by March, Mia
Ah. Now Veronica had an idea what this was about.
“Most of us had closed adoptions, so it’s not like we could pick and choose, but we talked about it, of course.”
Penelope scrubbed at a clean expanse of counter. “And what was it that all of you seemed to want in adoptive parents?”
“Well, we wanted the parents to be loving and kind. Lacking in bad tempers, like some of our fathers.”
“What else?” There was desperation in Penelope’s voice.
Veronica shut off the burner and poured the water over Earl Grey tea leaves in the teapot. “That’s it, really. Loving seemed to be the key word.”
Penelope stopped scrubbing. “But how would you know if someone was loving. I mean, you’d have to really get to know them, right? It’s not something you can just tell from a few brief meetings.”
“You can generally tell someone’s disposition right away, though, don’t you agree?”
Penelope looked like she was about to cry. She flung the balled-up paper towel on the counter. “My husband and I have tried for years to get pregnant. And now I’m thirty-eight and my chances are slimmer and slimmer. So we decided to look into adoption, and I know there are so many couples hoping for a baby—we were told it could take a long time. But then a girl from Hope Home chose us. I can’t tell you how happy I was, maybe happier than I’ve been in my entire life. But now she might be unchoosing us. She likes my husband, but says she’s not sure I’m the right mother for her baby, after all.” She turned away and covered her face with her hands.
Oh dear. “Why did she choose you and your husband in the first place?”
Penelope looked up at Veronica. “To be honest? Because we’re wealthy. The girl comes from the wrong side of the tracks, had a rough, impoverished childhood—she’s still a child—and it’s very important to her that her baby be raised with wealth, that he or she never want for anything—whether breakfast or an iPhone. It’s important to her, and she wants a wealthy, Catholic family from Boothbay Harbor only. So we finally fit the bill for a birth mother. But then she met us, and I tried to be what she wanted, but the more time we spent with her, the more dissatisfied with me she seemed to get.”
Veronica poured two cups of tea and gestured for Penelope to sit. “What do you think her issue is?”
“My husband says I’m coming across as forced, that I need to be myself. But I know what kind of image I project—snobby. I’m trying to change that.”
I noticed, Veronica thought. But it can’t be fake.
Penelope added cream and a sugar cube to her tea. “I know I’m not the friendliest person there ever was. And maybe I have a reputation of being snobby. But I’d love this baby with all my heart—and my heart is big, Veronica. I might not show it to everyone, but my husband knows it. And my mother. My sister too—I’d do anything for my family. And this baby, this precious angel I want to love and raise and share my life with—I’ll be the most loving mother. I know that more than I’ve ever known anything.”
“You need to tell her this, Penelope. You need to say it just like you said it here. You need to tell her from here,” Veronica said, touching her chest. “It needs to be more than words to her. She needs to hear you mean it.”
“I’ve tried—three times. She doesn’t like me.” Tears shimmered in Penelope’s eyes.
“I think you should go see her. Just you. The real you, not this toned-down false you. You in all your real Penelope Von Blun glory. Tell her, from the heart, what this baby means to you. How you want to raise her. Tell her why you’ll raise her baby better than anyone else could. Tell her everything you think about every night before you fall asleep. That’s usually where the truth is.”
Penelope nodded, then reached over and pulled Veronica into a hug. “Maybe I should take home a recipe for your Hope Pie.”
Veronica went over to her pie binder and took out a recipe for salted caramel cheesecake pie. “I don’t think you’ll even need an elixir pie, Penelope. I feel your hope in waves.”
Close to eleven o’clock that night, Veronica was sitting on the edge of her bed, rubbing lilac-scented lotion into her dry elbows, when her phone rang. Nick? Penelope, maybe?
“Hello?”
Bea. Veronica was so surprised to hear her voice that she almost dropped the receiver. After brief hellos and some talk about today’s unusually hot weather and how it wasn’t great for pie baking, Bea said, “I’ve been thinking, and I would like to contact Timothy Macintosh.”
