by March, Mia
“Everyone says making piecrust is so difficult,” Isabel said. “But this was easy.”
Penelope wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron. “I’m so glad I signed up for this class. I think I’m going to bake a few pies a week for the senior citizens center.”
Okay, Veronica really liked this new, nice Penelope. “Now, let’s wrap the dough in plastic and let it chill for thirty minutes while we work on the filling.”
“Wait, I wasn’t really thinking about my mom while I was adding the flour to the bowl,” Leigh said, her face crumpling. “Now the pie won’t work for me.”
“No worries,” Veronica said, aware of Nick’s eyes on her. “Remember, I make Spirit Pies for other people. They sit down with their pies and think about who they want to feel close to. So it works if you make the pie or if you don’t. But in our case, since we’re making the pie, we’ll each think about who we want to feel close to as we’re making the filling.”
Leigh brightened. Nick looked uncomfortable. Penelope seemed relieved. Isabel and June were the only two that seemed to be enjoying themselves. Because they’re at peace with their losses, with their grief, Veronica understood.
Veronica assigned everyone an ingredient for the filling. “Now, as you pour your ingredient into the mixing bowl, think about the person you want to feel close to—you can just picture them, think of a memory, anything that reminds you of them, and close your eyes.”
Veronica watched Leigh dump in the baking soda as slowly as she could, her expression a combination of happiness, sorrow, and determination. Nick added the brown sugar so fast Veronica almost missed it. Isabel put in the butter, and Veronica showed Leigh how to whisk it together, then June poured in the egg. Penelope stood before the bowl and, as she added the vanilla extract, she closed her eyes for a moment as though she was praying, and Veronica couldn’t help but wonder whom she was thinking about. Perhaps she’d offended a friend or a relative and was hoping to be forgiven. Leigh poured the molasses and whisked it again.
“I feel her hand around mine!” Leigh yelped, glancing around. “I feel my mom’s hand!” She stood very still and started to cry, and Nick put his arm around her.
“Leigh? Are you okay?” he asked.
“I felt her hand around mine,” she said again, and even though she was crying, her face held an almost joyous wonder.
Nick squeezed her shoulder and kissed the top of her head, but he was looking out the window.
Veronica added the boiling water to smooth out the filling, startling herself for a moment because it wasn’t her grandmother’s sweet face that came to mind.
It was the baby girl she’d given up for adoption. Veronica had only held her for two minutes, and in those two minutes, Veronica had fantasized about breaking out of the ambulance, where it had been parked at Hope Home, and making a run for it with the baby. But as she’d looked at that beautiful little face, the three-quarters-closed eyes and wisps of blond hair, just like Timothy’s, she was reminded that she had nowhere to go and no way to provide for her child. Her parents had disowned her. Her boyfriend had insisted it wasn’t his baby. And her grandmother, the only person who’d ever been her rock, was almost a year gone by then. With no support from anyone, how could Veronica hope to support a child, emotionally and financially? When the EMT guy gently took the baby back to tend to her, Veronica had squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away, reminding herself over and over that the baby wasn’t hers, really hers, and that she was doing the right thing, the best thing for the baby.
The right thing. How many times had she heard that phrase, over and over and over. Not from the staff at Hope Home, who knew better than to throw around platitudes that weren’t necessarily true. But from strangers. Visiting parents. Anyone she told her story to. You’re doing the right thing. You did the right thing.
I did the only thing I could do, Veronica had thought then.
Over the years, she rarely tried to imagine what her daughter looked like. At birth, the hair might have been Timothy’s, but the face was Veronica’s. The eyes, even just a quarter opened, were Veronica’s. Same with the nose. Maybe the chin and something about the shape of the face were Timothy’s. Veronica liked kids fine, but she tended to keep her distance. Playgrounds made Veronica feel unsettled. Parents walking hand in hand made her feel like she’d once had something and then didn’t, not lost exactly, but just gone. Veronica went to the sink, ostensibly to wash her hands, but really to close her eyes for a moment and let this feeling pass. But it didn’t pass. The baby’s face came to mind again, the feel of that tiny weight in her arms, against her chest. She felt it now, as though she were right back in that ambulance.
Since she’d been back in Boothbay Harbor this past year, she’d have strange dreams about Hope Home and the night she gave birth, quite unexpectedly, in the ambulance. The baby had started coming and that was that; there was no time to get her to the hospital safely, and the EMT guy with the kind face had delivered the baby. Veronica had been having odd bits of dreams, pieces of experience, but she never let herself think too much about the baby girl or where she might be or what she really might look like. It was too painful, and Veronica had learned at sixteen how to tamp those thoughts down so she didn’t fall apart. Maybe these sudden thoughts about the baby while making the pie were about all those bits coming together. Maybe subconsciously, she did always think about the baby.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t feel anything,” Penelope said, worrying her lower lip.
“I’m not sure that I felt my parents’ presence,” Isabel said, “but I did think about a memory I haven’t thought about in a long time, a really good memory.”
