Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (4 page)

Veronica just wanted to know that the daughter she’d given up was all right. Sometimes Veronica thought if she could just know that, she could move on. Her jagged heart would piece together, and her life would change. Could change, anyway.

So she’d come home, uncomfortable as it had been. Come home and tried to face her demons right away. Before she’d even started looking for a house to buy in town, she’d driven by the house she’d grown up in, a white saltbox that new owners had painted blue. She’d pulled over and felt sick to her stomach and got away from there fast. But she’d driven by several times, and each time she’d had less of a reaction. Same for the house the Macintosh family had lived in, the brick cape where she and Timothy had spent so much time. She’d even walked in the woods where she and Timothy had set up her old Girl Scouts tent, where they’d talk for hours about dreams, about leaving Maine right after high school and taking a Greyhound bus to Florida, where it was always warm and never snowed. That old tent was where a child had been conceived.

She’d tried to face her past, but she was obviously doing something wrong—not facing the right things, maybe—because she felt as unsettled in Boothbay Harbor as she had the day she’d moved back a year ago. She didn’t even know why. No one cared about what happened twenty-two years ago, except several folks who did remember her as the girl who’d gotten pregnant as a junior in high school, whose parents were so embarrassed they’d sent her away, sold their house and left town, left the state, leaving her behind to fend for herself. Two of those people who did remember had unfortunately signed up for Veronica’s pie-making class that started Monday night—Penelope Von Blun and CeCe Allwood, who’d gone to school with her and now led
perfect lives and fake-smiled at Veronica in town, then whispered behind her back. Veronica’s pie classes were popular; she’d taught four so far, but she limited the class to five students so that she could give individual attention to each baker. Ironic, since she’d spent most of the past year trying not to pay any attention to Penelope or CeCe.

Fitzwilliam Darcy’s face filled the TV screen. “If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you; you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on,” he was saying to Elizabeth, and Veronica felt something move in her chest the way she always did at this scene. God, he was intense. Intense with fierce love.

The doorbell rang, and Veronica pulled herself away from the kiss she’d been waiting the entire episode for. She wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron, took one last glance at the TV, and went to the front door.

Officer Nick DeMarco and his daughter, who Veronica would guess to be about nine, maybe ten. Veronica always thought of him as Officer DeMarco, even though they’d gone to school together their whole lives. Well, until junior year, anyway. He’d been friendly with Timothy, the boy who everyone knew had gotten Veronica pregnant. So Veronica had kept her distance from Nick, who seemed to keep something of a distance from her, as well. He was out of his police blues, wearing jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt. His daughter looked just like him. Same dark hair burnished with lighter brown, and dark brown eyes with long lashes. She had an elfin chin, though, and there was nothing elfin about Nick DeMarco.

“We’re not late, are we?” Nick asked, peering in behind her. His daughter looked up at Veronica expectantly.

“Late for what?” Veronica asked.

“The pie class,” he said.

Pie class? Nick DeMarco had definitely not registered for her class. If he had, even staring at Colin Firth for two hours the past four nights would not let her forget it. “Well, actually, you’re early. My pie class starts Monday night. Right time, wrong day. But I don’t have you on my registration list, do I?”

He winced. “I had your flyer in my back pocket for a week and kept meaning to call and then I figured we’d just show up.”

The girl looked like she was about to cry. “We can take your class still, right?” she asked Veronica.

Oh hell. The class was full. She had six people already and really did prefer to limit each four-week session to five students. Otherwise, there wasn’t enough of Veronica to go around and the class got too unwieldy. Too many elbows at the counters and table.

Officer DeMarco was staring at her, pleading with her to say yes, of course you can take my class, sweet girl.

“I happen to have a few slots open, so not a problem at all,” she said to his daughter.

She watched the girl relax and wondered why learning to make pie—and perhaps one of Veronica’s special pies—was so important to her.

“What’s your name, honey?” Veronica asked.

“Leigh. Leigh DeMarco. I’m ten.”

