Finding Colin Firth: A Novel

by March, Mia

  Thank you,

  Bea Crane

  She addressed the envelope and headed out to the mailbox on the corner of Main Street, watching the letter disappear down the chute.

  Chapter 20

  VERONICA

  Veronica spent Saturday in her kitchen, surrounded by flour and butter and sugar and baskets of fruit. She was on her twelfth client pie of the day, this last one a Key lime Confidence Pie for her neighbor Frieda, who was nervous about applying to nursing programs for a second career. As Veronica grated lime zest into her mixing bowl, atop the condensed milk, egg yolks, and Key lime juice, she tried to summon up her own confidence—to call Bea. To call Nick. She hadn’t heard from him since Monday night. Not a word since he and his daughter had left her house after the pie class. She’d been so sure he’d stop by or call—something—but he hadn’t. Maybe she’d been reading more into their blossoming . . . friendship than was really there. Or perhaps there was some fallout from his taking Leigh to her class when her grandparents were up in arms about it. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, though, which had her Amore and Hope Pies come out perfectly the past several days.

  Her phone rang, and she wiped her sticky fingers and grabbed the receiver, her fingers crossed that it was Bea. She hadn’t heard from Bea since Monday night either, when Bea had called to ask for Timothy’s contact information. Five days. Had she called Timothy? Had he denied being her father? Or was she sitting across a table from him in a restaurant right now?

  “Hello, Veronica speaking.”

  Silence for a moment. And then, “Veronica, it’s Timothy. Macintosh.”

  Veronica dropped the receiver and grabbed for it. Jesus Christ. Her heart was pounding, and her lips felt dry.

  “Veronica?” he said. “Are you there?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m here.” She didn’t have to wonder how he’d tracked her down; her number and address were listed in the telephone directory.

  “I received a letter yesterday from someone named Bea Crane. Is it true? Am I the father? And I mean without a shadow of a doubt?”

  She sat down at the table, trying to get over the shock of hearing his voice. “I was a virgin when I started dating you, Timothy. You were the only guy I slept with until I was nineteen, as a matter of fact.”

  She heard his own intake of breath. “You’re sure. You’re absolutely sure.”

  “I’m sure. As sure now as I was then.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. “She wrote me a letter. She said she’d be willing to take a DNA test if I wanted to go that route. I suppose I should, just for legal purposes.”

  Veronica could hear the worry in his voice, the fear. It was much the same voice it had been at sixteen, if a bit deeper. “She’s twenty-two years old and was legally adopted as a newborn. You have no legal obligation to her, Timothy, if that’s your concern.”

  “This is just so crazy, so sudden. She says she wants to meet me, to know about her biological father’s family and medical history.”

  “She’s a lovely person, Timothy. I can assure you of that.”

  “I just don’t know,” he said. “I’ve kept track of the time. When . . . the baby would turn eighteen. I wondered if I’d get a call.”

  Veronica stood up and paced as much as the phone cord would allow. “So you did wonder if you were the father?”

  “Well, I’ve always known it was possible. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. My wife says it’s haunting me. Especially because I saw you recently, about six months ago. My wife and I were visiting friends of hers, and as we walked past a diner I saw you. I don’t come to Boothbay much since my parents moved out a long time ago. I almost fainted when I saw you—it was just so unexpected. I’d heard you moved down south.”

  “I moved back to town a year ago.”

  “My wife thinks I should have settled the answer of whether or not I really fathered your baby a long time ago. For the last few years, she’s been telling me to call you and ask you straight out, after all these years. But every time I picked up the phone, I put it down. Not even a month ago, Beth handed me the phone and begged me to call you and just find out once and for all instead of letting it eat at me like this.”

  Veronica froze.

  Beth. Her client who’d ordered the Cast-Out Pie.

  The kind of pie that would get someone off someone’s mind . . .

  The question. That was what Beth wanted to cast out of his heart.

  I’m not the one who has to cast someone out. It’s someone else who has to get someone out of his goddamned head.

