Page 91 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Every shop owner wanted to talk, and were delighted to speak with Henry in Arabic, and to a lesser degree, Veronica in her rusty French, laughing and negotiating in a blizzard of words that fell like copper coins around her.

At last, they sought the address that Rachel had included in her list, one without much information attached. It was not easy to find. They had to stop and ask directions three times, circling closer and closer until at last they came to a small street with only two doors. One was painted blue, and the other had a hand symbol in the middle, a symbol that was everywhere in the medina. Veronica said, “A hand like that shows up in New Mexico, too.”

“Well, New Mexico was settled by the Spanish, and Spain was heavily settled by North Africans, so it’s probably the same thing.”

She gave him a look of admiration. “So it is.”

He grinned, brushed the back of her hand with the back of his own. “Stick with me, kid.” He knocked on the door, and for a while it didn’t seem anyone would come. As they were about to turn away, the door opened abruptly, and a Western man with a grizzled beard and sandals barked in French, “What do you want?”

Henry waved Veronica to the fore. “Sorry to bother you,” Veronica said in the same language. “I’m a writer doing some research, and I wonder if you knew a woman named Rachel Ellsworth.”

“Rachel?” He shook his head and switched to British-inflected English. “You must have the wrong person.”

On a hunch, Veronica said, “Did you spend time in India in the mid-nineties?”

He straightened. “I did. Do you mean American Rachel, from somewhere in the Midwest, maybe? Chicago, someplace like that?”

“Denver. You knew her?”

“Barely. We traveled around some is all. Bit of fun.”

Veronica remembered the first boyfriend from Rachel’s letters, the guy she’d traveled to Delhi with the first time. “Are you Alex, by any chance?”

“I am.” He stepped back. “You’d best come in, then.”

They followed him into a courtyard overgrown with plants. A gray dog, quite old, sat panting by a set of stairs. The man sat and gestured for them to join him around a table inlaid with tile. Without asking, he poured them all water from a glass pitcher. “What’s this about? Is Rachel dead, then?”

It was such a bald question, but she supposed that was quicker. “Yes. She was killed just over a year ago in a shooting.”

“Jesus,” Alex exclaimed, his bright-blue eyes peering hard into her. “Bloody American shootings—they’re like a virus. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Veronica nodded. “She was a food writer, and left notes for a book on Parsi cafés, and to a lesser degree, cafés in general.”

He stroked his grizzled chin. “That tracks. She was never going to be a professor. Can I read her books?”

“Yes. I’ll leave you a list.” Veronica opened her notebook and scribbled Rachel’s name andThe Wonders of Spice, the book she was most known for. “We don’t know why she wrote your address down. Do you have any idea?”

“She quit drinking or something, have to go through her amends?”

“I don’t know. Henry?”

“Not that I know of, but maybe it was along those lines if that’s what occurred to you. Did she owe you an amends?”

He looked down, and the angle made him look quite a lot older. “I used to think so. We were in love, traveled all over India together. And then she met this girl and dropped me like a hot potato.”

That was an angle Veronica hadn’t considered, that Zoish might have been the love interest. But in the interest of keeping an open mind, she asked, “Were they lovers?”

“Nah. I mean, people weren’t out then the same way, but I don’t think so. They were friends, tight friends, but something happened, and they fell out in a big way. I saw Rachel just before she went home, and she wouldn’t even talk about it, said it was all too horrible. She was wrecked about it.”

“Something to do with the family of her friend?”

“Maybe. The girl wasn’t speaking to her.”

Veronica looked at Henry. “Do you remember the family name?”

“Nah. But they ran a café we all loved, Café Guli. It had been in the family for eighty years or something like that.” He paused, staring into the past. “They had this sandwich, abun maska, that we all loved so much. Rachel wasn’t all that careful with food—she’d eat street food and take a drink of water if someone offered it, saying you couldn’t be rude, but we all liked Café Guli. You could count on it.”

Henry laughed. “Never changed, either. And her daughter is back at theriadright now, nursing a case of food poisoning.”