by March, Mia
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 N
ick 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.
Chapter 3
GEMMA HENDRICKS
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.”
Right. The best. The best wouldn’t be let go, though, right? Alexander, to his credit, insisted “the best” had nothing to do with “upstairs” and their nutty decisions. Policy was stupid policy and he’d assured her any of the papers in the city would grab her up. Except they hadn’t. “Not hiring, sorry” was the refrain she’d heard from five newspapers. But then Alexander had started saying that getting laid off was a blessing in disguise, that it was time to start a family, to move on to the next stage of their lives.
She wasn’t even sure which had been more shocking—losing her job at New York Weekly or seeing the pink plus sign.
How had this happened? Gemma had taken her birth control pills like clockwork, at exactly seven o’clock every morning. Six weeks ago, she’d been prescribed an antibiotic for bronchitis, and when her doctor told her that antibiotics lessened the efficacy of birth control pills, she’d made Alexander use condoms, which elicited a deep sigh from her husband.
And now she was pregnant. One stupid condom that had torn. Whammo.
She wouldn’t tell Alexander until she came up with a solid plan to present to him, one strong enough that she could refute any argument of his. For two days she’d been working on it. They’d stay in the city. They would not move to Westchester—let alone to the same town as the overbearing Hendrickses. She’d send out a fresh batch of résumés to her second-choice news outlets. She’d find a great new job, work until the day before her due date, have the baby, then go back to work when the baby was three months old, a great day care or full-time nanny long arranged. She and Alexander would draw up a schedule of who would take off work for baby sick days and pediatrician appointments. For the past two days, when Gemma thought about it this way, she could at least breathe a bit easier, even if the part about the baby scared her to death. She had no idea how to be a mother, how to want to be a mother, how to want any part of motherhood.
But there was no way Alexander would say yes to any of her plan. For months now, all he talked about was wanting a completely different life: a baby, a house in the suburbs, a safe, sturdy car, like a Subaru, instead of their snazzy little Miata. According to Alexander Hendricks, they could be on their second child by now, like his brother, who had a two-year-old and another on the way. Alexander was sick to death of New York City—the crowds, the noise, the car alarms, the crazy cabdrivers, the subways. For the past six months, he’d been telling her “this isn’t all about you, there are two of us in this marriage.” She’d say the same back to him. Stalemate.
She glanced at her neighbor on her terrace, still blowing raspberries on little Jacob’s belly. But suddenly Jacob’s expression changed and his face got kind of red. Lydia laid him down on the padded chaise lounge and started moving his legs in bicycle formation. The baby stopped fussing.
How does she know what to do? Gemma wondered. Maybe it was as easy as Lydia always made it look. Maybe motherhood was about instinct.
But Gemma didn’t have any maternal instincts. And Lydia Bessell was no help in Gemma’s plan; the woman was a former Wall Street investment banker who wasn’t planning on going back to work. The Bessells had already found their dream home in Tarrytown and were moving at summer’s end. “See,” Alexander would tell Gemma, since he knew she generally liked and respected Lydia. “Even Lydia gave up her three-hundred-thousand-dollar salary to be a stay-at-home mom in the burbs. It’s the dream life, Gemma.”
Once Alexander knew she was pregnant, he’d take over. He suffocated her now? She couldn’t ev
en imagine how bad it would get. The hovering, the nagging, the constant calls. Did you, are you sure you, don’t forget to . . . The campaign for the life he wanted. Case closed.
“Gem, if you want to get to Maine before dark, you need to hit the road,” Alexander called from his home office. “It’s past eleven.”
She absolutely did need to hit the road. Alone in a car for seven blessed hours. Heaven. She could think, formulate her plan, her arguments. She could figure out how she felt about being pregnant in the first place. Right now, all she had was one emotion: panic.
As Gemma turned to go back inside, her neighbor’s mother, who visited practically every day, came out on the terrace. She beelined for the baby, scooping him up carefully in her arms and making more baby talk at him. Gemma’s heart squeezed as it always did; she couldn’t imagine ever sharing such a moment with her own mother, who was cold and kept to herself, always had. Even Alexander, who’d met some of the shadiest characters in his work as an assistant prosecutor for the state of New York, was taken aback by Gemma’s mother’s lack of warmth and social skills.
She went back inside the apartment and over to Alexander’s makeshift office that he’d created and hated, two pressurized walls that reminded him on a daily basis he didn’t have enough room and had to resort to fake walls. He was staring at his computer screen. For a moment she was startled, as she sometimes was when she looked at her husband, at how good looking he was—tall and muscular with all that sandy-blond hair and intelligent dark brown eyes that missed nothing.
She’d loved his overbearing ways when she’d first met him, loved how his family welcomed her on their third date as though they were already married, when Alexander had brought her over to meet the loud, opinionated Hendrickses. Unused to a happy, boisterous clan, she’d adored them all. During the first month they’d been dating, his mother had called her for her opinion on everything from what color shoes to wear with a brown dress to what she and Alexander’s father should get Alexander for his birthday. Gemma loved being drawn in by the Hendrickses, loved every minute of how overbearing they were with their thoughts and opinions and family get-togethers during the week for no reason at all. Her own family life had been so lonely, her mother a French professor who spoke French most of the time at home despite Gemma and her sister never quite picking it up, and her father a businessman who traveled during the week. When her parents divorced when Gemma was eleven, Gemma was almost relieved, thinking the dead silences would end, that both parents would suddenly become warm and loving in their separate homes, but that hadn’t been the case.