Finding Colin Firth: A Novel

by March, Mia

  She pushed her long hair behind her shoulders. “Leave me alone. I can’t understand a word of the stupid book. I’m not reading it.”

  “I bought you the CliffsNotes to help you.”

  “So now I have to read that too?” she shouted.

  He threw up his hands. “Fine, fail the class. Fail high school. Drop out.”

  Bea realized she was watching them as though she were at a tennis match. Both spoke in the same rapid-fire way. They looked nothing alike, of course; Maddy was petite, with wavy, dark brown hair and huge hazel-green eyes, and Tyler was tall and angular, with that mop of sandy-blond hair. She’d give Tyler twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. He had a dimple in his left cheek, which she probably hadn’t noticed before because he never smiled. But the chewing on the inside of his cheek brought it out. He cared about his sister, that was obvious.

  “I don’t mean to eavesdrop,” Bea said, “but since I’m sitting right here . . . I assume you’re talking about To Kill a Mockingbird again?”

  Maddy turned to her. “You mean ‘To Kill a Boring Bird.’ ”

  That got her Tyler’s trademark eye roll. “It’s a great book,” he told his sister. “One of my favorites.”

  “Like we’re so similar,” Maddy muttered.

  “Maddy, I graduated from college—Beardsley—last year with an English degree,” Bea said. “I’m planning to be an English teacher. Middle school or high school. I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird at least five times since I was a sophomore in high school, and like I said, I wrote my senior thesis on it. I could help you, talk you through the themes of the book or whatever’s giving you trouble.”

  Tyler was watching her, she knew.

  “You’re in summer school, I presume,” Bea said to Maddy.

  “And if she doesn’t pass the class by reading the book and writing an essay with a grade of B minus or better,” Tyler said, staring hard at his sister, “she fails and will have to take sophomore English again when she’s a junior in the fall. Then she’ll end up short of English credits to graduate.”

  “So what?” Maddy said. “It’s not like I’m necessarily going to college. I don’t need to read ‘To Kill a Stupid Bird’ in order to backpack around Italy.”

  “I backpacked around Italy the summer I graduated from high school,” Bea said. “I had the most amazing time.”

  Maddy’s face lit up. “Really? I’m obsessed with Rome. I want to see the Colosseum, throw coins in the Trevi Fountain. See the statues of angels. And the Sistine Chapel.”

  “If you pass this class, I’ll take you,” Tyler said, gritting his teeth.

  The girl stared at him. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. You pass the class and I’ll take you to Italy. You’ll see the Sistine Chapel.”

  She wanted that trip, Bea could see. Bad. Bad enough to pass the class.

  “You can help me?” Maddy said to Bea.

  “We don’t even know her,” Tyler said, clearly mimicking Bea from the other day. Though it was true.

  “I’m staying in town for the next few weeks. At the Three Captains’ Inn. I tutor at Beardsley during the school year, so I’m experienced. Here’s my ID from the Writing Center.” She took it from her wallet and handed it to him.

  He studied it, then handed it back to her. “Maddy, can you wait for me outside for a second?”

  Now that Italy was on the table, Maddy jumped at his request.

  When the door closed behind her, he said, “How much do you charge?”

  “If I wasn’t broke, I’d offer to do it for free,” she said. “But I’m working for my room and minimum wage at the inn, so I really could use some extra cash. Fifty bucks an hour.”

  “Fifty bucks? Jesus.” He moved aside the little curtain at a window and peered out at Maddie, who had her compact out and was reapplying her gooey lip gloss. He let the curtain drop. “Fine. But I want you to work with her in the library—not our mom’s house or here. I want her to take this seriously.”

  “Okay. The library it is.”

  He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “The class ends in three weeks. I’m thinking once a week for an hour should be fine.”

  “So you’re from Boothbay Harbor?” she asked.

  “Two towns over,” he said, as though giving personal information was a hardship for him. “The high school’s regional.”

  The door pounded. “Hello, I’m sweating out here,” Maddy shouted.