“Well, Leigh, you just turn up with your dad on Monday at six o’clock sharp and don’t forget to bring an apron.” One look from Nick told her that he didn’t have an apron.
“But if you don’t have one or forget, I just so happen to have extras.”

Leigh smiled and her whole face lit up.

“Is there a particular kind of pie you’re interested in making?” Veronica asked Leigh. “I’m planning on teaching apple pie for the first class, but I’ll have recipes for my special elixir pies available if anyone wants to work on one of those too.”

The girl glanced sideways at her father, then at the ground. “Apple pie is fine. I had a slice at the diner last week. It was really good.” It was obvious the girl had her mind set on a particular special pie but didn’t want to say in front of her father.

“Ah, yes, my apple crumb Happiness Pie,” Veronica said.

“I did feel happy when I was eating it,” Leigh said, but her shoulders slumped.

Nick ruffled Leigh’s hair. “Well, we won’t take up more of your time, Veronica. Sorry about the mix-up. We’ll see you Monday at six, then.”

He looked so uncomfortable that Veronica felt sorry for him. She was pretty good at reading people; it was how she earned her reputation with her pies. But Nick DeMarco was impenetrable beyond the obvious desire to leave. A cop requirement, most likely.

Just as Veronica turned the lock, the doorbell rang again.

This time, only Leigh DeMarco stood on the porch. Her father stood on the sidewalk. He held up a hand and Veronica nodded at him.

“Hi, hon,” she said to Leigh.

“I remembered what kind of special pie I want to learn to make,” Leigh whispered. “But I want to keep it secret, if that’s okay.”

“That’s okay.”

Leigh bit her lip and turned around, as if to make sure her father was out of hearing distance. “I want to make the kind of pie you made for Mrs. Buckman. She’s my neighbor. She invited me in for a snack after school last week and gave me a slice of the pie. She told me you made it for her special. She said it would make me feel better too.”

Veronica’s heart squeezed. The pie she’d made for Annabeth Buckman was a Spirit Pie, a shoofly pie, the only kind that seemed to work for Veronica when she wanted to feel close to her grandmother. Shoofly pie was nothing special, just molasses and a crumbly brown sugar topping, and rarely seen these days, but Veronica loved it. Her grandmother had grown up making shoofly pie during her family’s poorest times, and Renata Russo had said she’d be happy never to make a shoofly pie again as long as she lived and had access to fruit and good chocolate and other delectable ingredients. But one day, in those early weeks when Veronica had moved back to Boothbay Harbor and was so lonesome for her grandmother, she’d made a shoofly pie for the first time, and at the smell of the thick molasses and the crumb topping with its brown sugar, she felt like her grandmother was in the room. She felt her so close, felt her love, felt everything she’d say to Veronica now. God, how different life would have been had her grandmother been alive when Veronica had gotten pregnant. She would have kept the baby, most likely, instead of having to give her up for adoption. Her grandmother would have taken her in.

Focus on Leigh, she told herself, sucking in a quick breath.

“I know just the pie you mean, Leigh. It’s my Spirit Pie—a shoofly pie. When you make it or eat it, you think about the
person you want to feel close to. That’s how it works. Shoofly pie got its name long ago because it’s so sweet that it attracted flies while it cooled. So the bakers would say, shoo, fly! And it stuck.”

“Shoofly pie,” Leigh repeated. Then she nodded and turned to leave, then turned back again and said, “Thank you.”

Her mother, Veronica realized. Leigh must want to feel her mother’s presence. Veronica had heard that Nick DeMarco’s wife had died in a boating accident almost two years ago.

Oh, Leigh, Veronica thought, watching her slip her hand into her father’s as they started up Sea Road.

It would be no trouble at all to add the sweet girl to her class. Her father probably wouldn’t last past the first session. They were likely “doing something together,” and then he’d drop off Leigh at the next class and she wouldn’t have to be in such close quarters, like her kitchen, with Nick DeMarco, who clearly remembered her from school and knew she’d gotten pregnant and then mysteriously disappeared. Back then everyone had known she’d been sent to Hope Home, a residence for pregnant teenagers on the outskirts of town. The few friends she’d had had told her that everyone was talking about it and that Timothy Macintosh was telling people he wasn’t the father, that Veronica had slept around on him.

