Less than nothing.
Because she had the audacity to try to forget.
Celeste drove through the night, fueled by strong coffee, a lead foot, and the blue-hot flames of mortification. The fact she’d misjudged her friendship with Matt was bad enough. The fact she’d misjudged herself far worse.
Less than fifteen hours ago, she’d fled campus after having stopped at her dorm long enough to shove clothes in her bedraggled blue-striped tote and grab a blueberry muffin from the mini-fridge. She’d driven around in a daze, attempting to shore up her battered dignity. Then she’d made her decision and headed for home.
She’d crossed from New York to Connecticut, cut through Massachusetts, caught five hours of Z’s at a New Hampshire rest stop, and zigzagged along the Maine coast all the way to Casco Bay’s best kept secret: her hometown of Hidden Harbor. Her dignity had degenerated, and the blueberry muffin had long since rolled beneath the passenger seat, road grit overriding sugarcoating.
In all that time, her memory had refused to resurface.
Minutes before three on Wednesday morning, Celeste parked her trustworthy Cabriolet, Old Yeller, in her parking spot before Lamontagne’s, Katherine’s bakery. The owner’s neighboring spot was vacant.
A week or so ahead of New York foliage, a hint of decaying leaves already mingled with the ocean air. A few solitary leaves rattled across the empty sidewalk, skeletons scratching the concrete. The storefront looked the same as when Katherine had purchased it from the previous owner, 1999 masquerading as 1976, a fact Celeste never hesitated to remind Katherine. The fact Katherine was supposed to have sold the bakery to Celeste months ago, that back in May, Celeste had already mentally cut the time-consuming breads from her menu and planned out October’s pumpkin cheesecake, whoopie pies, caramel apples, and apple strudel, had meant nothing to Katherine.
Katherine’s reneging on their verbal agreement and the associated meaning—she felt Celeste wasn’t ready to run her own shop—meant everything to Celeste.
Yet here she was, in a compromising position, second time in less than twenty-four hours.
Her reflection stared back at her from the bakery’s glass front. Even in the streetlamp’s low light, the hollows beneath her green eyes appeared bruised, shades of the unintentional Goth look she’d sported six years ago, during her junior year in high school. An unseasonably warm breeze caressed her cheek, like a mother comforting a child, and Celeste shook off the misplaced sensation.
Katherine Lamontagne wasn’t her mother.
The fact the baker had acted the part since Celeste’s parents had abandoned Hidden Harbor for warmer shores meant nothing. Katherine had reminded—okay, nagged—Celeste into eating three meals and two nutritious snacks a day because passing out behind the counter would’ve been bad for business. Their arrangement had been purely professional, no blurred lines.
Same as her friendship with Matt.
The coffee in Celeste’s stomach churned in revolt, as though a wand were foaming milk for a cappuccino in her belly. She wiped the sour taste in her mouth with the back of her hand and acknowledged the slightly sore sensation between her legs that hadn’t lessened. That and a few glimmers of memory evidenced her folly.
She’d downed two screwdrivers. She’d accepted Matt’s ride back to the dorms. She’d kissed him good night.
She’d kissed him.
Celeste’s key fit into the lock, and the glass door gave, opening into the café at the front of the shop. The customer-alert bell jingled. Canary-yellow vinyl booths with light-green trim lined two walls, but the seat farthest from the door appeared lighter than the rest. When Celeste went to take a closer look, even the trim was different. Red instead of green trim proved Katherine still needed Celeste to tell the difference between the two colors, if nothing else. She ran her hand along the cushion, free of the permanent center indentation. Why would Katherine have replaced a lone cushion? Baby-blue paint, Katherine’s only other update since her long-ago purchase, made the place look as much a nursery as a bakery. Back of the café, slant-front glass cases housed rows of pastries. The aromas of vanilla, butter, and spun sugar softened the air and wrapped Celeste in a hug she didn’t bother resisting. This warmth and sweetness was her home, her siren song calling, her safe haven. Last time she’d spoken to Katherine, Celeste had told her boss she didn’t need her, her bakery, or Hidden Harbor.
