Page 34 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“My kids wanted to run a background check,” she said with a smile, and ran a smoothing palm over the duvet. “Curtains open or closed?”

“Open, please. I want to see the sky.” Her voice was thin. “And will you get my meds and bring them over? The pain meds.”

Veronica looked through the bottles and found a tranquilizer and a pain reliever. “These?”

“Yep.” Mariah popped two into her mouth and drank a long swallow of water. “Google,” she said again. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Veronica paused. “I also think I’d like to ask your aunt about the letters. You don’t have to read them, but if I’m going to write about this journey, I need to know more about what happened.”

“Makes sense.” She picked up her phone, scrolled. “I sent you her contact info. Will you turn off the lights on your way out?”

Veronica did as she was asked, her mind whirling. She had some serious digging to do on Rachel’s past.

Chapter Seventeen

Henry had settled on the couch. “Is it all right if I stay for a while?” He held up the book from the car. “It’s a lot more comfortable here than my hotel.”

“Of course. Feel free.” She filled the kettle. “Want tea or coffee or anything?”

“No, thanks.” One long leg was propped on the other, ankle to knee, and he’d donned a thick sweater the color of sand. It set off the darkness of his tan, making him look like a rugged outdoorsy gentleman.

Veronica measured coffee into the cup, and sugar, and waited for the water to boil. “Mariah told me to google her accident.” A rustle of warning stirred in her gut. “And to never talk to her about it. She thought I knew already.”

“Mmm.” He closed the book, swung his foot onto the floor. “You don’t know what happened?”

“I assumed it was a snowboarding accident. Then, when I realized her mom was dead, maybe a car accident.”

Henry said, “I’ll sit with you while you do it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Will I need support?”

He lifted a shoulder.

Veronica made the coffee and carried it to the sofa. It surprised her again how large he was, lean muscle draped over a large frame—the longlimbs and broad shoulders. His warmth was a comfort as she picked up her laptop and typedMariah Ellsworthinto the search bar.

Hundreds and hundreds of results popped up—and they were not the Olympic angle Veronica expected. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She clicked on one fromThe Denver Post.

Among the 11 victims of Tuesday’s mass shooting at a local grocery store was celebrated snowboarder Mariah Ellsworth, a multiple Olympic medalist. She has undergone three surgeries to save her left leg. According to a hospital spokesman, physicians were unsure whether the operations would be successful. “We did everything we could, but the bone was massively shattered. It’s a miracle she didn’t bleed to death.”

Ellsworth’s mother, cookbook author Rachel Ellsworth, was killed instantly, one of six deaths.

A weight pressed the air out of Veronica’s lungs. “I remember this,” she said hoarsely. It had taken place at the same brand-name grocery store that she shopped at, so she knew the layout and the angles, everything, making it devastatingly easy to imagine how it happened. It had been deeply unsettling. “Such a mundane place for so much horror.”

“Aren’t they all?” he said gruffly.

Veronica felt tears rise, and pressed her mouth together. Tears were so easy, such a surface-level response. And yet—she thought of mother and daughter in the store, picking up dinner, trading easy conversation, and then ... “You don’t think about the people who arejustinjured, do you?”

“It’s hard to think about any of it. We’re not equipped to cope with this level of horror.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Aren’t you a war photographer?”

“Not anymore,” he said gruffly. “But that’s how I know.”

She took in his stoic expression and wondered what hid beneath it. It felt schoolgirlish to react with tears when he’d faced so much, when shootings were so common now that it was hard to even remember them all.

And yet, all of them were not the one. All violence did not cancel the particular and piercing horror of thisone.

“So her mom was killed,” Veronica said, “and now Mariah wants to finish this book for her.”