How did that still have the power to sting in the center of her chest? she wondered as she turned up the volume on the TV. Forget everything but
Pride and Prejudice
and Colin Firth’s face, she told herself. After all, she had an Amore Pie to make, and she had to be in a certain frame of mind to make that pie. She’d finish watching
Pride and Prejudice,
ogle Colin Firth, and then she’d get to work.

Ever since Gemma had seen the pink plus sign on her home pregnancy test two days ago, she’d been in a full-blown panic. She’d kept the news to herself. The second she told Alexander, he’d grab her up in a crushing hug, swing her around the room, then call his family, order celebratory cigars by the truckload, and set the plan in motion that would slowly suck the life out of Gemma’s soul.

Because she’d lost her job last week—a job she’d loved so much that she still got teary before she went to sleep every night—Gemma knew that Alexander, an assistant prosecutor, would use all his considerable skill to make his argument, the argument he’d been making for almost a year now: to get started on the three children he wanted, move to the same Westchester County town as his parents and brother’s family, preferably equidistant between their two homes, and Gemma would be a stay-at-home mom, hosting playdates. “We’re twenty-nine, for God’s sake, Gemma,” Alexander constantly said. “Married five years. We’re grown-ups.”

Gemma gripped the railing of their apartment balcony, high above the streets of Manhattan on the eighteenth floor. A minute ago, she’d been okay. She’d been sitting on her bed with her laptop, making final arrangements with her friend June
about what time she’d arrive in Maine tonight for their mutual friend’s wedding tomorrow night. Then ping, ping, ping. Seven e-mails from Alexander’s mother. House listings in Dobbs Ferry, each annotated with Mona Hendricks’s thoughts and feelings on every room, paint choices, landscaping, and a bit about the neighbors, since Mona had made it her business to scope them out in advance.

Good God. She’d been fine until that moment. Just knowing she was about to get in a car and drive to Maine for a girls’ weekend, a weekend away from Alexander, who suffocated her (just wait until she told him she was pregnant; he’d be unbearable), Gemma had managed to calm herself, the panic abating a bit. Then the e-mails came from Mona, with a vision of the life Alexander would try to force her into, and Gemma had escaped to the balcony to gulp in air.

Oh no. Now the Bessells, who lived in the apartment next door, had come out onto their terrace with their infant, Jakey. Jakey-Wakey this, Jakey-Wakey that. Gemma heard the Bessells cooing at their baby all night long. “Jakey-Wakey needs his dipey-wipey changed!” Even at three in the morning, the Bessells always seemed thrilled to be awake and dealing with poop.

Lydia Bessell held up Jakey clad only in a diaper, blowing raspberries on the baby’s bare belly as John Bessell pretend-nibbled one tiny foot. Jacob gurgled his delight.

She full-out stared at them, trying to imagine herself with a baby, but she couldn’t. She was meant to be a reporter, writing award-winning articles about life in a Brooklyn housing project, or about the effect of Hurricane Sandy on families on a particular block in Far Rockaway. She was supposed to be out there,
getting the who, what, where, and why, and writing articles that generated hundreds of letters and comments. She was a reporter, had been a reporter from the moment she’d stepped into the school newspaper office as a high school freshman. It was all she’d ever wanted to do, find the truth, share people’s real feelings, let readers know what was really happening out there from a personal perspective. But all her hard work, all the paying of dues, all the promotions, the writing around the clock to make insane deadlines—all that came down to being called into her boss’s office last week at
New York Weekly,
a long-running, respected alternative newspaper where a byline meant something. She’d been let go. Let go with, “I’m so sorry, Gem, I fought for you, but times are tough, and upstairs said anyone who’d been on staff less than five years had to be first to go on this round of layoffs. Someone will snap you up fast, Gemma. You’re the best.”