“I expected that you’d want to.” Veronica wondered what would happen when Bea did call him. How he’d respond.
“Do you have a place for me to start? I did a search for Macintosh in the area, and there are quite a few. No Timothy Macintosh, though.”
“I know someone who might have his current address. I’ll call you right back.” Veronica hung up, a strange pressure pressing on her chest. She called Nick, and he did have Timothy’s address. He lived in Wiscasset, just fifteen minutes away, in the same town where Veronica and Bea had been yesterday during their brief stop at the bus station. Nick had run into him last Christmas while shopping in Best Buy, and Timothy had handed him his card. He was a boat mechanic.
A boat mechanic. Living just fifteen minutes away.
Veronica sucked in a breath and called Bea back and told her what Nick knew. Her stomach churned.
“Thank you, Veronica,” Bea said, and Veronica couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.
She went upstairs to her closet, to the back, where her hope chest was. She’d kept things she’d brought with her to Hope Home, and things she’d saved, move after move, over the past twenty-two years. She reached into the bottom and dug out the picture of Timothy Macintosh and looked at it. Sixteen-year-old Timothy was standing in their spot, wearing that leather jacket, his hands in his jeans pockets, a sweet smile on his face.
It didn’t hurt like Veronica thought it always would, perhaps because of all the opening up she’d done. God, Bea looked a lot like him. She was walking proof that she was his daughter.
Veronica put the photograph in a small manila envelope and wrote Bea’s name on it, then added a note: “Thought you might want to have this. Timothy Macintosh, March 1991.”
She’d walk it over to the inn in the morning and leave it in the mailbox. That settled, she slipped into bed and had a feeling she’d sleep pretty well tonight.
Chapter 18
GEMMA
After a long morning of research and interviews, including a heart-tugging breakfast with a woman who’d given her baby up for adoption back in 1963, the year Hope Home opened, and a poignant hour spent with a pregnant fifteen-year-old who would only let her baby be adopted by a wealthy, local couple, yet was having trouble finding a loving enough set of “filthy rich” prospective parents, Gemma stopped by the movie set. She hoped to catch a glimpse of Colin Firth and talk her way into an interview. Her editor at the Gazette had said that she’d assigned a reporter to cover the movie being shot in town, but that didn’t mean Gemma couldn’t try to score an interview with the actor herself. Now that she was almost done with her research, she’d be ready to write the long middle section of her article over the next couple of days, and then she’d be done. She’d have to give up the ID card that Claire had made up for her. She’d have to go back to being unemployed.
She’d have to go home and face her future.
But an interview with Colin Firth could be her ticket to a job. A one-on-one with an A-list movie star. An Oscar winner. A handsome Englishman whom everyone respected. It would add a bit of cachet to her clips—and just might get her her dream job. Maybe even her job back at New York Weekly. And once she was employed again as a reporter, Alex would have to accept her plan to stay in the city.
Except he hated the city now. And making him stay wasn’t fair to him.
“Hey, everyone! Colin Firth is signing autographs in the Best Little Diner!” a man called out, and a big crowd rushed toward the harbor and up to Ma
in Street. Gemma was embarrassed by how quickly she took off for the diner; she cut through a brick alleyway that she remembered from her teenage summer days and raced into the diner, out of breath, a crowd hot on her heels. The diner was busy even at eleven in the morning, and Gemma glanced all around, hoping to spot him and get to him before anyone else could. Excuse me, Mr. Firth, she’d say, I’d love to treat you to dessert, perhaps a slice of that delicious-looking blackberry pie on the counter, if I might ask you a few questions for the Gazette. But there was no sign of him in the diner. Not in the booths, not at the counter, not flattened against the wall, trying to escape detection while he awaited his coffee.
“Well, where is he?” a woman shouted, pushing past Gemma.
A waitress was refilling the little sugar bowl at the next table. “Where’s who?”
“Colin Firth. Someone said he was in here, signing autographs.”
