by March, Mia
“Not my proudest moment, but I was so pissed at her for not knowing how she felt. How could you not know how you feel? She shouldn’t have come here.”
It killed Veronica to think of Bea, who seemed not to have a mean bone in her body, getting yelled at, getting a sandwich thrown at her. Bea must have felt awful.
“Everything is a learning opportunity,” Larissa said.
“I’m going to be very, very honest,” Veronica said. “I think that girl you’re talking about is my birth daughter. Long, blond hair? Brown eyes? Tall?”
“Omigod, yes,” Jen said.
Veronica nodded. “We did finally meet and I’m so glad.”
“I like knowing that someday my baby will try to find me,” Kim said. “I know you don’t, Jen, but twenty years from now, you might feel totally differently.”
“Doubt it,” Jen said. She turned to Veronica. “So what now? You’re suddenly all mother-daughter?”
“We’re working on just getting to know each other.”
Jen glanced around at the other girls, then back at Veronica. “Can I ask you questions about your family? My mother hates my guts for embarrassing her. Apparently, everyone knows and she had to quit her country club.”
“My family wasn’t supportive. Some families are. I had friends here whose mothers and fathers would visit a few times a week. It made me feel awful, but it made me want to find my own happiness, you know?”
“So what did you do?”
“I decided what I wanted for myself. To travel, see the country.”
“I want to move to California. The second I’m eighteen, I’m out of Maine,” Jen said.
“What about the father,” Allison asked. “Is he still in the picture?”
“No,” Veronica said. “He told me it couldn’t possibly be his baby. And I never saw him again. I think he was scared to death and used his fear to turn on me.”
“God,” Kim said, glancing at a girl with long, brown hair who looked to be around five or six months pregnant. “That’s like Jordan, Lizzie.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Lizzie said. “I’m trying to totally forget he ever existed.”
“Did you?” Jen asked Veronica. “Forget he existed?”
“No. But I tried also.” She glanced at Lizzie. “It got better, though. I pushed a lot of it out of my mind, willed myself to forget. But I’ll tell you something. It’s important to deal with your feelings, let them out, cry if you feel like crying, ask questions if you have them. If I could go back and change something, you know what it would be?”
They all stared at her.
“I would have opened up more to people. Told them what I’d been through. Talked about it. I wouldn’t have hidden it. I wouldn’t have thought it was something to be ashamed of. I would have talked about how scary it all was.”
“Well, Jen never shuts up,” Kim said, “so she won’t have that problem.”
Jen threw her squeezy ball at Kim, and everyone laughed.
The girls continued to ask questions and Veronica was as honest as she could be without instilling any real fear or worry. She liked being here, liked listening, liked talking to them.
“You were wonderful,” Larissa said as she walked Veronica to the kitchen, where Veronica would bake three pies and give a lesson to whoever wanted to learn the fine art of pie baking.
“Thank you. I used to be one of them. So it was easy.” As she was about to go into the kitchen, she turned back. “Oh, Larissa. I heard there was a reporter writing an article on Hope Home. If you have her contact info, I’d like to talk to her.”
I would have opened up more to people. Told them what I’d been through. Talked about it. I wouldn’t have hidden it.
Now she’d take her own advice.
The moment Veronica arrived home, she called, Gemma, who wanted to talk to her right away. They’d be meeting here in a few hours. As Veronica headed into her living room to tidy up for the interview, she suddenly thought of cherries.
Cherries, with their beautiful deep red color, their burst of sweet and tart flavor, the way they’d always reminded her of tiny hearts, especially when there were two on a stem.
And even though she’d made quite a few pies at Hope Home this morning, she had one more pie in her.
A cherry pie. Henceforth known as Colin Firth Pie.
Veronica went into her kitchen, her head clear, her heart warm.
Chapter 21
GEMMA
Late Tuesday night, close to midnight, Gemma left Veronica Russo’s house with a bag containing two boxed pies, one fudge and one lime. The streets were still teeming a bit with Fourth of July tourists even though the Fourth had come and gone, the decks of restaurants jutting out on piers still lit up and full of people. She couldn’t wait to get back to the inn and finish her article. Veronica’s story, all she’d shared, had moved Gemma to the point of tears more than once. Now her article would come a beautiful full circle.