Not the first time Celeste had spoken her mind and regretted it.
Celeste slipped into the kitchen and found her apron on the hook, same place she’d left it upon storming out months ago but without the fuzz of flour and the scourge of deep-set stains. She held the cotton up to her nose and inhaled the baby powder–scented laundry detergent Katherine used on all the dish towels and oven mitts. The smell rattled Celeste’s jaw, rattled her. Celeste’s mother had warned her not to burn her bridges, not to bite the hand that fed her. A mixed metaphor Celeste hadn’t appreciated until today.
Celeste turned on the industrial Blodgett oven, and the bad old girl’s pilot light fired to life. She consulted the master bake sheet, a mammoth blackboard Katherine propped up by the stockroom door. Despite Katherine’s best efforts at erasing, smudges from past weeks’ orders bled through to the present. Nothing a little baking soda and water wouldn’t correct, but Katherine had never been good at taking Celeste’s advice.
When Celeste had worked here, Katherine split the master bake sheet into Celeste and Katherine columns. Now the entire gargantuan list fell to Katherine.
A dull headache thrummed behind Celeste’s eyes. Hunger pains stabbed her gut, but she knew better than to give in to her body’s demands before she’d taken care of today’s business. She knew better than anybody that if you wanted to earn your keep, you’d better roll up your sleeves, rewrite the master bake sheet to include a Celeste column, and get to work.
An hour later, when the front door jingled and Katherine Lamontagne breezed into the kitchen, the bread dough was rising, warming the air with the satisfying aroma of yeast and flour. Inside the mammoth oven, apple, peach, and pumpkin pies baked and browned, and Celeste was hand folding wild blueberries into the muffin batter. Celeste raised her gaze to Katherine Lamontagne’s dark-brown eyes.
Neither woman blinked.
“You’re back from New York,” Katherine said.
“Apparently.”
Katherine’s gaze widened, and her jaw set. “What are you doing here?”
Celeste gave the batter bowl a solitary pat. “Stirring up the blues.”
Katherine shook her head. She turned to shed her peacoat and don her apron. She pulled her thick, dark hair into first a ponytail and then a chignon, her fingers working like magic. No matter how many times Celeste had studied Katherine, she’d never been able to replicate her process. Today, the sight of the back of Katherine’s neck—pale and vulnerable beneath the harsh lights—made Celeste feel like crying.
Probably just sleep deprivation.
Katherine turned around. The slight imperfection of her cowlick only enhanced the do. Her gaze lighted on Celeste’s eyes and softened. “Why’d you come back?”
“Maybe I missed your apple tarts.”
“You were supposed to show me how much you didn’t need me. You were supposed to finally get a degree and open up a shop in New York,” Katherine said, her tone at once accusatory and foot-stomping disappointed.
“I never said New York.”
“Anywhere but Hidden Harbor.”
“Maybe I like it here.”
“You needed to leave.”
“Maybe I wasn’t ready? Maybe you were right to go back on our deal?” Celeste’s cheeks tingled with heat. The sound of her own voice—thin and unsure, every statement a question—made her throat itch.Who was she? She wanted to take inventory, to strip down in front of a full-length mirror and seek the missing smart-ass Celeste. She hadn’t felt this way about herself in years, every failure a certainty, every insecurity exposed. She hung her head, and a chunk of
hair sprang from her ponytail.
“Oh, Celeste. I never said you weren’t ready. I said I wasn’t ready to retire at forty-six.” Katherine sighed. She reached into her pant pocket and took out a handful of hairpins. “How many times have I told you to keep your hair off your face?” Katherine swept Celeste’s hair from her throbbing forehead, her hands cool as summer tea. Then she cajoled Celeste’s unruly auburn mop into a bun, snug and secure.
Katherine tipped Celeste’s chin up. “New York didn’t work out?”
A flash of Matt’s face streaked across Celeste’s vision. The expression she’d previously identified as regret now seemed like what? Embarrassment? He sure hadn’t sounded embarrassed when he’d bragged about sleeping with her the way her big brothers used to brag about nailing a bull’s-eye during target practice.Who was she to judge character? Any way Celeste looked at it, she was screwed. “Something like that.”