  “One sec,” he called out. “When can you start?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “How’s Wednesday? I take her out to dinner every Wednesday night so I know it works for both our schedules.”

  Fifty bucks would buy a nice outfit at the consignment shop for the dinner cruise Patrick told her he wanted to take her on sometime soon.

  “Meet her at the Boothbay Harbor library at five,” Tyler said. “Will that work?”

  She nodded, and he stepped toward the door, then turned back to her.

  “Don’t bring up the birth mother thing,” he said. “She’ll get angry and distracted.”

  “Okay.”

  He headed for the door, then turned back. “Did you meet yours yet?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it with you,” she said.

  He stared at her, then shrugged and went down the step.

  Patrick had time only for a twenty-minute lunch, but Bea didn’t mind. It was fun to eat in the air-conditioned trailer, watch the occasional assistant come in, then dart out when it was clear this was a private lunch. Over Italian subs, he told her about production schedules and call sheets, which listed where and when the actors had to show up. He explained he was something of a backstage manager, making sure everything was as it should be for filming the scene.

  She liked him. A lot. He was good looking and smart and responsible for quite a bit on this film. He asked right away how meeting her biological mother was, and when she told him she’d rather talk about him, he still tried to keep the conversation about her. She told him more about losing her way last year, after her mother’s death, and that she planned to apply to a hundred schools if she had to for a job as an English teacher. He said he thought it was noble, that teachers should make more money. She liked the way he looked at her, his intelligent blue eyes full of interest, respect . . . desire for her.

  He was called away to douse yet another fire, as he put it, but not before he kissed her on the lips. “The next few days are going to be crazy all day, but maybe you could come by my hotel Tuesday night. For a late dinner around eight? I won’t be back till right before then, and have to get up at the crack of dawn, but I’d love to sit on my balcony with you and have some great room-service fancy dinner and just talk. And I mean that—just talk. This isn’t some ploy to get you in bed. Not that I don’t think you’re incredibly beautiful, Bea.”

  She smiled, and he kissed her good-bye, a sweet kiss on the lips. This was perfect. Now she’d have something exciting to look forward to, especially if Veronica’s “tour” was too much, too hard to take in. And Bea was sure that it would be.

  Chapter 17

  VERONICA

  Veronica sat in her car in the driveway of the Three Captains’ Inn at noon on Sunday, reminding herself that she was here as much to deliver three pies as she was to pick up Bea for the tour of her life. She got the pies out of her trunk, her monthly invoice for June in an envelope taped to the top box. The box labeled blueberry reminded her of Nick; he’d mentioned that Leigh had caught a bad cold on Friday, and Veronica had baked a special Feel Better Pie—blueberry—and brought it over Friday evening. Nick’s house was a white clapboard cottage not too far from downtown. Leigh had been propped up on the sofa, watching How to Train Your Dragon, and she’d invited Veronica to come watch with them, but Nick hadn’t seconded the invitation. Veronica wasn’t sure if two movies in two nights with her would be one too many, or if maybe their evening together on Thursday had been a bit too unexpected. He’d left soon af
ter A Single Man had ended, giving her a squeeze of the hand when she’d expected a kiss. Not that she’d been ready for a kiss from Nick DeMarco—talk about loaded—but if she was honest with herself, she wanted him to want to kiss her. She wanted him to want her.

  Because he represented her past? Because she hadn’t been accepted back then? Because the one guy who had accepted her—someone Nick had been friends with—had turned around and betrayed her? Or maybe it was much scarier than any of those reasons. Maybe she just . . . liked Nick.

  Boxes of pies in her hands, she headed up the pretty stone path to the porch of the inn. For almost a year now she’d been making weekly deliveries of her pies to the Three Captains’, and the beautiful Victorian was as familiar as her own house, but now her birth daughter was inside. Waiting for her in the parlor to go on a tour of Veronica’s life at age sixteen.

