Finding Colin Firth: A Novel

by March, Mia

  Her doorbell rang, and she startled at the sight of his police hat on the counter next to the bowl of apples. She hadn’t even noticed he’d left it behind. And Veronica usually noticed everything.

  She assumed it was him and went to the door with the hat in her hand to save him from having to come in and wait for her to get it; he clearly needed some time and space, and she’d give it to him.

  She opened the door and there he stood.

  “I usually don’t go around leaving my hat in people’s kitchens,” he said with a brief smile.

  “I—”

  The phone rang, and Veronica ignored it, letting her answering machine pick it up. She was about to offer Nick the other half of his coffee in a travel cup when a woman’s voice began leaving a message.

  “Hello, Veronica?” the melodic voice said into her machine. “My name is Bea Crane. I was born on October twelfth, 1991, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I’m here in Boothbay Harbor, staying at the Three Captains’ Inn. I’d like to meet you, if you’re open to that. You can reach me on my cell at 207-555-1656. Bye for now.” Click.

  Veronica went still, heard herself let out a strange sound, and dropped the hat on the floor. She stood there, in some kind of daze, aware that Nick was kneeling at her feet, picking up the hat and staring at her. Then he was leading her to a chair in her living room and helping her sit down.

  “Veronica? Are you all right?”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. The baby. Her baby. The daughter she’d given up for adoption.

  She’d called.

  Veronica started crying and stood up, then sat down, then stood up.

  Nick stood beside her. “Veronica?”

  “I—” she began, but words wouldn’t come. She stood there, sobbing, and then felt arms, strong arms, around her. She let herself slump into them and cried, unable to stop, unable to speak. Finally, she began sucking in air and calming down. “It’s— it’s . . .”

  “The child you placed for adoption?” He sat in the chair next to hers. “What she said, and the birthdate . . . I just put two and two together.”

  She closed her eyed and nodded. She hadn’t been wrong that he remembered. “I’ve always updated the file at the adoption agency so she’d be able to find me when and if she wanted. I’ve been waiting for this day since she turned eighteen. She’s twenty-two now. I can’t believe it.”

  “I should go, give you some privacy to call her back.”

  “Actually, I think I’m glad I’m not alone right now. It’s such a shock. I guess I lost some hope that I’d ever hear from her.” Bea Crane. Her baby was named Bea Crane. Her voice was lovely. She sounded so polite and kind. Tears started stinging the backs of Veronica’s eyes again.

  Nick went into the kitchen and returned with the box of tissues she kept on the counter. He handed her a tissue and sat back down. “Can I get you a glass of water? Anything?”

  She shook her head. “You and . . . Timothy were friends back then, right?” she blurted out. She sucked in a breath. She hadn’t even meant to ask.

  He nodded. “He is the father?”

  “Yes. I know he told everyone he wasn’t. But he definitely was. There was no one but him. I had quite a reputation for a girl who was a virgin before I met him.” She shook her head. “All in the past.”

  “To tell you the truth, I feel a bit like that now with my in-laws. They think I’m this terrible jerk when it couldn’t be farther from the truth. And now I’m letting them push me around? Over pie?”

  He was giving her an out, to change the subject, to tell him to go. But she was glad he was here, strangely enough. The connection to her past, to Timothy even, seemed more of a comfort than anything else. She’d always been so alone with thoughts of that very lonely, confusing time when she’d been sixteen. When she’d had the baby, alone in an ambulance with an EMT who’d been thankfully very kindhearted. She’d been alone with the memory of handing that baby back and never laying eyes on her again. Twenty-two years was a long time to be alone with those thoughts.

  “At sixteen I let everyone push me around, I guess,” she said. “I didn’t know how to stand up for myself, how to make people believe me.”

  “I try hard to teach my daughter that she has to believe in herself, that that’s how it works. You believe in yourself, and to hell what anyone thinks.”

  She nodded. “You’re a good father, Nick. Her grandparents must know that.”

  “Sometimes people see what they want.”

  That was terribly true, Veronica thought.

  “For the past twenty-two years—actually, from the day I was sent away to Hope Home, I kind of shut my eyes to everything. I tried so hard not to think about what I’d left behind—my parents, who wanted nothing to do with me. The boyfriend I’d lost, like that,” she said, with a snap of her fingers. “The future I envisioned for myself. Back then, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have something so vital in the back of my mind, always there, something that had changed my life yet wasn’t a part of it going forward. I had to tamp everything down so it wouldn’t feel real.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Too well,” she said. “I’ve spent so much time trying not to feel anything.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “But now here your daughter is, very real, asking to meet you.”

  “It feels wrong to think of her as my daughter. I didn’t raise her. I wasn’t her family.”

  He squeezed her hand.

  Veronica bit her lip. “I could pick up the phone right now and in a second I’ll be talking to her. To Bea Crane. I can’t believe it. I wonder who she is, what she’s like, what she looks like.”

  “Are you going to call her back tonight?”

  Suddenly she didn’t know. She couldn’t actually imagine just picking up the phone and calling Bea back. She wasn’t sure she could handle it. “I just want to sit with it for a bit. It’s more shocking than I thought it would be.”

