Page 17 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Still, the process was the same, the mental process and the physical process. Her team, her former team now that she’d fired them officially, poor saps, had tried to get her to go to trauma counseling, but she didn’t need any of that shit. She was an athlete with plenty of time in the trenches. It would take longer this time, but it had really only been sixteen months. By the time she hit the two-year mark next August, she’d be over it.

Physically, probably not. She hated that, but you didn’t get anywhere making up stories. Her body would never again be up to the feats of athleticism that had marked her life before.

Mentally, she had more to do. She saw that. This trip was part of the process. It was her aunt Jill’s idea to complete the research her mom had been doing on cafés and then maybe pull the research together into what? A book? That was what her mom had planned, but that wasn’t really Mariah’s forte. Maybe she’d hire someone to ghostwrite it.

She glanced across the aisle at her companion, tidy even at rest, her blanket pulled up to her neck as she leafed through the book in her lap. Maybe she’d be good enough at writing to want the job.

But Mariah didn’t have to decide that part right now. As the warmth of the vodka and oxy spread through her body, she opened the file with her mother’s notes. Several cafés had been documented by Rachel already, the iconic Russian Tea Room in NYC, and in Mariah’sopinion, the overly touristy Sally Lunn’s in Bath. She’d visited with her mother on a trip when she’d graduated high school on time, a bribe because Mariah wanted to quit school and hit the circuit. Her mother had adamantly refused—citing the stats on injuries and washed-up athletes until Mariah finally gave in.

And look who’d turned out to be right.

She refocused on the list of cafés, but the pills and booze had done their work, and she fell asleep, to dream of a trip when nothing had yet gone wrong, and her mother was still alive, and the whole world spread in front of her like a yellow-brick road.

Chapter Nine

The plane grew quiet and dark as they flew. Veronica tracked the flight on the screen in front of her, delighted to see Hudson Bay, then the Atlantic. She’d tucked herself in after dinner, legs up and pillow propped under her neck, and had been happily reading ever since, carted away to the world of the novel she was reading. Mariah was out cold, curled up beneath the velour blanket she’d carried on. She hadn’t stirred for dinner, which was maybe a mistake, especially as she’d taken something. For sleep? For pain?

It was as they crossed below the tip of Greenland that Mariah began to whimper. It was slight at first, and Veronica just glanced across the aisle. But in a few minutes, the whimpers grew louder, and she started moving restlessly, talking incoherently. Her hand rubbed her thigh, and she gave a single, sharp cry.

The flight attendant appeared at the doorway, but Veronica waved her back, unbuckling and standing to bend into Mariah’s pod. “Mariah,” she called quietly, then put her hand on her arm. “Wake up, honey, it’s only a dream.” She winced when she heard thehoneyland—she didn’t want to create that dynamic here, although she could feel the need to mother this lost girl. “Wake up.”

Mariah bolted up, slammed into her seat belt, and made a soft cry. “Shit!” She grabbed her leg. “Why are you waking me up? Oh my God, my leg is on fire.”

“You were crying out in your sleep. I thought you might need more meds.”

Mariah blinked up at her blearily. “In my sleep?”

“Yes. Can you get the pills easily?”

“Um. I don’t know. They’re in that little bag.” She pointed to a small purse hung on a hook.

Veronica handed her the bag. “Do you think you might need some food and something to drink? You don’t want to land all dehydrated.” She glanced toward the galley where the flight attendant stood at the ready and headed up the aisle. “Is there anything she can eat, bananas or some yogurt, maybe both?”

“Yes. I’ll bring it right now.”

“Maybe some fresh water, too.”

“Of course.”

Mariah was rubbing her leg when Veronica returned, and her face was the color of lime juice, entirely too pale and faintly green. She rubbed her leg up and down, up and down. “Will you help me? I need to walk it off.”

Veronica offered her hand, and Mariah limped down the aisle by herself, turned in the narrow space by the bathrooms, came back, and repeated the circle several times. The flight attendant offered Veronica the yogurt and fruit. “Anything else you need?”

“Not right now.”

On the third rotation, Mariah’s face was less pinched, and some of the color had come back to her cheeks. She paused at the chair and let go of a big breath. “Thanks. I’ll be okay now.”

Veronica stepped back to give her space to get back into her pod, then when she was settled, offered the food. Mariah shook her head. “I can’t right now.”

It took a lot for the mothering part of her not to insist she eat something with the meds, have something to drink, make sure she didn’t mess up her system with whatever she was taking. She had noticed that Mariah hadn’t eaten any dinner, only drank two mini bottles of wineand went to sleep. “Maybe try in a little while? It won’t hurt anything to have them handy.”

For a moment, the food hung between them in Veronica’s outstretched hands. Annoyance and something darker snapped over Mariah’s face. She snatched the food. “Fine. Now I’m good, okay?”

Veronica settled back into her own space and picked up her book, glancing over at Mariah periodically. This could be more challenging than she’d thought.

Part Two

London