Page 98 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

“Tell me.”

“When I was in the middle of my divorce, I was trying to find a place to rent that would let me bring my dog, Sophie. She wasn’t that big, but she was a husky mixed with chow, and apartments don’t like those dogs, so I was having a hard time. She was very old, and I felt anxious about leaving her at the house—I just wasn’t sure anyone would give her the love I did.”

Something about the tone of her voice settled Mariah a little.

“She had a cold or something, coughing, and I took her to the vet, and they gave her some antibiotics, which had to be administered every four hours. She didn’t really like pills. Dogs don’t.” She shook her hair out of her face, her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. “A slice of cheese always did it, so I bought some American slices and gave my ex instructions. I called him regularly. I went over there every afternoon when Fiona—the girlfriend—wasn’t around.” She sucked her upper lip into her mouth. “And then I had training for a job in a call center, which—don’t laugh—I was desperate to land, and I had to work two days in a row, past the afternoon hour I was ‘allowed’ to visit my own dog.”

Mariah felt where it was going, this story, and she wanted to tell her to stop, but she wanted to hear, too.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve guessed. They didn’t give her the antibiotics regularly, and they weren’t paying attention well enough, and Sophie ...” Her voice cracked. “Died. Of something that shouldn’t have been fatal. They just neglected her and she died.

“So I went over there, and Fiona said it wasn’t the right time of day, so I took a brick out ofmygarden, and I started breaking windows.”

“What?” Mariah gasped.

“Yep.” She shook her head. “They were really great windows, too, leaded glass, some of them.” She brushed a tear away, turned her handover and took Mariah’s. “I managed to shatter most of the windows along the front porch and around one side before the police arrived.”

Henry sat beside Veronica on the other side. “And they arrested you?”

“Domestic violence. And I had to pay damages, too,” she said, a laugh escaping and turning into a painful sob she caught and swallowed, as if she wasn’t allowed even that moment of grief. “I had to take classes, and I’m still not allowed to come within a hundred feet of the house.”

“He deserved it,” Mariah said fiercely. “What a dick.”

“Yes.” She was quiet, looking into the distance. “The thing is, it didn’t bring Sophie back. And I’m still suffering the consequences of losing my temper. I know a dog is not the same as a mother, but I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in the violence you were feeling just now and the violence I felt that day.”

Mariah imagined Veronica, so proper and hungry for approval, in handcuffs. She still felt restless, the noise popping in her head every so often, but something about Veronica’s tone of voice centered her. Maybe the violence stemmed from helplessness.

Which made her think of the boy with the gun, the one she wanted to punish, and his violence. Had that come from helplessness, too?

She thought of Veronica, breaking windows methodically, being dragged away by the police. She raised her head. “I hate that that happened to you.”

“Thanks. The point is, I don’t want you to give yourself more trouble. You’ve had plenty, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. Thank you.”

On the way back to theriad, Mariah asked, “Did it feel good to break things?”

“It was very satisfying.”

Henry chuckled. The low, warm sound made all of them smile.

Chapter Forty-Five

Their clothes were in tidy stacks when they returned, freshly laundered and pressed. They all went to their rooms to repack and get things ready for the flight that evening. Veronica marveled at the delight of someone else doing her laundry, pressing and folding her blouses. Had anyone else done her washing since her mother died? She tried to remember a time and couldn’t.

Another moment of wonder. She smiled to herself.

Veronica went to Henry’s room. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course.”

His room was no less gorgeous than hers, the tiles here blue, the accents in pink velvet and yellow. Admiring the inlays on a lamp, she said, “Don’t you kind of wonder how beige and white became so popular? I keep looking at all this tile work, and it makes everything beautiful. Why are we in a season in America of painting everything white?”

He made apssshnoise, shrugged. “I’m not the design guy, but I hear you. Why not have some color?”

“In her letters, Rachel talks about semitrucks in India being painted and covered with flowers and wonders why that’s not done in the west.”

“Did she? That makes sense. She was definitely not a minimalist. You’ve been to the house, right?”