The waitress, a short redhead in her early forties, raised an eyebrow. “This again? If Colin Firth were in here, do you think I’d be arranging packets of fake sugar? Or would I be a puddle on the floor?”
“She’s just saying that,” another woman yelled, racing around to look in the bathroom—including the men’s. “He’s probably hiding in the kitchen!”
“He’s not, I swear,” the waitress called out. “If you’re not here to eat, beat it.”
Maybe Gemma could catch him coming or going from the set, she thought as she left the diner with a large herbal iced tea. She’d recently seen two of his films, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Then She Found Me, and she’d seen a few others over the past few years—The King’s Speech, Love Actually, and Mamma Mia! After she worked on her Hope Home article tonight, she’d watch one of his more recent films and sketch out ideas for how to frame the story. Oscar winner arrives in small town Maine. Mr. Darcy comes to town. An Englishman in Boothbay Harbor. Perhaps he’d share what sights he’d taken in while in Maine, if he had, and Gemma could frame it as a bit of a travel piece too. And by a fan girl, of course. She adored Colin Firth and had no doubt she’d be that puddle on the floor herself while standing just inches from him, listening to him talk in that beautiful accent of his. Her mind was whirling with ideas as she neared Frog Marsh, where the number of trailers had quadrupled, and Gemma’s phone rang just as she pulled out her little notebook to jot down ideas. Her mother-in-law’s name flashed across her screen. Oh no.
“Gemma, just what on God’s green earth do you think you’re doing?” Mona Hendricks asked, her voice full of judgmental anger.
Gemma rolled her eyes. Had Alex told her she was pregnant? Granted, they hadn’t talked about telling or not telling people at this early stage, but the later Mona knew, the better. “I don’t know what you mean, Mona.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re pregnant and running around Maine for three weeks? You’re giving Alexander a hard time about moving to Dobbs Ferry?”
Good Lord. Had he sicced his mother on her?
“Oh, he tried to make it out like it didn’t matter to him. He said you two might end up staying in the city because you feel so strongly. Just how goddamned selfish can you be?”
“Excuse me, Mona, but why isn’t Alexander selfish for wanting to move to Westchester when I want to stay in the city?”
“Don’t be daft. You know perfectly well why. You’re pregnant. You’re bringing a life into this world. It’s not about you.”
Like son, like mother. Alexander had said that same thing.
“Mona, this is between me and Alexander.” Don’t let loose on her. Just get her off the phone. Don’t add to your problems.
“This is a family issue. We’re all here in Dobbs Ferry. And now that you’re expecting, the three of you belong here too. Think of the baby if your own husband doesn’t matter to you.”
“I have to go, Mona,” she said. “Good-bye.”
Anger bubbled in Gemma’s stomach. How dare she! Think of the baby if your own husband doesn’t matter to you.
She had to get an interview with Colin Firth. She had to.
After an hour of fruitless calls to find out when Colin Firth was due to arrive in town—even the guy Bea was dating, the second assistant director on the film, wasn’t sure because of scheduling conflicts, according to Bea—Gemma got to work on her article about Hope Home. She couldn’t stop thinking about Lizzie Donner, the fifteen-year-old pregnant resident who was insistent that her baby be adopted by a wealthy family from Boothbay Harbor, where she herself had been raised in poverty. Gemma’s heart had gone out to the girl as she’d shared her story. Lizzie had thought she’d found the perfect prospective adoptive parents—very wealthy, Catholic like herself, lived in Boothbay Harbor in a mansion on the water, but every time she met with the couple, she found she didn’t like the wife. I want my baby to have everything she’ll ever dream of, Lizzie had said. I thought that was the most important thing. But the wife is so phony and fake—how could she be a good mother to my baby? Gemma left out that last line as her hands flew over the keyboard of her laptop. She’d promised Lizzie she’d only write the gist of what was important to Lizzie and not disparage anyone, especially since Lizzie hadn’t written off that couple just yet. Gemma thought about her own mother—not fake, but just cold. Her parents were very well off, but money and vacations and expensive summer camps certainly hadn’t made anyone happy.
