Group.”

“You didn’t finish?”

Veronica shook her head. “No. Got married, started having children. Always said I’d go back to it.” Suddenly, it sounded so conventional, especially to a woman who’d lived as a snowboarder, taking chances.

Mariah seemed to pick up on her insecurity. “Are you sure this is the right job for you? I mean, it’s not like being a nurse or anything, but you’ll be kind of ... a servant.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ve got the servant thing down pat.” She made a wry face. “My whole job was making his life easier and my kids’ lives easier, and maybe that’s cliché—I get that it is, kind of, but to tell you the truth, I really need a job, and I really love the sound of this. I do speak French.”

The torrent came out without her permission, but sitting there in that well-appointed room, Veronica just wanted something for herself. The manual parts of the job would be annoying—hauling and whatever—but it wasn’t like she hadn’t been doing that for her family for twenty-five years.

Mariah just looked at her, and for the first time, Veronica saw that her mouth turned down on the right side. A thin white scar led to her temple under her hair.

That must have been some accident, which was exactly why Veronica didn’t ski or snowboard. Her whole family thought it was a waste—living in Colorado and not partaking—and they’d spend days on skis or boards, depending on the generation. All their vacations were taken in the mountains over winter breaks. Veronica happily packed up, cooked for them, made sure everyone had what they needed, but she had no desire to hurtle at high speeds down a mountain. Every single one of them had been rushed to the ER with injuries of greater and lesser degrees, ranging from a broken ankle to a torn rotator cuff and two knee surgeries, to a concussion and twenty-seven stitches across the back of the skull.

She’d never tried it, so she’d never gotten hurt.

Instead, she spent her ski days curled up in some warm spot by a fire, drinking cider in a cozy sweater and reading a book. So many books. Such good memories.

“It doesn’t pay a ton,” Mariah said. This must have been a sticking point with other applicants, Veronica thought, and braced herself. “I’ll cover your travel expenses, of course, all the meals and everything that goes with it, but the pay is minimum wage, calculated on a forty-hour week. It might end up being more than forty hours, but that’s what I can pay.”

For a minute, Veronica felt an acute sense of disappointment. The sum would barely cover her rent, although that was technically being paid by alimony. A buzzy sense of panic sent her nerves into high alert. What if something went wrong? She had zero cushion.

She found herself biting her thumbnail and forced her hand into her lap. “How often will you pay me?”

This had not crossed Mariah’s mind, obviously. “Oh, I don’t know. What works for you? Every week? The first payment on the second Friday after we leave?”

“I can live with that. What is the job, exactly?”

Mariah picked up a sheaf of papers and handed it over. “I’m finishing some work my mom had assembled for her next book oncafés around the world. She’d already done a lot of writing, but there are big gaps where she needed on-the-ground research to fill in the details.”

Veronica looked at the notes, and a little bubble of excitement pushed itself into her anxiety. The sheaf of papers held a list of cafés, each with low-grade printout photos, bare facts, and addresses. Veronica had never heard of any of them except one, Angelina in Paris. Long, long ago, on one of her two trips abroad, she’d drunk hot chocolate there with Spence on their honeymoon. A wash of memory—gilt and mirrors and the musical sound of French—lit up her heart.

The other cafés were in London and Morocco, and a handful was in India.

“It’s a lot of ground to cover,” Veronica said, tucking her gnawed thumbnail out of reach into her palm. “How long are you planning to be on the road?”

“About three or four weeks. Through the holidays, just so you know.”

“That makes me want it more,” Veronica said.

“A photographer will meet us in London,” Mariah continued. “A family friend who wants to help finish this book in memory of my mom.”

Veronica nodded.

“Mainly I need help with the research and how to organize it—and I need you to sign a release assuring me that you won’t try to write the book yourself.”

“Of course! I’m happy to sign anything.”

“Good.”

“Related to that,” Veronica said, “there are a couple of sites in both London and Mumbai that I might want to visit. Will there be any downtime for my own research?”

Mariah’s mouth turned down in consideration. “I don’t see why not. We can make that happen as long as you make the cafés your first priority.”

“Great.”