Finding Colin Firth: A Novel Read online

  She sat at her desk, her favorite novels, books of essays, a memoir about a teacher’s first year, and her laptop making her feel stronger, more like herself. She stared at the manila envelope, lying right next to To Kill a Mockingbird, on which she’d written her senior thesis. She was supposed to be an English teacher by now, middle school or high school, teaching teenagers how to write strong essays, how to think critically about novels, why they should love the English language. But when her mother died last summer, Bea found herself floundering for months. She hadn’t gotten a single interview for a teaching job at any of the private schools she’d applied to, and the publics all wanted her to be enrolled in a master’s program for teacher education, which would mean more loans. A year later, here she was, not teaching, and still living with students. The only thing different was that she wasn’t who she thought she was.

  Bea stared at the photo of herself and her mother at her college graduation, willing herself to remember that she was still the same Bea Crane she was last week. Same memories, same mind, same heart, same soul, same dreams.

  But she felt different in her bones, in her cells, as though they were buzzing with the electricity of the truth. She had been adopted. Another woman, another man, had brought her into this world.

  Why did that have to change anything? Why did it matter so much? Why couldn’t she just accept the truth and move on from it?

  Because you’re here alone, for one. Her two good girlfriends had left Boston upon graduation for first jobs. Her best friends from high school were scattered across the country and in Europe; everyone was off on their summer plans, except for Bea, who had nowhere to go, no home.

  She felt caged and absolutely free at the same time. So this week she’d stalked around Boston, thinking of her parents with one breath, and this nameless, faceless birth mother with the next. Then she’d come back to her room and stare at the manila envelope until she’d open it and read the adoption papers again, which told her nothing.

  Maybe if she did know something, just something to make this tenuous grasp on the words birth mother feel more . . . concrete.

  “Damn it,” she said, grabbing the envelope and sliding out the papers. Before she could stop herself, she picked up her cell phone and punched in the telephone number on the first page.

  “Helping Hands Adoption Agency, may I help you?”

  Bea sucked in a breath and explained the situation and that she just wanted to know if there were names. Most likely there would not be. Bea had done some reading and learned that most adoptions were closed, as hers had been according to the paperwork, but that sometimes birth mothers left their names and contact information in the adoption files. There were also registries birth parents and adoptees could sign up for. Bea would not be signing up for anything.

  “Ah. Let me look in your file,” the woman said. “Hold just a minute.”

  Bea held her breath. Make this difficult, Bea thought. No names. She wasn’t ready for a name.

  Why had she called? When the woman came back, Bea would tell her thank you for checking but she’d changed her mind, she wasn’t ready to know anything about her birth parents.

  “Bingo,” the woman said. “Your birth mother called to update the file at her last address change just over a year ago. Her name is Veronica Russo and she lives in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

  Bea couldn’t breathe.

  “Do you need a minute?” the woman was saying. “I’ll give you a minute, no worries.” She did indeed wait a minute, and Bea’s head was close to bursting when the woman said, “Honey, do you have a pen?”

  Bea said she did. She picked up the silver Waterman that her mother had given her as a graduation present. She mechanically wrote down the address and telephone number the woman gave her. Home and cell.

  “She even included her employment address and phone number,” the woman continued. “The Best Little Diner in Boothbay.”

  Veronica Russo. Her birth mother had a name. She was a real person, living and breathing, and she’d updated the file. She’d left every possible piece of contact information.

  Her birth mother wanted to be found.

  Bea thanked the woman and hung up. She shivered and grabbed her favorite sweater, her father’s old off-white fisherman sweater that her mother had bought him while they were on their honeymoon in Ireland. It was the same sweater her father wore in her favorite picture, with Bea up on his shoulders. She put it on and hugged herself, wishing it smelled like her dad, like Ivory soap and Old Spice and safety, but her dad had been gone since Bea was nine. A long time. For the next eleven years, it was just Bea and her mom, both sets of grandparents long gone, both Cranes only children.

