Page 70 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Disappointed, Veronica nonetheless understood. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.”

“I should return to my duties,” she said. “Allow me to send out our favorites.”

Veronica and Mariah exchanged a glance. “Please do.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

All at once, between one bite of a roll and the next, Mariah crashed. It was as if someone had pulled a plug in her toe, and all the buoyancy and energy that had held her up through the day drained instantly from her body. She dropped the bun on her plate and fell back against the seat, almost dizzy with exhaustion.

“Evenyoucan’t take another bite?” Veronica teased.

“I guess.” She touched her forehead where sweat had broken out. “I need to go back to the hotel. Like five minutes ago.”

“Oh! Okay.” Veronica was on her feet in two seconds. “Let me just pay the check, and we’re out of here.”

Henry helped Mariah out to the curb. She leaned on him, feeling as if she couldn’t breathe properly, pressing a hand to her diaphragm. A sense of danger wound through her brain,alert alert alert. “Am I having a panic attack? I don’t know what happened.”

Henry raised a hand for a taxi. “Maybe the backfires. They were pretty loud.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The motorcycle that backfired about six times outside the window? The yelling?”

She looked at him blankly, feeling a ripple of warning, a rustling she pushed away. “Maybe I was in the ladies’ room.”

“Hmm. Maybe so.” He opened the taxi door and stood outside waiting for Veronica. She bustled out, the scarf flying, and Mariah, still gripping her chest, was suddenly grateful for her. For both of them, coming on this trip with her.

When they started driving, the panic started to ebb, and by the time they got back to the hotel, her only lingering symptom was exhaustion. Veronica helped Mariah settle in, making sure that she had water and small snacks—“not that any of us can eat another bite for three days”—and Mariah waited until she was gone to strip to her underwear and T-shirt, throwing her bra in the corner. From her bag, she took out the book on mediumship, and pulled the curtains as if someone might see her reading it.

But she couldn’t focus. Every time she thought she was calming down, her heart skittered anew, or her nerves jumped all at once for no reason.

She got on TikTok and scrolled until she found one of the mediums she followed doing a live reading. She was a Black woman in her fifties, wearing a white hairband, her braids flowing backward over her plump shoulders. Candles flickered beside her, and her voice was calm and quiet. “I’m seeing an older gentleman ...”

Mariah’s heart, which had been alternating intense pounding with fluttering, fell into a steady, even beat. Her limbs, exhausted by the day and her own rigidness, softened. Within moments, she was asleep.

Away.

Chapter Thirty-Three

After she settled Mariah, Veronica went to her room, opened a bottle of water, and took a small sip. Her stomach was so full from the piles of food she’d consumed today that she looked about six months pregnant, but for once she decided to forget about it and do something more interesting than obsess that she was not the right size or the right person or the right whatever. Today she could forget it.

Her mind buzzed with the information they’d picked up at Café Farroukh. She opened the file on her tablet with the notes about the cafés, and reread the handful of letters Jill had managed to get to her. The actual facts were fairly thin. Rachel talked about Zoish, her university friend in Bombay, and Café Guli, which she loved. The family owned and operated it, obviously, if Zoish had gone shopping for vegetables.

Three girls and a boy, Navaz said, and something happened to the boy. What Veronica could piece together was that Rachel made friends with the family in Mumbai. That café closed sometime later. The family scattered—the father to Delhi, two girls to London. The third sister had opened the Paris café, Café Farroukh.

Which sister was the one Rachel befriended? She looked through the letters. Zoish. The sister who opened the London café was named Hufriya. The sister in Paris was Chamani. That left Zoish, who had opened the bookstore.

Two sisters had returned to India—one when her father fell ill, the other because she’d become a widow. Did they perhaps live together now? If she found one, would she find the other?

One question she should have asked Navaz was the brother’s name. With that name, she might have been able to track down more information.

She didn’t have a great connection to the internet, but she ran a quick search for Café Guli in Mumbai. Nothing. She frowned, tried again. The London café came up, listing the proprietor as Hufriya Mistry.

What was their maiden name? She searched back through her notes and found the father’s name again as proprietor of the Bombay Café Guli, Farroukh Irani. Not only proprietor, but patriarch, and all three daughters had shown their devotion. Zoish had returned to nurse him when he became ill. Hufriya had honored the family by naming her café after the one they’d left behind. And ... she checked her notes, the third sister Chamani had given her café her father’s name.

Why had they left India entirely instead of leaving with their father to Delhi? Where was their mother? And what happened to the brother?

The cursor blinked as she tried to peer through time to find answers. Her brain offered possibilities, ideas—