  He stood up. “I’ll let you have your privacy then. I need to get going, return the squad car. Maybe Leigh and I will be here Monday for the pie class. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

  “Do what feels right,” she said. “Actually,” she added, “do what you need to do.”

  “You too,” he said, and then was gone again.

  Two hours later, Veronica sat at the kitchen table, looking from the landline phone she’d pulled over to anywhere else. She wasn’t ready to make this call. At first she’d planned to call Bea from her bedroom, thinking she’d feel safe and comfortable reclining on her bed against the array of soft pillows and all her familiar things and keepsakes, but she’d realized she needed to be in her kitchen, among her pie plates and the faint smell of chocolate and caramel in the air. A fresh mug of coffee sat untouched in front of her, next to the phone.

  Bea Crane. Here, in Boothbay Harbor.

  She’d known Bea Crane for nine months and two minutes, and now here she was, no longer that six-pound weight she’d held against her chest, but a grown woman of twenty-two. She tried to envision Bea—did she look like Veronica? Like Timothy? A combination of both? She had no doubt Bea was tall; Veronica was five feet ten, and Timothy was over six feet. She wondered if Bea had gotten Timothy’s fine, thick, light blond hair, that beautiful fine-spun hair all the Macintoshes had had.

  She’s going to ask about him too, Veronica knew. Was she supposed to tell Bea the truth about everything? How she’d been treated by her family? By Bea’s biological father? That she had no idea where Timothy Macintosh or his family was now? Veronica could give her own brief history, of course, but she couldn’t imagine telling a curious twenty-two-year-old the more painful circumstances of her birth. She would tell Bea that she’d been sixteen and she’d placed her for adoption to give her the best possible life. That was true after all, and that was what she’d tell Bea. Veronica didn’t have to tell her what her mother had said, what her mother had called her. Or how Timothy had screamed
at her and walked away. She wouldn’t tell Bea any of that.

  She stared at the phone.

  They would talk. A bit of small talk. They would meet for coffee or lunch or dinner. They’d talk about their lives. Bea would probably want to know her medical history, and Veronica could provide that, what she knew, of course. But then what? What would they talk about? They would be like strangers with the most fundamental thing connecting them.

  Just call her back already, Veronica told herself, picking up the receiver, but her hand started trembling and she waited. She found herself wishing Nick hadn’t left; he’d encourage her to press in the numbers, top off her coffee, tell her to go ahead.

  She’d memorized the phone number. She pressed it in, slowly.

  It rang twice. Then: “Veronica?”

  She sucked in a breath and went still. “Yes. Hello.”

  Silence for a second, and then, “Hello.”

  Okay, they were both nervous. “I’m glad you called,” Veronica said. “I was hoping you’d call.”

  “The adoption agency said you updated the file every time you moved, so I felt comfortable calling.” Bea’s voice, the cadence, was so different from Veronica’s. “I’m glad you’re glad.” Silence. “Oh God, I sound like an idiot already.”

  Veronica laughed. “No. Not at all. I’m as nervous as you are.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time,” Veronica said. “Hoping to meet you again, know that you were okay.” I wasn’t supposed to think about you. I told myself not to. My friends at Hope Home told me not to, that it was the only way to get through. But as much as I locked down memories of you, I’ve thought about you every day. If you were happy. If your parents were loving.

  On your birthday, every year, sometimes I’d be unable to get out of bed, but then I’d think of you blowing out the candles on your birthday cake, and I’d feel better . . .

  “I am okay.”

  “Good,” Veronica said. “That’s what I wanted to know most of all.”

  “Should we meet?” Bea asked.

  Veronica felt her heart swell, and tears pricked her eyes. “I’d like that.”

  “I’m just not sure how this is supposed to go,” Bea said, “how it’s supposed to feel. I don’t know anything,” she added, and her voice sounded so strained.

  Given how nervous Bea sounded, perhaps she would feel more comfortable coming over to Veronica’s house, getting an outward glimpse of who she was, instead of sitting in a neutral coffee shop or restaurant, aware of people at nearby tables listening to their conversation. Veronica could set up a nice tea for the two of them and bake a pie, a Happiness Pie.

  “I’d much rather come to your house,” Bea said when Veronica gave her the choice.

  Again, Veronica tried to picture Bea. Would she look like a younger version of herself? Would she share some of Veronica’s traits? Her likes and dislikes? She didn’t know all that much about the ways of nature versus nurture, but she figured that at the least, Bea would look something like her. Veronica had been a waitress more than half of her life; except for her pie baking, she didn’t even know what she might excel at, what she wasn’t much good at. She couldn’t hit a tennis ball, and she was no math wiz, but she read a lot, could spend every night watching a movie, and she did like to travel. God, she’d bore Bea to death tomorrow with who she was.

  “Tomorrow, evening? I won’t be home until around six or seven o’clock. I could make dinner, or if you’ll have already eaten, I can make a pie.”

  Bea was silent for a few seconds. “I have early dinner plans, but I figure I could be over by eight, if that works.”

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow night, it is.”

  And just like that, the baby girl she’d held against her chest for less than two minutes on an October night would be knocking on her door tomorrow.

