Page 79 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“Nancy!” she cried, but the phone was dead.

With a sense of panic, she called Jenna. “Mom, I’m on the way to a meeting. Can this wait?”

“No. My landlady is evicting me, and I need to get my things out of there. I need your help.”

“Mom, I am so swamped right now!”

She felt as if she’d been slapped. “Jenna! I never ask you for anything, and I’m in trouble. I need you to make some calls, find somebody to help get my things out without spending money. Ask Tim to help you. I’ll have to put it all in storage.”

“Maybe this is a sign, Mom. This trip has never been a good idea. Maybe you just need to come home and deal with it.”

“I’m working!”

“So am I! Ben broke his leg, you know.”

“I just heard.” The flames burned around her ears again, touched her eyes. She couldn’t believe her daughter was refusing to help. “But I’m not coming home. I amworking.”

“Whatever.” She tsked. “I’ll make some calls. But you have a lot of shit.”

“Not really, but thank you. Let me know. I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’m sorry, this is all just a lot.”

“Yeah, it is. I know.” For once, she didn’t say she was sorry.

She didn’t think it was legal for her landlady to evict her on such thin cause. Thinking of the roomy kitchen, the old walls, it felt like losing the family house all over again. She chewed her thumbnail thoughtfully, stopping when she bit too hard and realized that she hadn’t shed the habit after all.

To solve all these issues, she just needed to set Mariah down and talk out the contract for the book. Ghostwriting, as Spence said so accurately. Some kind of payment plan, maybe an advance, even a small one, would see her through until she got home.

Was she being greedy? It wasn’t like she knew what she was doing, and she was in Paris, for heaven’s sake, had flown first class, was eating more than luxuriously. To ask for more seemed very cheeky.

Except, a small voice argued back, the arrangement had been for companionship to start with. Taking notes was one thing and she would have been happy to do that part. Doing the groundwork to write Rachel’s planned book was quite another thing entirely.

Rubbing her eyes, she suddenly realized it was nearly midnight and they had a plane to catch in the morning. She’d revisit the thought when she had a fresh brain.

Chapter Thirty-Five

At some point in the middle of the night, Mariah awakened. She limped to the bathroom, feeling the not-unpleasant sense of having worked her leg a bit. In the mirror, she thought she looked better than she had for a while. Maybe Paris agreed with her.

Maybe it was fresh air and moving her body.

Back in her room, she rummaged through her bag to find snacks, nuts, and pretzels and a bottle of Ribena from London. She carried them to bed and curled up with her iPad. It was 2:00 a.m., so she probably needed to get back to sleep eventually, but she’d slept hard since five, so she wasn’t really lacking.

But, wow, it was so quiet! The world felt as empty as an apocalypse. It was the thing she hated the most about life right now. She’d never really been alone much, like, ever. She’d either been with her mom or her coaches or traveling in a pack with other athletes in a dozen variations, training or in dorms for an event or in a house with slopes somewhere nearby. Often there was a man in her bed, or she was asleep but somebody else had a lover in a bed nearby.

In short, her former life had been communal. Now it was solitary. Sleeping alone, awake in the middle of the night alone. She knew Henry and Veronica were close by, but she didn’t feel like she could wanderinto one of their rooms and curl up next to them or jump on the bed to wake them up, both of which she would do if her mom was still here.

Here. As if she was in another room and could come back.

Loneliness left a hollow in her lungs, making it hard to settle. She scrolled through the offerings on all her streaming services, and couldn’t find anything interesting. She wasn’t a big reader, but she’d downloaded some books recommended on BookTok, and went through them, reading a few pages here, then another, but she was too restless for that, too.

She got up and went to the window. The silence in the room was deafening, and even outside, very little moved. A taxi drove by. A traffic light flashed in the distance. A lone person crossed the street and disappeared. The whole world was asleep.

Or not. Across the alleyway, she saw a kitchen with a light on, hands taking a kettle from the stove. Higher up was a living room with a TV flickering. She scanned the buildings for other signs of life, and found them. Lights on. Movement against curtains. She wished there was some magic way to contact anyone who was awake and lonely.Look out your window,she’d say.Wave!

She laughed at herself. That probably already existed; it was called the internet. But had anyone ever written a program where you could contact people nearby?

That would probably be weird.