She crept into the inn, worried about waking anyone up, but the newlyweds in the Osprey Room were right behind her, waving an unopened bottle of Champagne and asking Gemma if she thought Isabel would mind if they raided the refrigerator for some of that incredible pie she had available every day. The couple was clueless but sweet, so Gemma gave them the fudge pie Veronica had sent her home with, keeping the Key lime Confidence Pie for herself.
As she headed upstairs and passed Bea’s door, she was so tempted to knock and tell Bea everything Veronica had said, but of course, she wouldn’t. All these years, twenty-two years, I thought I was running away from my past. I thought I’d come back to Boothbay Harbor to face that past. But it turns out my past—the pregnancy, reactions from my family, from the baby’s father, all that paled in comparison to what I was really running from: how much I loved that baby girl I held for two minutes against my chest. How much I love her now, even though I barely know her. You can love someone without knowing them much, did you know that? I fought against it all these years. But not anymore. Regardless of whether my birth daughter wants me in her life or not. I’ll always love her.
Maybe that was what maternal instincts were all about, Gemma thought, unsettled in a good way by all Veronica had told her. She slipped on her noise-canceling headphones to block out the laughter coming from the newlyweds’ room and got to work, her fingers flying over the keyboard of her laptop as she worked on the long middle of her article, the personal stories: a birth mother reuniting with the daughter she’d given up for adoption. A teenage girl determined her baby be raised by a wealthy couple, then discovers that money alone wouldn’t satisfy her—only a loving heart would. A birth mother, now remarried with children, who’d never told her husband of the baby she’d given up for adoption seventeen years earlier. Two women, now in their sixties, who’d been pregnant teenagers back when Hope Home had first opened fifty years ago, had shared their stories with Gemma by telephone and Skype, stories that had made Gemma cry. A lot had changed in fifty years. And a lot had not. Gemma wrote until her eyes started to water from exhaustion.
At just after two in the morning, the article was done. She sat back, expecting to feel sad, bereft that it was over, but all she felt was proud—and never so sure she was doing what she was born to do.
One of the women she’d interviewed, a prospective adoptive mother, had used exactly that phrase. I feel like I was born to be a mother, but I’m not sure it’ll ever happen . . .
You’re so lucky, she remembered another interviewee, fifteen-year-old pregnant Hope Home resident Chloe Martin, saying to her when Gemma had revealed that she was pregnant.
When would she ever figure this out? she wondered. What if she never did? How was she supposed to go home this week to a life she couldn’t imagine? If only she had a solid job as a reporter, she could be both—a reporter and a mother. A working mother, like so many other women. But without a job, without even a lead—and she’d applied online for nine staff reporting jobs since she’d been in Maine—she would go home
and slowly morph into Alexander’s mother and sister, this article just her last beautiful hurrah.
In the morning, with the sun shining bright into her window, Gemma woke up from a strange dream in which she couldn’t get her baby out of a baby carrier on her chest, but the baby wasn’t an infant; she had a woman’s face and looked scarily like Gemma’s mother. Gemma sat up, trying to shake the remnants of the dream from her memory. That wasn’t even one she wanted to look up in the dream dictionary.
She supposed it meant she worried she’d be like her mother. Or that she was carrying her worries about being a good mother and it was all tied into her own feelings about her mother. Maybe a lot of both, she knew.
She lifted up her tank top and put her hands on her belly, still only slightly beginning to round. “Hey, little one,” she said, tears stinging her eyes. “If you’re listening, I want you to know that I will love you. The minute I meet you, I’ll love you. How could I not? That is not even a question. I’m just missing some synapse, some switch that’ll get turned on when you’re born. I think I’ll feel like Veronica Russo does—that I always loved you. Even if I didn’t know it.”
