Page 87 of Look What You Made Me Do

Ella took the envelope she’d refused two years earlier. She’d instructed Sol to shred it and was exceptionally grateful he hadn’t.

“Your mother came to me about a year before she died,” Sol said, giving Ella the background she hadn’t wanted to hear at the time. “She’d had a premonition she wasn’t going to be around for much longer.”

Ella looked up from the envelope, surprised at the information. Of course, the good folk of Trently had had a few premonitions of their own, none of which involved the rather pedestrian heart attack that had killed Rachel at fifty-three. They’d been expecting a much stickier end.

Lord knew there were any number of scorned women who hadn’t shed a tear when the town tramp had collapsed in her front yard and not been able to be revived.

Sol steepled his fingers and pursed his lips. “There are things in there she desperately wanted you to know.”

Ella nodded, slipping it into her handbag. “Thank you.”

“Your mother was a good woman, Ella,” he said gently. “She always had the time of day for me and that can’t be said for everybody, even if I am the only lawyer in town.”

The affection in the older man’s voice was palpable and Ella was reminded that despite the way the town had painted her, Rachel had always possessed an innate kindness. It had been an easy fact to forget growing up in a community that hadn’t cared about the finer points of Rachel’s character.

But Jake obviously hadn’t forgotten nor had Sol Levy.

“She liked you a lot,” Ella murmured.

She stood then and Jake and Sol followed. But she didn’t know what to do next. She wanted to leave but wanted to hear more about her mother even as she shied away from the emotional baggage of it all. So she just stood there feeling awkward AF until Jake placed his palm on the small of her back.

“I think we’ll be on our way now,” he said to Sol.

The lawyer nodded. “Of course. Nice seeing you both.”

Ella stood in front of the non-descript tombstone, her warm breath misting into the cold air. There was just a name and two dates. No lament. No words to usher Rachel’s spirit into the afterlife.

No flowers either.

All around them, neatly kept graves boasted vases of freshly cut blooms. Only weeds grew where Rachel lay.

Trently would probably think that was fitting. In fact, Ella wouldn’t have put it past the town to deliberately infect her mother’s final resting place with such ugliness.

Rachel, who’d always had an eye for beauty, would have hated it.

Ella fell to her knees and started yanking at the scrawny weeds, her movements agitated as she clamped down hard on the rising block of emotion threatening to blind and choke her. The ground was cold, her hands colder as she plucked at the ground.

“Hey,” Jake murmured, kneeling beside her, one hand on her back. He placed his other hand over hers, stilling the frantic movements. “Let me do this. Why don’t you read the letter?”

Ella rested back on her haunches and looked at him. “She’d hate them.”

“I know.” And he took over where she’d left off.

Ella watched him for a moment or two before she slowly opened her bag and located the cream envelope. She turned it over a few times before summoning the courage to open it.

The paper was beautiful – expensive and delicately perfumed – so very, very Rachel. But the shock of seeing her mother’s flowery handwriting again rocked Ella and she was gripped with a sudden sense of foreboding.

“You’re never going to know unless you read it.” He stopped what he was doing and looked at her with calm green eyes. “I’m right here.” Then he returned to the job, throwing another weed in the pile near his right knee.

With a heavy heart, Ella settled cross-legged on the grass in a patch of sunlight and started to read.

My Darling Ella,

I guess if you’re reading this then the prayers of every spoken-for woman in Trently have been answered. They’ve had their rosary beads and voodoo dolls out for a lot of years and it’s nice to know, for them at least, that persistence pays dividends.

Don’t be mad at them, darling. Or at me, for that matter. You’re a long time dead so life shouldn’t be wasted on things that you can’t change.

I know you don’t understand why I do what I do. It was so much easier, darling, when you were little and would look at me with those huge blue eyes of yours and say, “You look so pretty, Mommy,” and not care about the whys.

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