Page 1 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Prologue

Everybody in the neighborhood came out to see who was being arrested. Huddling in knots of two and three, they watched Veronica take an actual walk of shame down the sidewalk, escorted by two police officers who looked like they were barely out of high school. The woman apologized for handcuffing her, but it was protocol in these situations.

Veronica didn’t look at them or at Spence. Her face was a mess of snot and tears. She felt her hair sticking to her cheeks, and she was cold because her jacket was on the floor where she’d thrown it.

She didn’t look at her gawking neighbors. She didn’t want to see the pity or the horror masking their bald curiosity. She shuffled down the old concrete between the perennial beds she’d planted, every single inch, flowers that once bloomed in such extravagance that people slowed down to stare, even stop to take a photo. The newspaper had once done an article on it.

Gone. Lost beneath the most ordinary bark mulch a person could imagine, the entire side garden lost to a swimming pool. A pool that could be used maybe three months out of every twelve.

That brought a fresh wave of tears. All her flowers! How many hours had she spent on her knees, nestling gaillardia next to tiny dianthus, the pink and orange echoed in the beds by the house with gladioli and roses? It underlined the end of her marriage more forcefully than anything else could have.

The female cop put her hand on Veronica’s head as she helped her into the back seat. She looked back to Spence. “Are you sure, Mr. Barrington?”

“Doctor,” he corrected. His jaw was WASPy stone. “Quite sure.”

The car pulled out, driving past the thin row of neighbors watching her banishment. She didn’t look at any of them.

Part One

Colorado

Chapter One

Eighteen Months Later

Thanksgiving was Veronica’s favorite holiday. She loved the pure extravagance of food, the little family traditions built over the years—like the fresh strawberry- and blueberry-infused sparkling water that her youngest, Ben, had invented when he was six, and the banoffee pie Spence had discovered on an academic trip to England. Veronica practiced it until he swooned. Her own favorite dish was a yam casserole baked with mini marshmallows, the only recipe she really had from her mother. When her kids were small, they’d loved that dish more than anything.

Today, it sat forlornly on the table with only one serving removed. Hers.

The orange casserole was served in a glass dish she’d rescued from an antique shop, and the dishes were a set of china she’d collected over time. It was an antique pattern with lacy edges and delicate roses, called Chateau Dresden. She’d found a saucer, bowl, and teacup at a thrift store when she was an undergrad, one of the most beautiful things she’d ever owned, and made a vow to herself then to have a life that included a full set.

And so she had.Hadbeing the operative word.

Shehadespecially loved her dining room, a broad space with wide pine-plank floors and a row of leaded-glass windows looking outtoward her side garden. It had been beautiful even in deep autumn in Boulder because she’d planted things that had interesting dry leaves and colored stems to duplicate themselves in the edges of the leaded glass.

The walls of the dining room were painted light green, with William Morris wallpaper in a wide border above the wainscoting. Below a 1920s chandelier with rare green carnival glass sat a big table they’d found at auction long before “farmhouse” became a named decorating style. The china she had collected one piece at a time looked splendid on that table.

The most beautiful room in the world, she thought, when her family and friends were arranged around the bountiful food she’d prepared for them. It could be a Dutch painting, with bowls of steaming carrots and the gleaming bird and bread in a basket, everyone lit just so by that bank of north-facing windows.

It was even more delectable when everyone went home or into their own spaces, leaving her to her beautiful home, each room a creation from her very soul. Home.

Her space no longer.

Today, in her much smaller apartment kitchen, she’d prepared the turkey—which was not an easy bird to make delicious—and fresh cranberry sauce with orange zest and walnuts. She’d made her daughter’s beloved stuffed celery and the apple upside-down cake her youngest son loved. Now that he’d gone vegan, she had to alter the recipe, but she was quite proud of the adaptation. It had turned out so perfectly that she took a photo.

She’d set the much smaller table in her apartment and had created a playlist of favorites to cast a background to their meal and, frankly, offset the quiet. Even with all the effort, it felt a little hollow, an imitation Thanksgiving.

They did their best. They ate and laughed and joked. It was as she stood up to clear and picked up the sweet potatoes that Jenna said, “Mom, maybe it’s time to let the old-school sweet potatoes go.”

“I can see none of you like it now,” she said. Some small, barely audible voice said,But I do!

Tim snickered. “That’s because it was popular in 1959, boomer.”

“I’m not a boomer!”

“Close enough,” he said.

For some reason, it stung, the teasing that made her feel outdated. “I’m Gen X, and you know it.”