  And then Bea lost her mother. She was alone.

  She walked to the window seat and stared out at the rain sluicing down. I have a birth mother. Her name is Veronica Russo. She lives in a place called Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

  She works in a diner called the Best Little Diner in Boothbay.

  Which had a cute ring. A woman who worked in a diner like that couldn’t be so bad, right? She was probably a waitress, one of those friendly types who called her customers “hon.” Or maybe she’d fallen on hard times and was hard-bitten, a shell of a woman who set down eggs over easy and fish and chips with a depressive thud.

  Maybe she was a short-order cook. That might explain Bea’s ability to make an incredible hamburger, not that she could cook anything in her kitchenless room. This past year, between her jobs at Crazy Burger and the Writing Center, she had enough money to pay her rent. But now she would come up short for July, and the Writing Center was open only part-time for the summer sessions. Her last lousy paycheck, a half week’s pay from Crazy Burger, wouldn’t help much either.

  She had nowhere to be, nowhere to go. But she had this name, and an address.

  Bea could take a drive up to Maine, make herself walk into the Best Little Diner, sit at the counter and order a cup of coffee, and look at the name tags on the waitresses’ aprons. She would be able to check out her birth mother from a very close distance. She could do that.

  Yes. She would drive up, check out Veronica Russo, and if it seemed right to Bea, she would introduce herself. Not that she had any idea how to go about that. Maybe she’d leave a note in her mailbox, or just call. Then they’d meet somewhere, for a walk or coffee. Bea would find out what she needed to know so she could stop wondering, speculating, driving herself crazy. Then she’d say thank you to Veronica Russo for the information and drive back home to Boston and start looking for a new place to live. And a new job. Maybe she had to let go of her dream of being a teacher. She’d come home once her past had been settled, and she’d figure out what the hell she was supposed to be doing with her life.

  Home. As if there were one. This room was nothing more than a big closet. And her mother’s rental cottage on Cape Cod, where she and her mom had moved after her father died, had long ago been sold by the owner. But that little white cottage had been the one place left on earth that had felt like home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer breaks, and at times when Bea was stressed or heartbroken or just needed her mama.

  Now there were just memories and this old fisherman sweater. And a stranger named Veronica Russo, up in Maine. Waiting a long time to be found by Bea.

  Chapter 2

  VERONICA RUSSO

  Only an idiot would attempt to make a pie—a special-ordered chocolate caramel cream Amore Pie—while watching Pride and Prejudice. Had she put in the vanilla? What about the salt? Damn Colin Firth and his pond-soaked white shirt. Veronica set down her measuring spoons on the flour-dusted counter and gave her full attention to the small TV next to the coffeemaker. God, she loved Colin Firth. Not just because he was so handsome either. This TV miniseries was at least fifteen years old, and Colin Firth had to be fifty now. He was still gorgeous. But it was more than that. Colin Firth was six feet two inches of hope. To Veronica, he represented what she’d been looking for her entire life and had nev
er found and probably never would, at this point. Veronica was thirty-eight years old. Still not married.

  If you wanted love, really wanted love, you’d have it, friends, even boyfriends, had said many times over the years. There’s something wrong with you, her last beau had said before he’d stormed out on her for not agreeing to marry him. Something wrong with the way your heart works.

  Maybe there was. No, Veronica knew it was true. And she knew why too. But now, at thirty-eight, friends were worrying about her ending up all alone, so she’d started saying what felt lighthearted but true at the same time, that she was holding out for a man who felt like Colin Firth to her. Her friend Shelley from the diner had known exactly what she meant. “I realize he’s an actor playing roles, but I get it,” Shelley had said. “Honest. Full of integrity. Conviction. Brimming with intelligence. Loyal. You just believe everything he says with that British accent of his—and can trust it.”

