Page 86 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

She laughed and turned the phone face down. “You’re right. Imagine what it was like to travel before the ubiquitousness of phones.”

“Oh, I did. Internet cafés. Phone calls from obscure places at weird times to try to connect. You didn’t travel as a student?”

“God, no. I was about as broke as it is possible to be. I had a scholarship that paid tuition and books, but I had to work for everything else—rent, food, beer.”

He inclined his head slightly. “That’s not the background I imagined for you when we first met.”

“Really?” She tried not to care, but she did. “What did you think?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “More upper middle class, I guess.”

“That’s two decades of life in a university town. I’m a good mimic,” she said, and for the first time, it made her laugh. Shewasa good mimic. It wasn’t a flaw; it was a survival skill. “I lived in a trailer. Not even a double-wide.”

He held up his hands in mock horror. “Not single wide! The horror.” He picked up a piece of melon with his fingers. “Do you still have family back there?”

“Two brothers, but they’re a lot younger. We don’t really talk. Christmas cards, the odd email.”

“Sounds lonely.”

The word landed. She looked at the candle, recognizing that aside from her kids, she didn’t really have a life or a community at all these days. “You know, once my mom died, it felt like the world was an empty place, that there would never again be someone in my corner the way she was.” She looked in the direction where Mariah had disappeared. “And it’s really true. No one loves you like your mother does.”

He touched his chest with an open palm. “My mom died a few years ago, but it wasn’t really the same as losing one young.”

“And I didn’t lose mine violently, like Mariah.”

“Still,” he said, touching her hand lightly. “You lost her. And then your family lost its center.”

“Yeah.” Memories of the early winter dark came back, the trailer somehow a hundred times emptier than when her mother had just been at work, her struggle to keep making dinners of Hamburger Helper and spaghetti while her brothers played Nintendo and her stepdad checked out in his tool shed. “And I got out.”

“Good for you.” He moved his hand away, lifting his chin toward Mariah, who limped through the tables toward them. Veronica realized that she hadn’t been using her cane as much.

She sat down breathlessly. “I think we might have a ghost on our patio,” she said, handing Veronica her sweater.

“A ghost?”

“I know, I know, everyone thinks it’s stupid, but I swear Ialwaysfeel them. I feel them in my mom’s house all the time, and it’s fucking creepy, man.”

Veronica weighed her response. She knew that some people who were grieving wanted to believe in the afterlife. Should she take it at face value? Reassure her that it was nothing?

She opted for a question. “What do they feel like?”

Mariah pulled her sweater around her. “It’s like a cold spot, really cold, like black-hole cold. And”—she picked up some bread and took a big tear out of it—“there’s an emotion to it.”

Despite her disbelief, Veronica felt a sweep of goose bumps up the back of her arms. “What kind of emotion?”

“It’s always different,” she said, relaxing enough now to lean forward and fill her plate with apricots and dates and nuts. “Every time, it feels like something else. The one in the downstairs bathroom at my mom’s house is a little sad, but it’s okay. There’s something in the basement that feels way worse.” She ate an apricot, staring at the flickering candle. “The one in our rooms is sad—no, like,inconsolable.” She looked up at Veronica, her pale eyes vulnerable. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t know if there are ghosts or not, but you’re definitely giving me some feels,” she said, laughing and rubbing her arms. “Haven’t you stayed in these rooms before?”

“Yeah, but I never ran into this ghost before.”

Across the table, Henry had been silent. “Are you watching mediums on TikTok again?”

Mariah lifted a shoulder. “Maybe once in a while. And—ImighthaveseenapsychicinLondon.”

Veronica looked between them, very sure that it was none of her business this time.

Henry folded his hands, thumbs meeting. “Did it help?”