  This was your idea, she reminded herself, placing the pies on the table inside the foyer, where she always left them for Isabel. She went into the parlor, but Bea wasn’t there yet. The inn smelled wonderful, the hint of bacon and warm bread in the air. From where she sat on the love seat, she saw Bea appear at the landing of the stairwell, in a pale pink tank top and jeans, and Veronica stood up as Bea came into the room.

  “So you’re responsible for how good it smells in here?” Veronica asked as they headed toward the front door. She was surprised she could make small talk right now.

  “If I do say so myself—yes. And the dining room has been closed since ten o’clock too—brunch hours for Sunday. Everyone wanted bacon this morning—I must have fried up five pounds. If you smell bread, it’s Isabel’s doing—she’s taking bread-baking lessons from the owner of the Italian bakery. Hot crusty Italian bread with butter? Nothing better.”

  “She’s taking my pie class too,” Veronica said as she opened the passenger door of her car for Bea. “With all her new skills, she may put me out of business.”

  “Your pies are a big hit at the inn, especially at tea time. Isabel says no one could ever come close to touching your pies. I wanted to tell her that Veronica Russo, pie maven, is my biological mother, but I know you probably want to keep that private.”

  Veronica hated how tight her expression must seem. Why did she want to keep it a secret? A holdover from how her parents had made her feel? From how her one trip into town, at seven months pregnant, had made her feel? Ashamed. Dirty. Damaged. The whispers and stares of people she knew, of strangers, had been unbearable.

  Bea buckled her seat belt. “Are you sure you really want to take me on this tour? If it’s too much for you, I’ll understand.”

  “It will be too much for me,” Veronica said. “And that’s probably a good thing. I came back to Boothbay Harbor to face my past, to stop running from it. But being here alone hasn’t been enough—I’ve kept a year of my life balled up inside me, locked up tight. I need to . . . let myself remember.”

  Veronica drove the short distance to the high school, which was located far down Main Street. She passed it all the time but rarely let herself look at the building. She’d hated who she’d been there, how she’d felt in those halls and classrooms. Only for five brief months, when she’d been Timothy Macintosh’s girlfriend, had none of that mattered. She’d walked the halls with her head high, and for the first time, she’d felt as though nothing could touch her, hurt her.

  She pulled into the parking lot and stared up at the school. “When I look back on it now, it seems crazy that I was in love with Timothy after just a few months of dating, but you know how it is when you’re sixteen. The weight of a day feels like a month, everything happens so fast and with such intensity.”

  Bea nodded. “I’m embarrassed to say it’s still like that for me.”

  “You have his smile,” Veronica said. “My mouth, but his smile. I loved his face so much I could just stare at him for hours. He had light blond hair, exactly like yours, and the most beautiful hazel eyes. He was a bit of a rebel but not a troublemaker. He wore a beat-up black leather jacket that smelled like his soap, and if it was remotely chilly, he’d give it to me. I used to love wearing that jacket.”

  “His name was Timothy Macintosh, you said?”

  She nodded. “Everyone was always so surprised by the quiet guy in the leather jacket with his head down suddenly raising his hand to ask intelligent questions or give right answers. I had such a crush on him, and when he asked me out, I said no at first. I was so used to being asked out because of my reputation—because of the lies spread about me, first by a group of mean girls who didn’t like the way the popular boys were following me around, and then by the boys who made up stories about sleeping with me. And I told him so. I told him off, actually—it was the first time I’d ever done that, stood up like that. But he insisted he liked me for me and that he wouldn’t even try to kiss me for a month if I went out with him.”

  “Did you hold him to that?”

  “I sure did. But he didn’t try. We spent so much time together that first month too. He didn’t try once.”

  Bea smiled. “I love that.”

  “Me too,” Veronica said, lost in the sweet memory for a moment. “We had such honest conversations—about how we felt, about school, our teachers, our parents, the world, government, everything. He came from a rougher background than I did, and I cared so much about him that I wanted to take him away from all that by just loving him with all my might.”

  “Did you?”