“Want to talk about it?” Katherine asked.
Celeste slid the muffins into the convection oven, and her eyes dampened. For a nanosecond, she imagined sobbing on Katherine’s shoulder the way she’d cried in her mother’s arms after the Jerk Justin high school breakup that had sent her on the Bad Mad spiral that still lurked.
Hold it together, girl.
You didn’t bare your soul to your employer. You couldn’t get drunk, boink a classmate, have him blab about it to the whole class, and then expect your classmates to take you seriously.
Celeste couldn’t admit what had happened and expect Katherine to take her seriously.
Celeste had only seen Katherine drink once. They’d shared a bottle of sparkling wine after hours when Celeste had turned twenty-one. Freixenet, because Katherine insisted it went best with the Black Forest birthday cake she’d baked for Celeste. Celeste had never seen Katherine lose her head, with the exception of Katherine’s divorce two years ago. And in the middle of last spring’s thaw, her ex-husband, Barry, had started coming in for coffee every morning when the bakery opened at six. Katherine’s excuse? She’d never shown him how to use the coffeemaker.
When Celeste turned around, Katherine’s hands were planted on her hips, her eyebrows raised, as she awaited an answer to her question.
“Not really.” Celeste cleared her throat. “I don’t really feel like talking about what happened.”
“Okay.” Katherine nodded, but her gaze held on to Celeste’s, searching for answers. Then Katherine consulted the master bake sheet and ran her finger down the checked items. “Had anything to eat yet?”
“Does coffee count?”
Katherine let out a small laugh, and Celeste’s heart fluttered at her collarbone. “Not if you picked it up at a convenience store hours ago,” Katherine said.
“Guilty.”
Katherine went into the café and returned with an apple tart on a white stoneware dessert plate. “Eat while I get some proper coffee started.”
Celeste stared at the tart, perfectly proportioned, with golden-brown crust. Light from the overhead fixture shone off the apples. She inhaled the white chocolate of the glaze, and the tang from the apples puckered the sides of her mouth. But when she lifted the pastry to her lips, her throat tightened. She returned the tart to the plate. Her hands shook. “Too much coffee,” Celeste said in deference to the tremble, but they both knew that was a lie.
Ever since the burglary, whenever Katherine was alone at the bakery, she jumped at every sound. The rumble of a truck passing through the center of Hidden Harbor pooled tears at the back of her throat. Errant Dumpster odors slipping beneath the back door had Katherine checking and rechecking the stockroom and restrooms, in case an unhygienic intruder were hiding, biding his time to wield black spray paint against her walls and booth seating. Every morning, she stepped from her car and race-walked beneath the lamppost, blunt-edged key thrust between her pointer and middle fingers like a weapon. Don’t mess with me, or I’ll what? Scratch you silly?
And even though Katherine hated guns, her safe concealed the .22 she’d purchased within hours of the burglary, her biggest concession to newfound fear.
When a stranger broke into your sanctuary, stole, and fouled, nothing was sacred. Everything, no matter how precious, was tentative and up for grabs. And Katherine hadn’t needed her ex-husband, Barry Horowitz, to point out the obvious similarities between the crime and the layers of loss that had upended and toppled their marriage. Katherine didn’t need Barry to sit Celeste down on his chaise—or whatever furniture currently occupied his therapy office—to confirm the shadow of loss that haunted the young woman. Yet here he stood, front and center and Katherine’s first customer of the day.
Barry set his black coffee on the counter, then dug into his snug jeans pocket and produced a crumpled dollar bill. Katherine smoothed and folded the bill and slipped it into her apron on the pretense she’d yet to open the register. Later she’d add the dollar to the envelope of singles in the safe, all from Barry’s wallet.
Barry gazed around her, peering over her shoulder and into the kitchen. “Is that Celeste?”