A note was slipped under her door, and Gemma got out of bed to pick it up:
Today’s breakfast special is crepes—chocolate and/or strawberry! xo Bea
Bea was such a sweetheart. Right now, she knew Bea was unsure how she’d proceed with Veronica, what she and her birth mother were to each other, how—and if—to forge a relationship going forward. But with Bea’s big heart and how alone she was, and Veronica’s strength of hope, Gemma had a good feeling they’d work it out.
She reached over onto her dresser for her laptop and proofread her article, just under three thousand words, proofed it again, then sent it by e-mail to Claire at the Gazette.
She wasn’t in the mood to eat breakfast with her fellow noisy guests, so she skipped the crepes and headed out to Harbor View Coffee for a decaf iced mocha and a scone, then took a long walk around the pretty side streets of the harbor. She’d miss this place. She’d have to go home by week’s end; she had no other reason to be here. There was talk that Colin Firth was coming to town on Saturday to film his scenes, but there’d been rumors before and not a sign of him. She wasn’t getting an interview with Colin Firth. It was time to go home and face her future.
As she walked down Meadow Lane, she watched a father push his toddler on a tire swing hung on an old oak tree in the front yard of their house, and she smiled at them, imagining Alexander doing the same thing. This was Alexander’s dream, she realized, to be doing exactly that. Her husband’s dream. All she’d been thinking about these past few weeks was her own dream, and maybe now that one dream had gone belly up, it was time to dream another one, as Meryl Streep had said in the movie Heartburn, an old favorite of Gemma’s. Dream another dream. She was going to have a baby. It was time to accept that wholeheartedly. If it turned out she didn’t have maternal instincts, well, then she’d learn how to be a mother.
Her head and heart a bit more settled, Gemma was about to turn back to the inn to call Alexander and let him know she’d sent in her article when she noticed the cutest house a few doors down. The yellow craftsman had a widow’s walk and a quaint porch with a rocking chair, and between the sweet scene with the tire swing and that rocking chair, Gemma could almost see herself sitting on that porch, rocking her baby back and forth. Becoming someone new, someone she didn’t know but could grow into.
She touched her hands to her belly. A little over a week ago, she’d been on a hospital cot, wondering if it was over before it had begun for her, before it had a chance to begin.
She took a picture of the house, making sure to get in the widow’s walk and the porch, and texted it to Alexander: A: maybe you could find something like this for the three of us in Dobbs Ferry. I love the widow’s walk—and a porch with a swing is a must. xxG
In a few minutes he texted back: I’m thrilled, but are you telling me that my meddling mother actually changed your mind? Sorry she got on you. She told me about it, and I told her she had to back off.
Wasn’t your mother. It was me. I want to do the right thing for us, for the three of us.
I love you, G.
Facts faced.
By the next morning, Gemma still hadn’t called Alexander to tell him she’d finished the article, that she was coming home . . . soon. She lay on her bed, her hands on her stomach, Your Pregnancy This Week next to her. She’d had dinner last night with June and let it all come out, and even June had said that for all she knew, Gemma could love suburban life. After all, she loved Boothbay Harbor, a tiny town.
But Boothbay Harbor was different. Boothbay Harbor had always been a saving grace, a harbor in itself to Gemma, the place her father had taken her for a month every summer after her parents’ divorce. She’d always been happy in Boothbay, the vibrant coastal town a constant ray of sunshine. She had old friends here, wonderful memories. And she loved the old wooden piers and boats in the bay, the cobblestone and brick streets lined with one-of-a-kind shops and every imaginable cuisine. She’d talk to Alexander about vacationing here next summer. Maybe every summer.
Her e-mail pinged and Gemma went to her laptop, hoping it was from Claire, who’d say she loved the article and had another story for Gemma, not that Gemma would do that to Alexander, as much as she’d want to.
It was from Claire:
Gemma, your piece was beyond fabulous! My boss loved it. He wants you on staff—that’s how impressed he was. I’m prepared to offer you a full-time job as a senior reporter, covering human interest and your own column, with full understanding that you will take maternity beginning late December . . .
Gemma burst into tears. A job offer. One she couldn’t accept.
