Page 65 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Mariah thought of her and her mom sitting here. “How long did it take you to feel like yourself again after—”

“The bomb? A year, for the physical.” His fingers moved over the top of his camera, touching the buttons, the sides, caressing it. “But you don’t go back to being the person you were before. You become somebody new.”

She felt the truth of that, a knowing that she could never go back to being the Mariah who could snowboard at literally a hundred miles per hour through fresh powder. “I get that. So sad, though. Do you miss it? Your old life?”

“Yeah, I guess. But unlike you, I’m not young, and it was getting pretty brutal.”

Mariah took that in, thinking about the people she’d known who’d stayed too long in the competition arena, hoping for one more minute of glory. Almost worse than getting an injury that ended it all abruptly.

She spied Veronica coming back down the stairs. “Damn, she looks like she’s been crying. Don’t look! Let’s try to cheer her up.”

He covered her hand. “I’m in.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

As she returned to the table, hoping her intense crying fit didn’t show, Veronica said, “That is the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever seen.”

“Should I go see it?” Mariah asked.

“You definitely should.”

“First, let’s figure out what to order. We have to have drinking chocolate and theMont-Blanc,” Mariah said.

“I’m going to waddle home, I swear,” Veronica said.

“No, we won’t! Remember, my mom’s method is to order a bunch of things and take bites of all of it.” She pointed to the bag Veronica looped over her shoulder. “You need to take notes. This will be a good chapter.”

“Right.”

Henry, perusing the menu, said, “Add the onion soup and eggs Benedict with avocado. And coffee.” His leg was close to hers under the table, and he nudged her knee with his. “What will you try, V?”

The arrowheads still jabbed her lungs, but she forced herself to look at the menu. What would she like to try? What wouldshelike to try? “Okay, I’ll play. I want to taste the chocolate again, of course, but I’d also like to try the mille-feuille and, naturally, quiche Lorraine.”

“And what else?” Mariah said. “I’m adding the apple thing.”

“Not much else will fit on the table,” Veronica pointed out.

“We can ask to have them bring it out in rounds.”

Veronica wondered how it would feel to be so completely comfortable everywhere, all the time. Nothing put Mariah off. She believed she deserved to be wherever she was and didn’t question her choices once she made them.

It must be heaven to move through the world like that.

Henry probably felt that way, too, but he was a man, and he’d traveled all over the world. Was travel part of the secret?

What made a person comfortable in their own skin? She knew a lot of her discomfort upon going to college in Boulder had been that it seemed all the students were in a much higher social class than she.

But since then, she’d lived for years as the wife of a professor, by any measure a genteel world. That should have given her some cred, if only with herself.

The trouble was that she’d been hauled off to jail for criminal mischief and domestic violence (that second bit totally unfair, in her opinion), a scenario that had reinforced the image of herself as a working-class woman wearing the sheep’s clothing of a professor’s wife.

Piercing her drifting thoughts, Henry said, “Why don’t we take a look at the pastry case?”

“I’m going to stay,” Mariah said. “My leg gets tired standing in line. If you see anything else you think I might like, order it for me.”

The entire restaurant was decorated for Christmas, with garlands around doorways and along the railings. On the pastry case were trees shaped from macarons, and lights winked in surprising colors—peach and lime green and gentle blues. She hadn’t anticipated the layering of Christmas melancholy with the memory of her happy honeymoon. As she stood with Henry, looking at pastries, she wished she could share the experience with Jenna, and took a handful of photos, something she would never have done if Henry had not been standing there with his very visible enormous camera. A few people gave him the side-eye, but he didn’t pay any attention, and she supposed that a photographer would have to get used to people staring or not wanting him to shoot them.

“I’d love to see these shots,” she said.