So Katherine caved. God help her, but the man had a gift for drawing people out of their shells and into the open. Usually that gift didn’t extend to her. Katherine set her palms atop the bakery case and lowered her voice. “Found her in the kitchen when I opened up. Looked like she’d been here for hours. Something’s wrong. She drove all night from New York.”
“She misses her mother.”
“I’m not her mother,” Katherine said. “I’m not anybody’s mother,” she added, a regret Barry should’ve known, better than anyone save herself. But when he gave her a sad smile, she shook it off. “Besides, Celeste is a grown woman.”
“You’re mother enough. And you never outgrow needing your parents, no matter your age.” Barry stroked his beardless chin, a cliché shrink joke that hadn’t lost its ability to charm Katherine. Worse, the gesture drew attention to a face—boyish looking at fifty—she still adored and those pale-blue eyes. “Hmm. Come to think of it, you never outgrow the need for your long-lost wife, either.”
“Ex,” Katherine reminded him. “And I’m not long lost, I’m right here.”
Barry laid his hand on hers. “You’re three miles away,” he said, referring to the distance between Barry’s house that had always been too big for two and her apartment on the first floor of a Victorian.
Celeste wheeled a speed tray through the kitchen doorway, and Katherine snatched her hand away from Barry.
“Morning, Celeste,” Barry said.
Celeste rewarded him with her first genuine smile of the day. “How’s my favorite gym rat?”
“Couldn’t be better. Bench-pressed two-fifty last night.”
“It shows.”
Barry had coped with their divorce by losing the weight that had crept up on him over the course of their ten-year marriage, a pound for each year, giving up his Volkswagen Golf in favor of biking to work, and lifting weights as though he were a man half his age. Katherine had coped with their divorce by gaining the weight Barry had lost.
Celeste filled the display case with blueberry muffins and came out from behind the counter. “Well?”
Barry smacked his head with the heel of his hand. “Almost forgot.” He shrugged out of his fleece. According to protocol, Celeste ran her hands up and down either biceps. “Nice!” she said. Then, throwing a look over her shoulder to Katherine, “He’s going to make some lucky woman a fine husband someday.”
“Spare me,” Katherine said, although her heart, hard as stale bread, flickered in her chest. At least Celeste overstepping gifted Katherine a glimpse of the girl who’d stormed from the bakery months ago, too fast to let the door hit her.
Then Celeste scurried past Katherine and back into the kitchen, the joie de vivre drained from her face.
Katherine waited until Celeste disappeared into the far end of the kitchen. “Did you see that? Did you see that look on her face?” Katherine tried not to notice the way Barry’s button-down gaped
, pulled tight across his fit chest. She tried not to wonder whether his chest hair had grayed, along with the hair on his head. She tried not to remember how the curls tickled her lips when she took them between her teeth.
Barry aimed his shrink gaze at Katherine and nodded. “You’re worried about your girl.”
Katherine aimed her best anti-shrink gaze at her ex. But, heaven help her, she still felt validated. The Stinker. “She drove all night, she barely slept.”
“She’s passionate, like another woman I know.”
“She was passionate about leaving.”
“She changed her mind. Got there, and it wasn’t what she’d expected. She was disappointed. Sound familiar?”
Katherine had never been disappointed in Barry. When they were married and trying to conceive, he’d been disappointed in her. She ignored the dig. “She’s all wound up. Wound into herself.” Katherine huffed out a breath, looked to the pressed tin ceiling.
“Oy vay, Katherine. You are such a worrier. You sure you’re not Jewish? An honorary Jew?”
“Not anymore.”
“Jewish by inoculation.” Barry waggled his brows over his coffee.
Heat pulsed from Katherine’s cheeks. She hadn’t been inoculated in quite some time, and she’d half a mind to tell Barry flu season was upon them. But then she remembered the reason she’d divorced him: to give him a chance for a family with someone else.
Despite showing up at her bakery six mornings a week, he dated most weekend nights. Barry would never say so; he’d never be that cruel. But town gossip wasn’t known for its sensitivity.
Barry’s playful grin turned serious. “Here’s an idea. Have you asked Celeste why she’s back?”
A Measure of Happiness Page 2