Page 7 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

A small silence fell into the room. Mariah drank her tea and eyed the snow outside. Veronica pretended to read the notes, but her brain was buzzing too much to take it in. She noticed her hands were shaking a little, and to bring down the level of purewant, she asked, “When would we need to leave?”

“Two weeks from today. You’ll need some immunizations. Can you get those done next week?”

Veronica straightened. “I have a few. We’d been planning a trip to Africa when COVID hit.” And then Spence fell in love with a visiting professor, and Veronica lost her mind. “But I’ll need to check to see what’s recommended.”

“Cool. I’ll send you the list, and you can make sure you have what you need.”

“What about visas?”

“Won’t need it for Morocco, but you do need one for India. You should apply right away so we have some time, though mine only took a couple of days.”

A swell of possibility rose through Veronica’s body. “Does that mean the job is mine?”

“After I check your references ... if you want it, it’s yours. Please say yes.”

Veronica touched her heart. “Yes, please.”

Chapter Four

Mariah had been struggling to make sense of a life that had been completely emptied of everything she loved when she stumbled on her mother’s notes.

Trapped by the snowstorm a month ago, she knocked around the empty house with her cane, maybe subconsciously seeking the closet where she’d finally find where her mother was hiding.

It was a relief to be home, in some ways. Her recovery had been long and institutional—hospitals, then rehab centers—and sleeping in her own bedroom was heaven. She liked eating cereal at the table in the kitchen, as she’d done a million times before. Her athletic life had begun when she was quite young, so she’d always spent more time away from home than there. She and her mom traveled all over, Rachel working on whatever writing or research project she had going, Mariah working with a trainer or a coach or a team.

Daytime in the house was fine. At night, she liked it less. For one thing, it was cold and hard to heat. It was an old Victorian, built in the 1880s by a silver baron on one of the toniest streets in Denver. Understandably, there were pockets of cold everywhere.

But it was hard to convince herself that those chilly areas were probably not ghosts. She knew that it was completely idiotic for her to believe in them. She was direct and down-to-earth to a fault, ask anyone.

Nonetheless, she felt them. Something in the downstairs bathroom that was sad and weepy, not threatening. And not always there, either.Her mother scoffed, said it was her imagination, but that didn’t change the prickles that ran up Mariah’s arms when she sat down to pee sometimes.

There were other spots, too—an empty bedroom, a cold spot by the fireplace in the living room they also never used, preferring the smaller, cozier parlor.

The one place she wouldn’t go was the basement. Not ever, not for anything. She’d gone down there with her mother as a six-year-old and had to be carried out screaming. Never again.

Her mother, for the record, thought Mariah was letting her imagination get the better of her.

Now that she was back after her mother’s death, Mariah often felt lost in the eleven-room mansion. Much too large for one person. It had been too big for two, but her mother had a lot of personality and presence, and she had loved the old-fashioned rooms, the parquet floors, the sense of time and history sitting in the rooms like wallpaper. It wasn’t really Mariah’s taste, but she hadn’t figured out what to do, how to change it or maybe sell it. Her aunt Jill, her mom’s sister, had said not to do anything for a while.

So she didn’t. She focused on her PT, taking a Lyft down to the hospital three times a week, and focused on healing. Everyone said she’d never snowboard again, but they didn’t know how hard Mariah could work. They hadn’t even been sure she’d walk again, and here she was, walking just fine. Well, with a limp, but not a very big one.

The rest of the time, she didn’t have a lot to do. She’d gone from going 150 miles an hour all the time to ... nothing.

Now what? Now what? Now what?

That night, a month before, restless and grieving, she’d decided to do something useful. She visited her mother’s office. The air still smelled of her mother, faint soap and coffee and a particular hair product Mariah wanted to track down, and mainly the incense her mother loved that, to Mariah, smelled like something had gone bad inthe trash. Rachel laughed and laughed when Mariah had said that, and kept the sticks in her office.

The combination of scents had filled her with vast loneliness. She looked for the package to light a stick, which she placed in the ceramic holder near the computer. The scents of cedar and patchouli fused like a body.

Rachel’s desk was an antique made of walnut, the golden wood polished to a muted shine. The surface was tidy, file folders lined up in an elegant holder, pens and pencils in a carved-pottery cup. The silent monitor and a keyboard. A desk pad covered the surface. Only a few notes there, all written in Rachel’s trademark turquoise fountain-pen ink. The letters and numbers were more rounded than elegant, the handwriting of a teenager, but they were notes her mother had written with a still-living hand. She ran her finger over each one:Collect book numbers for 2023. Send Berta a thank-you card. Pick up cleaning. Call Henry.

So prosaic. As if life would just keep going forever.

Drawers lined both sides, each with a crystal knob. Mariah pulled out the central one, long and shallow. It held pens, pencils, erasers, paper clips, and two bottles of peacock-colored ink. The inlaid Monteverde pen she liked was already in Mariah’s possession, along with the rest of the contents of her purse.

She closed the drawer, opened each of the others in turn. The usual desk things: paper for the printer on a stand nearby, extra ink cartridges, extra files in multiple colors.

Jill had tried to open the computer, but it remained locked tight, secrets (if there were any) trapped behind a password. Mariah didn’t bother to turn it on. Instead, she plucked a file from the stand. It was labeled “History.” She leafed through the contents curiously, finding articles about cafés in London and Mumbai, all with a particular sort of art deco spirit. There was a photo of a man and woman, Indian, dressed in the styles of the 1930s; another of an art deco teapot made of green glass. It looked like the start of a project.