“I did too,” June said to her sister. “The seven of us—you and me, Mom and Dad, and Aunt Lolly and Uncle Ted and cousin Kat. Christmas at the inn when we were really little, and that stray cat Lolly took in unraveled all the garland from the tree and then got her nails caught and brought the whole tree down.”
Leigh laughed. “Was your aunt mad?”
“She was at first,” Isabel said. “But our uncle Ted was laughing so hard because the cat finally found his way out of the tree and had garland around his tail. That cat lived a good long life as the inn mascot.”
“Daddy, who were you thinking about?” Leigh asked.
All eyes turned to Nick. “My grandfather,” he said quickly, and Veronica had a feeling he hadn’t been thinking about anyone in particular. “You would have loved Great-grandpa DeMarco.”
Leigh smiled. “Will you show me pictures when we get home?”
Nick nodded, and she put her hand in his.
The filling for the shoofly pie was done, and now it was time to take the piecrust out of the refrigerator and roll it out. Everyone gathered around the island as Veronica demonstrated, and then she gave the rolling pin to Nick, who looked as if he needed something to do. Once the pie tin was laid out and the pie filled, Veronica got them started on the crumb topping, just some brown sugar, flour, cold butter, and salt.
“Can I talk to you privately?” Penelope said to Veronica as she watched over Leigh gently breaking the mixture into a crumbly texture.
“Sure,” Veronica said. “Everyone, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Leigh, just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Veronica led the way to her office and shut the door behind Penelope for privacy.
“It didn’t work for me,” Penelope said. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Were you thinking about the person you want to feel close to?” Veronica asked. “I know you said this was a living person.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, frustration and anger evident. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about her so much as I’m thinking about what I want to happen. Does that make sense?”
“I thought you said you wanted to feel closer to this person.”
Penelope pushed a swatch of her wavy brown hair behind her ear. The diamond ring above he
r diamond-encrusted wedding band was the biggest one Victoria had ever seen. “I just want this person to like me. That’s all.”
Okay, this was weird and Veronica had no idea what Penelope was getting at or what she could possibly be talking about. “Well, do you like this person?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. But I need her to like me. I thought I could take your class and learn to make one of your special pies that I hear people talk about all the time. Hope Pie or whatever. But when Leigh brought up the Spirit Pie, I thought maybe it would work for this too. I don’t believe in this nonsense, Veronica. But I’m not religious and outside of a genie coming along and granting me my greatest wish, I’m stuck and will try anything.”
“Stuck wanting something that you’re worried won’t happen because you’re not sure this person likes you?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
Veronica had no idea of the particulars, but there was true desperation in Penelope’s eyes.
“I’ll give you my recipe for my Hope Pie,” Veronica said. “Maybe that’ll help. Make it at home and put all the force of your wish into it. I’m planning to make one later for myself.”
Penelope glanced at her, as though surprised Veronica could want something. “I’ll try it.”
“Is this why you took the class? For the recipe?”
“Among other reasons,” Penelope said.
“Veronica,” Leigh called. “The oven dinged. Preheating is done.”
“Coming!” Veronica called back.
“Let’s go put the pie in the oven,” she said to Penelope. “I’ll be spending the remaining class time going over techniques, and each student will work independently on a piecrust. You can try again at the feeling you’re after with this person.”
Penelope nodded and looked away. There was defeat in her face now.
“And Penelope, if you need to, you can call me. For whatever reason.”
Penelope glanced at her. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
A few minutes later, the brown sugar crumb topping was over the pie and it was in the oven, and everyone was making their own piecrusts as practice. The class was going well. Nick and Leigh were laughing about the dusting of flour on Nick’s cheek and in Leigh’s hair. June and Isabel were chatting away about family memories. And Penelope was forming her dough into a ball, much too roughly, as though she were trying to force the feeling again, forge a bond where maybe none existed. Veronica reminded her to be gentle or the dough would be too tough. And then again, out of nowhere, Veronica felt the strangest sensation of a tiny weight in her arms.
Chapter 9
GEMMA
Gemma sat on the porch swing of the Three Captains’ Inn with her laptop, typing up her notes from her visit to Hope Home earlier that day. She had about ten minutes left before Bea would arrive for the introduction to Isabel about the job in the kitchen. Gemma was glad she’d recorded her interview with Pauline Lee and had taken notes; there was so much to digest, and each answer she got from Pauline had elicited more questions. Of the seven residents at Hope Home right now, one was keeping her baby, four were going the adoption route, including the two girls whose conversation with Bea had spiraled out of control, and two were undecided, including a newly pregnant seventeen-year-old with a college scholarship who was considering terminating the pregnancy.
The seven girls at Hope Home came from all over; two girls were from New York, four others from the New England states, including one from right here in Boothbay Harbor, and one came all the way from Georgia. According to Pauline Lee, none of the girls had intended to become pregnant. Two girls, caught up in the moment, had been assured when their partners said they would “pull out,” so they “had nothing to worry about.” Another used no birth control at all, having heard that a woman could only get pregnant at a certain time of the month, and she was sure it wasn’t that time for her. Two others were careless with remembering to take their birth control pills. And two others had reported that their partners had used condoms, but that they had broken.
Gemma could attest to a broken condom causing an unexpected pregnancy.
