Page 61 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“What did you do?” Mariah asked.

“Everything. Flipped burgers, washed dishes, waited tables, all of it. Whatever he told me to do.”

“Same, at the Blue Dog,” Veronica said, and she was surprised to remember it without sorrow this time.

Mariah returned, sliding in next to Henry.

“It was old-school Mexican, so cute,” Veronica said. “I’m talking about the Blue Dog, the place I worked when I was a teenager. Your mom would have liked it. The walls were painted bright colors, and we wore uniforms with embroidered flowers around the neckline, and a fake flower on a barrette. It was an institution.”

“No way! Did you hate it?”

She let the door swing open, visuals spilling into view. “No, I loved it. My mom was sick, and I really wanted to be busy.” She paused, feeling the noise and cheer and camaraderie she’d felt spill into her memory. “It was kind of magical, you know, the things you had to learn to be good at it, the way to serve sopapillas and how to gauge the heatof the green chile and how to serve from the right side of the table, and the language of orders.” A memory of Tomas flashed through her mind, his big dark hands, his smile. It arrived vividly, laced with both longing and guilt. She’d been besotted. She pushed that part of the memory out of view. “It’s hard work, but it’s fast paced, and if you get it right, people are happy.”

“Did your mom get better?”

Veronica shook her head. “She died of breast cancer when I was sixteen.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Still.” Mariah inclined her head, measuring. “It’s hard, you were really young.”

Veronica nodded, shrugged. True and true, but what was there to say?

“You still like feeding people,” Mariah said, spilling salt into her palm. “You offer me food all the time.”

“Idolike to feed people,” she said, thinking of that big farmhouse table, her dining room filled with light. “Or I did. That might be part of my old life.”

“Your mom life.”

It stung in some uncharted region of her chest. The sting was a hard truth she was still grappling with. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Next to her, Henry said, “Wonder what the new chapter will bring.”

She peered into the future, and although she couldn’t see very far, the road definitely had different features from the one she’d been walking for over twenty years.

She looked up at him. “Good question.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The hotel was tall and narrow, Hotel Altheda, and their three rooms took up most of the top floor. In her room, Mariah flung her body across the bed and fell almost instantly asleep, her belly full, her body tired from travel.

For the first time in nearly a week, it was natural sleep, unassisted or impeded by alcohol or painkillers or antianxiety meds. Her mind flashed pictures of pleasant things at first, a dream about running when she was a child, faster than all the other kids at the track meet, her hair flying behind her. Her mom had not been there, but Jill had been, cheering and screaming when she took the blue ribbon.

And then, abruptly, she was at the ER, a small army of people around as she drifted in and out, holding her mom’s hand as the team examined her leg, the wound in her side, her face, which bled buckets. All three wounds hurt so much, so loudly, and she kept telling themIt hurts! It hurts! It hurts!

A nurse held her other hand, trying to calm her. “We can’t give you anything yet, sweetheart, but it will get better soon, I promise. Hold on, Mariah, hold on. Keep talking. Squeeze my hand. We need to know you’re still with us.”

She looked at her mother. “What do they mean? Am I going to die?”

“No, baby. You’re going to live. Keep holding on. I’m right here with you.”

In her hotel room in Paris, she bolted upright, straight out of sleep, gasping for breath. Her heart raced, and she pressed both hands against it, trying to suck in a breath,one two three, outtwo three four five six, but her brain was racing, touching memories and strange moments all at the same time, and it didn’t work.

After struggling to her feet, she grabbed her water bottle out of her backpack and took a long drink. The action eased the building panic, and she was able to take a breath.

She’d taken three bullets. The worst injury was her leg, a shattered femur, but more drastically, the femoral artery had been nicked. Not blasted, or she would have died, but she still lost a ton of blood, and at the time the nurse had urged her to keep talking, the team had been all but certain they would lose her before they could get her into surgery. The bullet in her side had miraculously not touched any of her vital organs and passed straight through her body. The bullet that skimmed the side of her face had been a horror when she first woke up, but on that, too, she’d been lucky. Only flesh was mangled, not her brain.