  Beth, who never did pay her, was Timothy’s wife.

  “I have always been kind of haunted about it,” Timothy said. “Not knowing if it was true, if I treated you terribly and had been wrong. I’ve never known the truth. I never wanted to know.”

  She blocked the image of him, standing there in the brick alleyway the last time she’d seen him. His expression, the anger as she’d told him, shaking and crying, that she was pregnant. “I think when you see Bea, if you agree to meet with her, you’ll know once and for all that she’s your daughter. She has your hair, your smile. There’s just something in her expression that’s all you.”

  “God,” Timothy said. “I’m sorry, Veronica. I’m sorry.”

  He started sobbing, and then there seemed to be someone in the background talking to him, and then he said he had to go and hung up.

  Veronica sat in her kitchen for over an hour, the call from Timothy echoing in her head. She glanced at the unfinished pie. She’d have to throw it away and start over, not that she could tonight. Confidence was something Veronica was lacking in right now, about Bea. About how this would go between her and Timothy.

  She picked up the phone and pressed in Nick’s number and told him about the phone call.

  “Come over,” he said. “Leigh’s been asleep since eight forty-five. Bring your pie ingredients if you want. I’ll help you bake.”

  Twenty minutes later, she sat at Nick’s kitchen table, sipping a glass of wine as he stood a foot away, making a Confidence Pie. The sight of him, barefoot and in a blue T-shirt and jeans, separating egg yolks, grating the lime zest, made her want to stand up and kiss him.

  “You okay?” he asked, whisking the ingredients.

  “I’ll be okay. It was just so . . . strange talking to Timothy.”

  “I’ll bet. Sounds like he finally accepted the truth, though.”

  “Thanks for inviting me over,” she said. “I needed this.”

  He sat down beside her and took her hand and held it. When he looked at her, she wondered if he was going to kiss her—and then he did.

  She was about to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back with everything inside her, but the doorbell rang.

  “Talk about bad timing,” he said. “Hold that thought,” he added with a smile at her.

  When he went to the door, she heard the voices of a man and a woman, the woman saying something about Leigh’s watch, which she’d left at their house, then the woman saying, “What’s that I smell? Lime juice? Are you drinking?”

  “I’m making a pie,” Nick said, his voice weary. “Thanks for bringing back Leigh’s watch. I’ll tell her you brought it back.”

  A woman, in her early sixties, with a silver-blond bob, burst into the kitchen. She stared at Veronica. “It’s you, isn’t it. That pie lady. Leigh described you to a T,” she added with disdain. She turned to Nick, furious. “And now you have women over? When Leigh’s asleep in her room?”

  “Gertie, first of all, Veronica and I are baking a pie, not having sex in the living room.”

  A tall, thin man, also in his early sixties, came into the kitchen. “Don’t be crude, Nick.”

  “You two listen right now,” Nick said. “I’m not going to live this way. Not a moment longer. I love Leigh with all my heart—you know that. I’m doing my best—and yes, my best is good enough. I’m sorry that Vanessa died. Things might not have be
en working out between us, but I loved her, I cared about her. And now you’re fighting me on being a parent to Leigh when I’m the only one she has left? Be her grandparents—I’ve never taken that away from you. Have I ever tried to limit the time she spends with you?” He turned around, his hand shaking on the counter.

  “I’ll go,” Veronica said. “I think the three of you need to talk.”

  She slipped out the kitchen door.

  Veronica stayed up as long as she could, hoping Nick would call and tell her how he and Leigh’s grandparents had left things, but by one o’clock he hadn’t called, and she must have fallen asleep soon after. She could still feel the imprint of his lips on hers, feel that beautiful urge to kiss him back. She wondered what would have happened had his daughter’s grandparents not burst into the kitchen.