She imagined herself living here in this sweet small town she adored, working on stories like Hope Home, having her own Sunday column. Spending time with old summer friends who’d blossom into everyday friends. Making new friends, good friends, like Bea. Watching her belly grow, month by month, and spending weekends decorating the nursery in a house like that old yellow craftsman, a house she could live in, breathe in, become a mother in. Coming home after work to Alexander, where they’d learn to be parents together.
Living three hundred miles away from her mother-in-law.
For all that, she’d leave New York City in a heartbeat.
The offer was almost cruel, considering she couldn’t call Claire and scream “Yes!” at the top of her lungs, which was what she wanted to do. So instead she called Alexander. “Claire—knowing I’m pregnant—offered me a full-time job as a senior reporter with my own Sunday column. At a decent salary too, well, not by New York standards, of course. I wish I could take the job. Why can’t any of the New York City papers I sent my résumé and clips to see in me what she sees?”
“Gemma, you’re a great reporter and a great writer. Between the economy and newspapers shutting down, you’re caught in the crossfire. But you had a great last assignment, and now you’ll come home and embrace your new life.”
“I know, I know,” she said.
“And listen, I’ve been thinking. If it’s Dobbs Ferry in particular that bothers you, we don’t have to move so close to my family.”
That was something, at least. “I guess that would help.” But she knew he was thinking a town over, not a county away. “I’ll drive down Saturday morning, okay?” she said, unable to keep the tears out of her voice. “I have some great people to say good-bye to up here.”
“I’ll see you Saturday night, then. Listen, sweetheart, you’re going to love your new life. It’s our next step.”
If only Gemma could believe it.
Chapter 22
BEA
Bea stood in front of 26 Birch Lane in Wiscasset, a fifteen-minute drive from Boothbay Harbor, her finger poised to ring the doorbell. In moments she would meet Timothy Macintosh, her biological father. She closed her eyes for a second and summoned up the advice Patrick had given
her today at lunch—to remember that Timothy had called her back, invited her to his home. Timothy had sounded like a kind enough person on the phone, if a bit hesitant. He’d explained that half of him truly had believed he wasn’t the father of Veronica Russo’s baby, while the other half worried all these years that he was. That had been weighing on him a long, long time, and he was looking forward to facing the truth once and for all.
She rang the bell.
There was a simultaneous gasp when the door opened. He was twenty-two years older than the boy in the photograph, but he looked so much like her. Very tall, with thick, wavy blond hair. His eyes were hazel, not brown like hers, but there was something so similar about their faces. The shape maybe. Something in the expression, the way they smiled.
“I don’t think you’ll need that DNA test after all,” the blond woman standing slightly behind him said.
Timothy had his hand over his mouth. “It’s very nice to meet you,” he said, holding the door open for her to step in. “This is my wife, Beth. Our daughter is out with friends, but maybe you can meet her another time, after we’ve sat down with her to tell her about you, of course.”
“I’d like that,” Bea said.
Bea had to cut her time short with the Macintoshes at four, since she had to meet Maddy for their tutoring appointment at five. Yesterday, Tyler had called to switch tutoring days from Wednesday to Thursday, since their grandparents had come to visit, but keeping the first meeting with Timothy to an hour and a half seemed about right anyway. Both Timothy and Beth were very formal and awkward with Bea, but she’d chalked that up to nerves. They were kind, bending over backward to share stories about Timothy’s family, whose ancestors came from Scotland. Bea jotted down what Timothy had said about his family’s medical history, an uncle with agoraphobia, a grandmother who’d died of ovarian cancer, a bit of depression here and there, but overall, strong, hearty folk. Timothy’s mother had been a secretary, and his father in construction, like Bea’s own father, and both Macintoshes seemed to love hearing about Bea’s childhood. Timothy and Beth had been married for seventeen years, and given how they’d sat with their arms entwined the majority of their afternoon with Bea, it appeared they were very close, that Beth was something of a rock for him. They were planning to tell their daughter about Bea that night, and Timothy promised he’d call about getting together again in the future.