  “For five months, I did. And then I found out I was pregnant.” She started the car and drove the three miles to the house she’d grown up in, pulling over across the street. “See that blue house, number forty-nine? That’s where I grew up. My period was late, over a week, and I was shaking when I took the pregnancy test. I was so scared when that plus sign appeared. I told myself it couldn’t be true—we’d used condoms. But I took another one later in the day, and it was positive too. It took me two days to work up the nerve to tell my mother. I was so afraid to say the words out loud. But then while my parents and I were having pancakes one morning, I blurted it out.”

  Bea was staring from the house to Veronica. “And they didn’t take it very well.”

  “Understatement of the year. I’ll never forget the expression on my mother’s face,” Veronica said, the memory so vivid that as she repeated her mother’s words, verbatim, to Bea, it was as if she was reliving it right now.

  “Your grandmother is rolling over in her grave right now,” her mother had screamed, her father just shaking his head and muttering, “How could you be so stupid, so careless?” Over and over.

  Veronica had wished with everything inside her that her grandmother was still here, that she could tell her everything. She knew her grandmother would have wrapped her arms around Veronica, told her everything would be okay, that they’d get through this, that they were Russos, and Russos were strong.

  All she had was her mother, pointing her finger in Veronica’s face and saying, “This makes you trash. No better than Maura’s trashy daughter who got pregnant and now has a toddler at seventeen. And I won’t stand for it.”

  Veronica had stood there, shocked.

  “Just what the goddamned hell is everyone going to think?” her mother had said, shaking her head. “Goddammit.” And she reached out and slapped Veronica across the face.

  Veronica winced as though her mother had slapped her right now.

  “Oh, Veronica,” Bea said.

  “I ran—to the one place that felt safe: my and Timothy’s ‘spot.’ ” Veronica started the car and drove back to Main Street, not too far from the high school, and parked across the street from Seagull Lane, a brick alleyway leading to the bay. The place where she and Timothy had kissed, finally, for the first time. Their meeting spot.

  The place where she’d told him she was pregnant.

  “I found a pay phone and called him,” Veronica said, “barely able to speak for the sobs coming from so deep inside me. He’d rushed to meet me—right there,” she add
ed, pointing to the alleyway. “And I was so scared to tell him. Despite how close we were, all we’d talked about, the plans we made to run away together after high school, I was afraid to say the words. His mother had gotten pregnant at sixteen, and she had a hard life because of it, and I knew he’d be very upset at the news.”

  “What did he say?” Bea asked.

  “He didn’t say anything for the longest moment. Then he told me it couldn’t possibly be his baby. He said a lot of other things.” She closed her eyes for a second. “But it was his. Couldn’t possibly be anyone else’s. I was so shocked, so hurt, then I went back home, in a daze, and my mother told me to pack my bags, that there was a spot for me at Hope Home. I was gone the next day.”

  “The next day,” Bea repeated. “I can’t believe how fast it all happened. I can’t imagine what you were going through.”

  Veronica drove the five miles to Hope Home, the long dirt driveway and pretty white farmhouse with its porch swing still so familiar. There had still been some snow on the ground when she’d arrived as a sixteen-year-old in early April. “This was actually a bright spot. I lived here for seven months.”

  Veronica told Bea what it was like back then at Hope Home, how some girls had been sent away because their families were embarrassed to have a pregnant teenage daughter, but that most parents visited every week with care packages full of treats and L.L.Bean sweaters and books about pregnancy and what was happening in your body, even though the Hope Home library was full of them. And those girls had gone back home after their babies were born and adopted, stories made up about two semesters away as foreign exchange students.

  She explained how no one had visited her in the seven months she’d been there. How her mother had called twice—once, her voice strained, to see if she needed anything, and another time to let her know the family dog had died. Even after that, when her mother had clearly wanted Veronica to feel worse than she already did, Veronica had hoped she’d call again, but she hadn’t. And any time Veronica called home, no one picked up or returned her calls. So she’d eventually stopped calling.