Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (24 page)

As they were leaving, Bea told him she’d walk him back to the set, since her birth mother’s house was nearby and she was due over there soon. “I can’t believe I’ll be face-to-face with her, talking to her, in less than an hour.”

“I’d love to hear how it went,” Patrick said. “Tomorrow is nuts, all day, but maybe you can come by my trailer around one o’clock on Saturday for a quick lunch on the set. I can impress you with the craft services table.”

Bea smiled. “I’d like that.”

He smiled back and took her hand, the comfort of it, the warmth, startling her. Yup, she liked this guy.

As they approached the trailers, which had grown much busier since yesterday with people milling about and rushing around, a man’s voice called out, “Hey, people, Colin Firth is signing autographs in front of O’Donald’s Pub!”

A swarm of people ran toward the little pub, but the only person standing in front of it was an elderly woman who was feeding two seagulls from her bakery bag. She let out a yelp at the crowd racing toward her, and a man came out of the pub—also not Colin Firth—and jumped in between her and the
storming mass. “Watch it, people,” he shouted. “Don’t run the lady down.”

“Is Colin Firth in there?” a woman asked.

“The only Colin in O’Donald’s Pub is my drunk uncle visiting from Scotland,” the man said. “What’s this nonsense?”

Bea looked back at the guy who’d called out the Colin Firth sighting. Tall and very skinny and quite possibly a little bit drunk, the fortysomething man, who had a huge smile on his face, looked like the one who’d asked out Veronica at the diner. “Is he just yelling out random Colin Firth appearances to make people run around like crazy?”

Patrick glanced at him. “He must be, because Colin Firth is not even in the country. He’s not due here on set for at least a few days, maybe more.”

Bea barely had time to thank Patrick for dinner before three different staffers rushed to him with various emergencies.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, giving her a very quick and sweet kiss on the lips.

She smiled. “Until tomorrow.” She watched him hurry toward the field of wildflowers, where a group of people were crowding around one of the cameras.

Bea heard a loud snort, and then a familiar voice said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She turned around to find Tyler Echols sitting on a director’s chair next to his teenage sister, Maddy, who had
To Kill a Mockingbird
open on her lap but was looking everywhere except at the book.

“I don’t even know you,” Bea said. What was with this guy?

“Oh, hey, are you the one who knows everything about this book?” Tyler’s
sister said to Bea, holding up
To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Do you know who this Boo guy is?”

Bea smiled at her. “Boo Radley. He’s the town recluse in Maycomb. Because no one ever sees him, but everyone knows he’s been holed up in his family house from childhood, they come to all sorts of conclusions about him. Wrong conclusions. Boo ends up saving the day for the kids. His characterization has a lot to say about the harm of gossip, the harm of assumptions.”

Maddy sat up. “Really? I hate gossip. A few months ago, someone started a rumor about this girl at my school and she never came back after spring break. Maybe I’ll read a little more to get to the parts about him.”

Bea smiled. “It’s a great book. Honestly. The whole thing.”

“Omigod, is that Christopher Cade over there?” Maddy said, staring at the tall, handsome actor on the field, surrounded by people with headsets and clipboards.

“More reading, less star staring,” Tyler told his sister, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

Maddy rolled her eyes at him. “I already have his autograph anyway.” She went back to the book but stole peeks of the very good-looking twentysomething actor every few minutes.

Tyler had gone back to pretending Bea wasn’t standing a foot in front of him, so she glanced at her watch. She might as well start walking over to Veronica’s.

“Good luck with the book,” she said to Maddy, ignoring Tyler, and headed toward the harbor, her heart fluttering in her chest.

Bea stood on Veronica Russo’s little porch, staring at the red front door, at the doorbell, which she still hadn’t rung.

She glanced up at the sky and closed her eyes, thinking of her mother. She wondered how Cora Crane would feel about her standing on her birth mother’s door, about to ring the bell, about to meet the woman whom Cora had spent so many years hiding via omission. Her mother must have realized Bea would seek out her birth mother; she couldn’t suddenly have this truth sprung on her at age twenty-two and not do anything with it. She’d have gone crazy otherwise, wondering, speculating, imagining, turning the truth over and over in her mind. It was right that she was here. Yes, Cora Crane had kept that truth a secret, but in the end, she wanted Bea to know. Where it took Bea was up to Bea. She knew her mother had accepted that while she wrote the letter. Cora had needed peace. She touched the tiny gold heart locket necklace she never took off—her mother had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday—and now it felt as though her mother were here with her.

I love you, mama, she said silently up at the sky, dusk just beginning to darken the blue.

She pressed in the doorbell and held her breath.

The door opened and there was Veronica Russo, who gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

Veronica looked at Bea for the longest time. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “It’s so nice to meet you, Bea. I don’t think I’ve ever meant that phrase more in my entire life.”

Bea smiled. “I’m glad to meet you too.”

Bea tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t a carbon copy of Veronica, but she saw enough of herself
in her face, in her height, that she began looking for the details—the straight, almost pointy nose, the slightly too big mouth, the texture of the almost straight hair with its wave, if not the color. Veronica was beautiful. She wore a lavender shirt embroidered with silver along the neck, a white skirt with a flouncy hem, and low-heeled sandals. A few gold bangles were on one wrist, a bracelet watch on the other.

Bea had spent a good half hour pawing through the makeshift closet in her room, trying to decide what was appropriate to wear for a first date and for meeting your birth mother for the first time. She’d gone with her white skinny jeans and a silky yellow tank top.

Veronica ushered Bea into the living room, where a big square tray was set up on the coffee table, holding a pie, an ornate teapot, and cups. “Why don’t we sit on the sofa,” she said, gesturing for Bea to sit.