Gemma moved on to the paragraph about Lindsey Tate, a New Hampshire woman who’d adopted a baby whose birth mother had been a Hope Home resident thirty years ago. She was looking back at her notes about Lindsey when a strange pain began in her stomach, like menstrual cramps. She put her hand to her stomach and stood up, thinking she’d been hunched over her laptop too much. But the pain intensified. Gemma walked around her room, as much as the small space would allow, and the pain got so bad she doubled over. What was this?
Was she losing the baby?
She opened her door and braced herself against the doorjamb, the pain getting worse in her abdomen. “Isabel?” she called out, startled by the desperate wail in her voice. Please be here.
“Gemma?” Bea called from upstairs. “Are you all right?”
“I’m having really bad pains in my abdomen,” Gemma said, barely able to get the words out.
Bea rushed down the stairs, and in moments she was back with Isabel.
“I’m pregnant,” Gemma said. “Just nine weeks. The pain is really intense.”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “I’m taking you over to Coastal General. Bea, can you cover the inn?”
“Of course. Anything you need.”
Gemma could barely stand straight up as Isabel helped her down the stairs. What was happening? She walked doubled over in pain to Isabel’s car, the cramping pain unrelenting.
“Honey, listen. I don’t want you to worry about anything,” Isabel said as she backed out of the driveway. “When I was in the early stages of pregnancy, I also had some severe abdominal pain, and it turned out to be nothing. The ER will likely do an ultrasound and just check you over. Don’t worry.”
But Gemma was worrying. She’d never felt cramps this bad. “Am I losing the baby?”
Isabel sped up, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Gemma doubled over, rocking a bit up and down. “We’re here.” She pulled up to the Emergency entrance and called out, “My friend is nine weeks pregnant and having severe abdominal pains!”
In moments Gemma was in a wheelchair and being pushed through the automatic doors into the ER. Before she knew it she was lying on a cot, two nurses hovering to take her vitals and insert an IV of fluids. Breathe, she told herself. The pain began to lessen some. A doctor came over and introduced himself as the attending OB and explained that he was going to spread some cold, jellylike substance on her belly for the ultrasound.
“Okay, there’s the heartbeat,” he said, and Gemma glanced up at the screen, her hand over her mouth. “I’m not quite sure what caused the pain, but it seems to have abated, and the baby is fine.”
A baby she would have been devastated to lose, especially without having had the chance to feel something—and she didn’t mean a flutter. She meant connection. The stirrings of love.
A nurse helped wipe off the jelly from her stomach, and then told her to lie and rest there for thirty minutes before she’d come to discharge her. She stared up at the ceiling, overtaken by something that felt a lot like wonder. Mixed with cold fear.
Gemma had been instructed to take it easy for the evening, but a walk didn’t seem like much exertion. She found herself drawn to the playground on Main Street, always full of children climbing over the fairy-tale-character structures and being pushed on the swings. She was hoping that after the scare, her perspective would be different, that she’d suddenly have all these warm and fuzzy feelings, that the elusive maternal instinct would suddenly settle into her bones, her bloodstream, and she’d be a different person altogether.
But as she watched two toddlers packing sand in buckets in the sandbox, she felt . . . nothing much at all. No rush of oh, how adorable, I wish I had one of those.
There was only the same fear. That she wasn’t up to the task, that she’d fail as a stay-at-home mother even with all day to practice her new life.
For reasons she wasn’t even clear on, Gemma pulled out her phone and pressed in her mother’s telephone number.
“Gemma, how lovely to hear from you.”
How formal. “Mom, I wanted to ask you a question. Did you plan your pregnancy with Anna or was she an accident?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I’m just curious. I know your career is very important to you, so I wondered if you planned getting pregnant or not.”
“I did plan it. And five years later, I was ready for a second baby—you. What’s this all about?”