  Chapter 12

  GEMMA

  The tap on her door at the Three Captains’ Inn startled Gemma. She glanced up from her laptop on the small desk by the sun-filled window to the clock: it was just past nine in the morning. She got up reluctantly; she’d been working from the moment she’d woken up two hours ago and hadn’t even been down to breakfast, but was on a good roll. The first few paragraphs of her article on Hope Home, its history, some statistics then and now, were done, opening up to the long middle of the piece, which would focus on human interest—past residents, current residents. True stories.

  Gemma stretched her arms above her head on the way to the door. When she opened it, Bea Crane stood there, looking like she might burst.

  “I did it,” Bea said. “I called my birth mother last night. We’re meeting tonight at her house.” She lifted her hands in front of her. “I’m shaking.”

  Gemma squeezed Bea’s hand. With Bea’s blond hair pulled into a ponytail, her pretty face free of makeup, she looked so young. “What was the call like? Oh, gosh—I must sound like the nosy reporter here. I’m asking as a friend. Remember to just say this is off the record, and everything you tell me will be private.”

  “Use whatever you want for your article,” Bea said. “Except for Veronica’s name, of course. Though for all I know, she’d be happy to talk to you and give her perspective.”

  “That would be so great if she would,” Gemma said. “Of course, I don’t expect you to show up at her house and say, ‘Nice to meet you. Want to repeat all of this to a reporter writing an article on Hope Home?’ ”

  Bea smiled. “Definitely not. But I will bring it up. She should know I’m talking to a reporter about her, even if her name isn’t used.”

  Gemma hoped Bea’s birth mother would be open to talking to her for the article. The dual perspectives of a birth mother from Hope Home, and the daughter she placed for adoption making contact, a first meeting—it would add so much to the article. But Bea and her birth mother were meeting for the first time tonight—Gemma wouldn’t expect to talk to Veronica, if at all, for days. It all depended on what kind of person Veronica was, how open to sharing her story she was.

  “If you need someone to talk to, as a friend, just knock or call, okay? Even if you just need a little reassurance before you head over to her house tonight.”

  “I appreciate that,” Bea said. “I’d better get back to work—the kids from the Osprey Room had a little oatmeal-flinging war in the dining room.” She smiled and then dashed down the stairs.

  Gemma closed the door, her thoughts whirling about the meeting Bea and Veronica would have, the emotion that would be in that room tonight. Bea’s story was so heart tugging. If Gemma could get her birth mother’s side for the article . . .

  Gemma grabbed her phone and called Claire, her editor at the Gazette, and explained that she might have the opportunity to talk with a birth mother and her birth daughter who were reuniting, get both their perspectives, and maybe she should take an extra couple of weeks for the article since Claire didn’t officially need it until mid-July.

  “No problem on the time,” Claire said. “I really don’t need it until July eighteenth to run it the Sunday before the fiftieth anniversary, which is July thirtieth. So take your time. I’d rather have a really full, knockout piece, and perspectives like the ones you’re getting are exactly what I had in mind.”

  Perfect, Gemma thought, sentences of her article forming themselves in her mind. She’d really have the time now to develop her story, go deep, write the heck out if it.

  She was supposed to go home tomorrow, but she’d just given herself an extra couple of weeks here, she realized. Because I don’t want to go home.

  She stood before the mirror hanging outside her closet door and put her hand on her stomach, turning to the side to see if her stomach looked even a bit rounder. Not yet. But she was definitely pregnant; a letter from her doctor confirming the positive blood test had arrived yesterday afternoon.

  She took in her slightly pale complexion, the bit of shadow under her dark blue eyes, which might be from working
so intensely the past few days. Her light brown hair, falling straight to her shoulders, seemed thicker, though, unless she was imagining it. More luxuriant, somehow. And her nails were longer. Her nails were never this long.

  You’re so lucky, she heard seventeen-year-old Chloe Martin echo in her head.

  It had been just over a week since she’d seen that plus sign on the pregnancy test. A week that she’d kept the news a secret from Alexander. But she still wasn’t ready to tell him. Another couple of weeks to finish the article, turn it in, and then she’d be ready to go home. Already, just a few days in full-out reporter mode, conducting interviews, doing research, and writing, she felt more like her old self—and she was a bit more used to the idea of being pregnant. In two more weeks, she’d be much more confident, have stronger legs to stand on when she told Alexander the news.

  She picked up the phone and pressed in the number of his cell phone. She wouldn’t mention the pregnancy yet, but she did have to tell him she wouldn’t be coming home tomorrow, after all.

  “Two more weeks?” he repeated after a deadly silence. “What the hell is going on, Gemma?”

  “I just want to go more in depth with the article. I might have a chance to interview the birth mother of one of my sources. It’ll round—”

  “Gemma, you were going to Maine for a weekend. Then it turned into a week. Now it’s three weeks.”

  “I’m just—”

  “Are you saying you need a break from us? If that’s what this is, Gemma, just say so. Don’t make it about an article for some small-town paper.”

  I need a break from you, she said silently, closing her eyes.

  “Neither the article nor the newspaper is small to me, Alex. Why can’t you understand how important my career is to me?”