  All that and yes, he was so damned handsome that Veronica had lost track of her own Amore Pie, a pie she could make in her sleep. Her special elixir pies were in high demand ever since she’d been back in Boothbay Harbor—just over a year now. She’d grown up in Boothbay, but had bought a house in a different neighborhood than the one she’d lived in with her parents. It had been love at first sight for the lemon-yellow bungalow on Sea Road, and the day she’d moved in, while hanging the wooden blinds on her sliding glass door to her deck, she’d heard someone crying. She’d peered her head out the door to see her neighbor sitting on her back porch, wearing only a black negligee and black leather stilettos. Veronica had gone over and asked if she could help, and the woman blurted out that her marriage was over. Veronica had sat down, and within moments her neighbor, whose name was Frieda, shared the whole story, how she’d tried to entice her husband, who barely looked at her these days, home for lunch with exactly what she was going to do to him. But he’d said he’d brought last night’s leftovers and would just have that.

  “He’d rather have a cold meat loaf sandwich than me?” Frieda had cried to Veronica. “For months, I’ve been trying to entice him back to me, and nothing works.” She broke down in a fresh round of tears.

  Veronica had told Frieda that she was a baker and would make her a special pie to serve her husband for dessert that night. When she gave him his slice, she was to think about how much she loved him, wanted him. And just for good measure, she could run her hands up the back of his neck.

  Well, that night, Frederick Mulverson had said he didn’t know what came over him, but he was back. Frieda had Veronica’s Amore Pie on standing order every Friday. One word to her friends and relatives, and Veronica’s phone had started ringing with orders, just as it had in New Mexico. Amore Pies were her most requested.

  She made upwards of twenty special pies a week. Plus two a day for the Best Little Diner in Boothbay, where she worked as a waitress. And nine pies a week for three local inns. But those—for the diner and the inns—were just her Happiness Pies, pies that tasted like summer vacation. She saved her special elixir pies for her clients around town, everything from Feel Better Pie, which came in all kinds of dietetic-friendly varieties, such as gluten free, dairy free, and even sugar free, to Confidence Pie, which involved Key limes.

  What she couldn’t seem to do was make a Colin Firth Pie for herself. She’d made Amore Pies for hundreds of clients that seemed to attract love to them. Sure, maybe it was mostly power of thought, but so what, since it worked. You get what you believe is what Veronica’s grandmother used to say. At the thought of dear Renata Russo, who’d died just months before all the trouble had started when Veronica was sixteen, Veronica closed her eyes. She let herself remember what it was like when she’d had a family, when Veronica, her parents, and her grandmother would sit around the table in the house Veronica grew up in—just several miles away from here—and have big Italian dinners. Meatballs and so much linguini in her grandmother’s homemade tomato sauce that it seemed to come from bottomless pots.

  She missed those days, days that had ended on an April morning when Veronica was sixteen and blurted out over a pancake breakfast that she was pregnant. One minute, she’d had a family—minus her beloved grandmother. The next, Veronica had been sent away.

  Why are you upsetting yourself by thinking about all that? she asked herself as she turned her attention back to the TV and the Bennet sisters, Elizabeth and Jane, conspiring in their lovely white dresses about their love lives. But since she’d moved back to Boothbay Harbor, her past was all she could think about. It was why she’d come home, for heaven’s sake. To face it. To stop . . . running.

  She thought if she came home, if she faced her past, maybe her heart would start working the way it was supposed to. And maybe, maybe, maybe, the daughter she’d given up for adoption would contact her. Veronica had been living in New Mexico when that baby girl had turned eighteen, and Veronica had called the Helping Hands Adoption Agency and left her contact information, then did the same with the registry in Maine. She’d waited by the phone that day. And the next. But there was no call from a young woman asking if she was Veronica Russo, if she’d given birth to a baby girl on October 12 in 1991 in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. For weeks afterward, Veronica had kept her cell phone close, expecting a call any time. She wasn’t sure why she’d believed her daughter would contact her on her eighteenth birthday, but she had believed it.