  Nick was the past and present in one, and she had a serious thing for him. She couldn’t help smiling when for the third time in twelve hours, she whisked together egg yolks, condensed milk, Key lime juice, and zest for Frieda’s Confidence Pie. She felt it, felt the little opening inside her heart. She liked Nick DeMarco and, from that one kiss last night, she knew he liked her too. A lightness that she hadn’t felt in years settled around her, inside her.

  My heart is open to Bea. My heart is open to Nick.

  This time, she got the pie in the oven.

  Just as she closed the oven door, the phone rang and Veronica grabbed it.

  Penelope Von Blun.

  “I wanted you to know I did what you said,” Penelope told her. “I prayed over three salted caramel cheesecake Hope Pies that our prospective birth mother would listen, that she’d believe everything I was saying, and then I called her and asked if I could talk to her, just me and her, and she said yes. I told her that I’d been trying to impress her, to be what she wanted, so I toned down my look and tried to look more churchgoing or something. I told her what I thought about before I’d drift off to sleep, sometimes thinking so much, wishing so hard that I couldn’t get to sleep at all. I told her what her baby would mean to me, why I thought I would be a good mother. I told her everything. And I think she started to like me.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that, Penelope.” Veronica was starting to like her too.

  They hung up, and Veronica flashed to an image of herself at sixteen and pregnant, at Hope Home, at group counseling, in private therapy with the very nice social worker who came once a week to meet with each girl. When she’d first arrived at Hope Home, she’d refused to say much at all, but slowly, week by week, she began opening up. She thought of those girls there today, thought of all they were going through, all they needed to say. Maybe, with her experience, she could be a help to those girls.

  An hour later, Veronica delivered her pie to Frieda, wished her well with the nursing school applications, and then drove to Hope Home before she could change her mind.

  Veronica pulled open Hope Home’s screen door and smiled at the woman at the front desk, same place it was decades ago. “My name is Veronica Russo. I lived here twenty-two years ago when I was sixteen and pregnant. Hope Home did me a world of good, and I’d like to volunteer here in whatever capacity you might need.”

  The woman smiled and stood up and extended her hand. “We can use all the experienced help we can get. Let’s sit down and you can tell me about yourself and fill out some forms. We’ll have to check your background and references, of course. When would you be able to start? A volunteer flaked out on me and I was counting on her help at our free-talk period this weekend.”

  Veronica sat. “I’d like to start as soon as I can.”

  As Veronica sat on a chair in the extras holding tent late Monday afternoon, her thoughts once again went to Nick, who still hadn’t called. All day she’d tried to put it out of her mind. He was probably dealing with Leigh’s grandparents. Perhaps they’d spent the weekend together, as a family, and were ironing things out.

  One kiss doesn’t obligate him to you, she reminded herself as she headed home and prepared her island counter for her students, once again having no idea if two of those students wouldn’t be coming.

  At a few minutes before six, June and Isabel arrived with June’s son, and then Penelope arrived, looking like her old self—a good thing. The jewelry was back. The makeup. The real Penelope. And like her look, her smile was very real. “Things are looking good,” Penelope said. “I’m hopeful again.”

  Veronica barely had time to talk to Penelope because the doorbell rang, and a shot of pure happiness burst inside her. She opened the door—but Nick and Leigh weren’t alone. Leigh’s grandmother was there too. Nick introduced them, officially.

  As Nick and Leigh stepped in and chatted with the other students, Leigh’s grandmother said, “I wanted to apologize for how I acted the other night. That wasn’t fair of me.”

  That was a turnaround. “Stay for class?” Veronica asked.

  The woman seemed pleased by the invitation. “None of those strange pies? I’m not a fan of that mumbo-jumbo.”

  “Just good old strawberry rhubarb tonight,” Veronica said.

  “Then I’d love to stay.”

  As Leigh led her grandmother into the kitchen, Nick whispered in Veronica’s ear, “Took me the last two days, but I got through.”

  Veronica smiled. She felt like something was getting through to her too.

