Page 77 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

At the hotel, they rode up the elevator silently. Veronica cast around for ways to break the hush but couldn’t come up with anything, and he didn’t, either. They just looked at the light over the doors like strangers, side by side.

In the foyer between the rooms, she said, “Thanks for such a great adventure.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and the sound of his low voice rumbled against the back of her neck. “Hope you get things worked out.”

She nodded and let herself into her room, where she leaned on the door, thinking about what she was giving up in the form of Henry’s skin. Henry’s mouth. She gave herself a solid twenty seconds to feel the vast disappointment, then kicked off her shoes and picked up the phone.

There were other texts, from Jenna and from Tim, but nothing from Spence and nothing from her landlady. Those were voice messages.

She called Amber first, but she didn’t answer, which gave her a pang. She was probably angry, and understandably so. Next she called Spence. “You rang?” she asked. “Gonna send my money after all?”

“You’re a grown woman and can take care of yourself. No, that’s not why I was calling. Ben broke his leg in a bike accident and won’t be able to go skiing. I was wondering when you’ll be home.”

“What? Wait! Is he okay?”

“It’s a straightforward tibia-fibula break, and he should heal fine. He just doesn’t want to go to Breck with everyone skiing.”

“Poor guy. I can’t believe he didn’t call me.”

“He didn’t want to bother you.”

That was sweet. “I need to call him. Was there anything else?”

“He can’t be alone, Ronny.”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do from here.”

“You can’t come home early?”

“No. I’m five thousand miles away.” She felt a sizzle burn up the back of her skull, snap across her nose. “I’mworking.”

“Yeah, poor thing, traveling all over, ghostwriting or whatever.”

“It’s actually exactly that. I’m doing research for a ghostwriting project.” The distance gave her a view of her life she’d never seen. “I’m not coming back to babysit my twenty-year-old son when a) he’s perfectly capable, and b) his father is right there and can manage the situation just fine.”

“We leave for Breck tomorrow. It’s a family tradition.”

That stung. She took a breath. “Boy, I do know that much. You need to hammer this out with him. He can stay on his own or he can go with you, or you can stay home and celebrate Christmas with him.”

“Leaving him alone is pretty harsh. It’s Christmas.”

“I get that. But again, you two have to work out how to solve the problem.”

“There’s a lot going on here, Ronny. I can’t go into it right now, but the furnace problem revealed a bunch of other stuff, and Fiona has not been well through this pregnancy, and the kids are on my ass about a million things. I need this break.”

She couldn’t help it—she laughed. “Figure it out. I can’t help you.”

“Ronny!”

She knocked on her desk. “Sorry, gotta go.”

She hung up. And wanted to tell somebody on the planet that she’d just stood up for herself with her absurd ex.

The first thing she had to do was call Ben. He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, babe. You broke your leg? How are you?”

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “They gave me some good painkillers for a few days anyway.”