  She’d started baking then, four years ago in New Mexico, pies that felt like hope. She’d never been much of a baker before, but she’d been watching a cooking show, a special on holiday pies, and Veronica had gone out and bought ingredients to make a pie from scratch. She loved the feel of flour in her fingers, the pale yellow sticks of cold butter, the texture of shortening, the whiteness of sugar and salt, the purity of water. Such simple ingredients for a piecrust, not that there was anything simple about making piecrust from scratch. But Veronica had persisted until she’d perfected her crusts, all kinds, depending on the pie. Just like that, she’d found what comforted her, what replaced lonely nights with work she loved in the kitchen. She loved baking pies. And her pies felt so special to her that when she made them for friends, she’d name them for the reason she was sharing them in the first place. For a heartbroken friend, Healing Pie. For a sick friend, Feel Better Pie. For a down-in-the-dumps friend, Happiness Pie. For the lovelorn, Amore Pie. For the worried, Confidence Pie. Her Hope Pies were popular too. One friend had wished that her boyfriend, on his second tour of combat duty, would come back from Afghanistan in one piece, and Veronica had baked her a salted caramel cheesecake pie that she put all her hope into and then told her friend to do the same while cutting the first slice. Her boyfriend had returned with only a broken leg. Her pies had worked their sweet magic on so many people that Veronica had developed quite a clientele. How did it work? they wanted to know. Either Veronica had a little bit of magic in her or it was all about prayer. And luck. Maybe some of each.

  But Veronica had never bothered with a Colin Firth Pie in the hopes of bringing a man into her life whom she could finally love. All the magical pies in the world couldn’t fix her messed-up heart. She wasn’t capable of loving someone; kind as she was to others, she knew that. She’d loved once, so fiercely, and had been irreparably hurt. By her grandmother’s death. By a sixteen-year-old boy. By her parents washing their hands of her. She’d tried to love; she’d tried damned hard. She’d had her share of boyfriends over the years. Some for a couple of years, some for just a few months—all kinds of men. From the cute short-order cook at the first diner that had hired her as a sixteen-year-old waitress in Florida, where she’d moved after giving birth; to the proud marine in New Mexico who’d announced he was tired of waiting for her to say yes, he was driving them to Las Vegas to get married that day whether she liked it or not. She’d tried to explain again, said they could have a wonderful, romantic weekend in Vegas without a wedding, without talk of marriage, but he’d figured she’d cave once they got to the wedding chapel. She hadn�
�t caved. Furious and shouting that he’d had it with her and her inability to commit to him, he’d left her there, by the chapel, and driven away and she never saw him again. By the time she’d returned to New Mexico the next day, his few belongings were gone from the house he practically shared with her. Her heart had just never opened fully to him. It never had for anyone except Timothy Macintosh, a guy she’d spent the past twenty-two years trying not to think about.

  It had been there, in front of the Little White Wedding Chapel, that Veronica had realized she had to go back to Boothbay Harbor. If she ever wanted to fix herself, she’d have to go back. Back to her hometown, where she’d been shunned and sent away, where she’d given birth to a baby girl she’d held for two minutes and then had to hand over. She believed if she came back, faced all those memories, her Hope Pie might work on her and her heart would suddenly open and that baby girl would make contact.

  Veronica just wanted to know that the daughter she’d given up was all right. Sometimes Veronica thought if she could just know that, she could move on. Her jagged heart would piece together, and her life would change. Could change, anyway.

  So she’d come home, uncomfortable as it had been. Come home and tried to face her demons right away. Before she’d even started looking for a house to buy in town, she’d driven by the house she’d grown up in, a white saltbox that new owners had painted blue. She’d pulled over and felt sick to her stomach and got away from there fast. But she’d driven by several times, and each time she’d had less of a reaction. Same for the house the Macintosh family had lived in, the brick cape where she and Timothy had spent so much time. She’d even walked in the woods where she and Timothy had set up her old Girl Scouts tent, where they’d talk for hours about dreams, about leaving Maine right after high school and taking a Greyhound bus to Florida, where it was always warm and never snowed. That old tent was where a child had been conceived.