  On Tuesday morning, Veronica heard from Patrick Ool’s assistant that the extras for the diner scene wouldn’t be needed until two o’clock, so she called the director of Hope Home and asked if she could come earlier. A group session was set for ten. Veronica drove out to Hope Home, turning onto the long dirt road with its canopy of trees. When the white farmhouse with its hanging sign and porch swing came into view, Veronica saw herself sitting on that swing, scared, worried, fearful for how she’d feel after she had the baby and gave her up, and she remembered the counselor sitting down beside her and just holding her, letting her cry. That was exactly what Veronica wanted to do for the girls here. Listen. Be a shoulder.

  She parked in the lot, near the very spot where she had given birth in an ambulance. She sat there and watched the few girls who were walking around the yard. They looked so young and vulnerable, though one or two had a tough edge to their expressions, to their makeup. Just before ten o’clock, she headed up the three steps and pulled open the screen door. A woman she didn’t recognize sat at the desk.

  “You must be Veronica,” she said, standing up. “I’m Larissa Dennis, head counselor here at Hope Home. You’re just in time to join Group.”

  The director appeared, welcomed Veronica, and sat down at the desk, and Veronica followed Larissa into the large room that faced the backyard. There were ten huge purple beanbags in a circle, and some rocking chairs. The room was just as it had been twenty-two years ago. Painted a very pale blue, with inspirational posters on the walls.

  As the clock struck ten, girls began coming in and sitting down on the beanbags and chairs. One very pregnant girl chose the recliner. Many of them had anxiety balls in their hands.

  “Morning, girls,” Larissa said. “We have a new volunteer joining us for group every week. Veronica Russo lived here at Hope Home twenty-two years ago as a sixteen-year-old. She’ll be helping guide discussions and just generally being of support and service. Turns out Veronica is a master pie baker, so she’ll be in the kitchen when she’s not needed. Anyone who wants to learn to make a few different kinds of pie, meet in the kitchen at eleven.”

  There were a bunch of “Me!”s, which made Veronica smile.

  “I’m craving pumpkin pie so bad,” a red-haired girl on a beanbag said.

  “Key lime.”

  “Chocolate cream.”

  “Anything but apple pie. Too boring.”

  Veronica smiled. “How about one of each?”

  The girls cheered. Pie had a way of making people happy. Even—especially, maybe—pregnant teenagers.

  “Any consensus of topic today?” Larissa asked the group.
r />   “Since someone’s here who used to live here, can we just ask her questions?”

  Larissa looked at Veronica. “Okay with an impromptu Q&A?”

  “Ask away,” Veronica told the girls. “Just say your name first so I can get to know who’s who.” She glanced around, glad she didn’t know the name of the girl Penelope had her hopes pinned on. That gave the girl some anonymity.

  “I’m Allison. Did you regret giving up your baby?” a girl with poker-straight blond hair asked.

  No easy pitches here, Veronica realized. “To be very honest, no, Allison. I had a total lack of support. From my family, from the baby’s father. I was alone. And very scared. Giving up the baby felt like the right thing to do.”

  “Did the kid ever try to find you?” another girl asked. “Oh, I’m Kim.”

  “Yes,” Veronica said. “Very recently too. I’d left my contact information with the adoption agency and the Maine State Adoption Reunion Registry.”

  “It must be weird when the kid you think you’ll never see again suddenly comes back into your life,” another girl said.

  “It brings up a lot of old memories, that’s for sure.”

  “Remember that blond chick who came by a couple of weeks ago, the one who said she was born here in the parking lot?” Kim said to another girl who had serious attitude in her blue eyes. She looked angry and conflicted, and Veronica made a mental note to be available to talk to her during the pie tasting. Some girls needed to ease into asking the questions they most wanted answers to. “She was trying to decide if she wanted to contact her birth mother.”

  Veronica froze. They were talking about Bea. No doubt about it. Bea had said she’d come here.

  “I felt bad for her,” Allison said.

  “Omigod, Jen, remember how you threw your turkey sandwich at her for making Kim cry?”