They sat on opposite edges, clasping and unclasping their hands. Bea put her hands underneath her thighs and glanced around the room. Cozy, homey. The sofa was plush velvet ecru with lots of colorful throw pillows, a matching love seat perpendicular. A crowded bookcase took up one wall, and a stone fireplace another. It was easier for Bea to look around than to stare at Veronica, which was what she wanted to do. Stare.

“I’ll be honest,” Bea said. “I’m at an advantage here because the adoption agency, where I got your contact information, told me where you worked. So I went to the Best Little Diner last Saturday, when I first arrived in town. I just wanted to see you from a distance, if that makes sense.”

Veronica seemed startled, but she said, “It does. I’m sure I
would have done the same thing.” She picked up the teapot. “Tea?”

Bea nodded and Veronica poured, and Bea noticed that Veronica’s hands were a bit shaky. Bea added a little cream and a sugar cube, and lifted the pretty cup to her lips just to have something to do with her own shaky hands. The smell of the Earl Grey was soothing.

When Bea looked up, Veronica was staring at her, but then she glanced away. “You can look,” Bea said. “I got to stare at you when I went to the diner. You’re more familiar to me than I am to you, physically, anyway.”

“You have my eyes,” Veronica said. “And height, of course.”

“The hair is my father’s?”

Veronica seemed to stiffen, unless Bea was reading into it. “Yes,” she said, glancing away.

No elaboration. Did she not want to talk about him? Had their relationship ended back when Veronica was pregnant? Had he stayed by her side through the pregnancy but stress tore them apart? Bea was so curious, but she sensed she should stick to Veronica herself right now, especially for the first meeting.

Bea took a sip of tea. “There’s so much I want to ask you, I hardly know where to begin. Can you tell me how old you were when I was born?”

“Sixteen. I turned seventeen just a month later.” Veronica set out two small plates on the coffee table. “Pie? It’s chocolate fudge.”

She doesn’t want to talk about herself, Bea realized. Bea sensed that Veronica would answer her questions, but her body
language, the stiffness of her shoulders, her tight expression, made it obvious that talking about this wasn’t easy.

“I’d love some pie,” Bea said. “I had your chocolate fudge pie at the diner the day I was there. That’s how I found out which waitress was you. One of the waitresses called to you by name and said your pies were to die for.”

Veronica smiled. “I’m kind of known for my pies in town.”

“I can understand why,” Bea said, taking a bite. “Delicious.”

Okay, I don’t want to make small talk about pies, Bea thought. I want to know who you are. Who you were. Where I came from—and why.

“Is Russo Italian?” Bea asked, figuring she’d stick to the reasonably neutral to start.

“Yes. My father’s family came from northern Italy, Verona, à la
Romeo and Juliet.
My mother’s family was Scottish.”

“And my biological father’s family?” she asked.

“Scottish too,” Veronica said. “I remember that because it was something we had in common. We were partnered on an ancestry project in high school. That’s how we started seeing each other.”

Italian and Scottish. Not a drop of Irish, as she’d always thought, like both Cranes. With her light blond hair, pale brown eyes, and pale complexion, Bea was often thought to be Scandinavian.

“How long were you dating?” Bea asked.

Veronica picked up her tea and took a sip. “Not long. Six months.”

“Were you in love?”

“I thought so,” Veronica said. “I was, anyway.”

Bea waited for her to elaborate, but Veronica gave Bea a tight smile and took another sip of tea.

Bea took a bite of her pie, then put her fork down. “How did your parents take the news? About your pregnancy, I mean.”

“Well, it wasn’t ideal,” Veronica said. “So they reacted the way many parents might.”

“They were upset?”

She nodded. “I was sixteen and my life as a typical high school junior was suddenly interrupted. They had a hard time with that. My parents had expectations for me, that I’d make them proud, go to college, build a career, get married, have children—in that order.”

“And my birth father,” Bea said, unable to stop herself from trying again. “Was he upset too?”

Veronica topped off her tea, even though her cup was practically full. She was stalling for time. “He was pretty shocked,” she finally said.

“Do you have a photograph of him?” Bea asked.

Veronica put down her teacup so quickly that Bea figured if she hadn’t, she might have dropped it. “I do. Just one. I kept it in a keepsake box, and there was one time during the pregnancy that I took out the picture and looked at it. And then I turned it over and put it on the bottom of the box and never touched it again.”

Bea bit her lip. She wouldn’t ask to see it right now. “He must have hurt you pretty bad, then.”

“Well, that’s in the past,” she said too brightly.

“Veronica, can I ask you something?” She seemed to be bracing herself. “Are you not saying too much about what life
was like for you back then because it’s painful to talk about? Or to protect me, maybe? To spare my feelings?”

“Maybe a little of both, but mostly the latter. This is your history, after all. And you’ve come all the way here to learn about it, where you come from. I’d like to give you the basics without the unnecessary gritty details.”

The gritty details were truth, though. And Bea wanted truth. Not sidestepping, not omission. Not anymore.

“I can handle it,” Bea said. She’d buried both her parents. She’d discovered—at twenty-two—that she’d been adopted. She could handle just about anything.

Veronica nodded. “It’s not easy for me to talk about my past, mainly because I don’t talk about it ever. I kind of had to put a lock and key on the subject twenty-two years ago or else I’d have gone crazy.”

“Because it was so painful?”

“My parents didn’t handle the news well. Your biological father didn’t either. And I was sent to a home for pregnant teenagers, where I didn’t have a single visitor in the seven and a half months I was there. Even that is a bit hard for me to say—I guess because I hate the idea of you having this in your head. That these blood relations of yours weren’t exactly . . . supportive.”

“You didn’t have anyone?”

Veronica shook her head. “I had an amazing grandmother—my father’s mother, Renata Russo. But she passed before I found out I was pregnant. She would have saved my life back then.”