She’d lost her own virginity at sixteen to her high school boyfriend, a cute, driven fellow reporter on the school newspaper who’d unfortunately taken “getting the story at all costs” to new heights and become very unpopular. They’d been a couple for over a year when Gemma had had enough of his relentless determination to put the story above people’s feelings; that was a line Gemma had never—and would never—cross as a reporter.
She’d asked her boss at New York Weekly if that was the real reason she’d made the list of those being let go, and he’d hemmed and hawed and said most of the time, in the types of stories she covered, people came first anyway. But there had been a time when Gemma was expected to hound a woman who’d recently lost her soldier son for reaction to a controversy surrounding his death, and Gemma had refused. Another newspaper had gotten the shot of the grieving, angry woman, who’d refused to talk to reporters anyway. But Gemma’s refusal to bother the woman had been noted.
There were questions she didn’t want to ask for the article on Hope Home either. Questions she wouldn’t ask, ones that were too personal and no one’s business. There was a line, and Gemma tended to know what it was. Her high school beau hadn’t believed in that line, and her admiration of him had turned to disdain.
And if she’d gotten pregnant then? If the condom had broken at sixteen instead of at twenty-nine? What would she have done?
She didn’t know. But the thought that went through her mind was: There but for the grace of God go I.
Because you were having sex in the first place, she heard her older sister say, as though Anna were sitting right next to her. Once, when Gemma was sixteen and worried that she might be pregnant because her period was almost a week late, Anna, home from college for Christmas break, had said almost exactly that. If you weren’t having sex, you wouldn’t have to worry about being pregnant. Don’t do the thing, and you won’t be the thing. It’s that simple.
Nothing was really ever so simple, Gemma thought. Absolutes, maybe. But not emotions.
Gemma’s phone rang and she grabbed for it, hopeful that it was the director of Hope Home. Pauline had promised to ask a few of the residents if they’d be willing to speak to Gemma to be interviewed and quoted in her article.
But it wasn’t the director. It was Mona Hendricks, her mother-in-law. Gemma sighed and answered. She could picture fifty-six-year-old Mona, with her curly brown bob and multicolored reading glasses on a beaded chain around her neck, working on an elaborate recipe like beef bourguignon in her kitchen, which was bigger than Gemma’s living room.
“Gemma, what’s this I hear about you staying up in Maine for the week?” Mona asked. “Is there trouble between you and Alex?”
Did all mothers-in-law ask such nosy, personal questions?
“I came up for a wedding and since I lost my job, I figured I’d extend my visit with my girlfriends. I don’t get to see them much.”
“Well, you won’t get to see Alexander much three hundred miles away either,” she said. “When are you coming home—I want to make an appointment with a Realtor I’ve heard great things about. There are two new houses on the market I think would be perfect for you and Alexander. One is a Colonial with—”
“Mona, I’m sorry to cut you short, but my friend just arrived, so I need to go. Talk soon. Bye.” It was a waste of Gemma’s breath to remind Mona that she didn’t want to leave New York City. Mona didn’t hear her, didn’t care how she felt. All the Hendrickses thought she was wrong and selfish for wanting to stay in the city.
Gemma might have felt guilty for practically hanging up on her mother-in-law, but Bea had indeed pulled into the driveway. She’d changed out of her jeans and T-shirt into a pretty cotton dress and ballet flats, her light blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. There was something about Bea that made Gemma feel protective. Bea was all alone in the world and was dealing with an
emotionally heavy situation. While Bea had been telling Gemma her story, about receiving the deathbed confession letter—a year later—from her late mother, Gemma wondered how she’d feel if she’d received a letter like that. I didn’t give birth to you. We adopted you. But there was a big difference between Bea’s mother, whom Bea had described as mother of the year, twenty-one years strong, and Gemma’s mother, who Gemma was pretty sure suffered from some kind of dissociative disorder. Gemma would read that letter, addressed to herself, and want to think ah, yes, now it makes sense, no wonder, she wasn’t really my mother. But motherhood didn’t work like that—that much Gemma was sure of. Motherhood wasn’t about who gave birth to you, who adopted you, who raised you. It was about love, commitment, responsibility. It was about being there. About wanting to be there.
It’s not that I don’t want to be there, she directed toward her belly. It’s just that . . . I don’t seem to want this—motherhood—the way I want my career back. I know that’s awful. Because I’m going to be a mother in seven and a half months.
You sound like Mom, she blasted herself, and again felt that icy squeeze in her heart.
“Hey,” Bea said as she came up the steps. “I can’t thank you enough for offering to introduce me to the inn manager. I don’t know if it’ll work out, since I don’t know how long I can promise to stay.”
“Well, let’s go find Isabel. I let her know that I met someone who might be perfect for the kitchen job, and she said to just come find her when you arrived. I’ll cross my fingers for you.”
They found Isabel, her baby strapped to her chest, refilling maps and brochures on the sideboard in the foyer. She extended her hand to Bea and introduced herself and baby Allie.
Gemma stared at the baby, again trying to imagine herself multitasking like this with a baby strapped to her chest. How did Isabel make it look so easy when it couldn’t be?