Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (9 page)

Bringing herself back to that day sent a fresh stab of pain to her chest. Maybe it would always hurt, even thirty years from now. Stop thinking about him, she ordered herself, calling out Penelope Von Blun’s and her mother’s order at the open window to the kitchen, which got an extended eye roll from Joe,
the cook. She wished she could stop. But in the first few weeks of her return to Boothbay Harbor, she’d actually seen Timothy, from a distance in the supermarket, and she’d been unable to sleep well ever since, memories waking her up. She’d been so stunned to see him that she’d jumped back behind a display of bananas. She hadn’t been sure, at first, if it was really him, but then she heard his laughter as he listened to something the woman with him had said. Veronica hadn’t gotten a look at her, just the back of her head—a precisely cut bob—and an amazing figure. Timothy’s arm had been around her, and he turned to look at something, and there was that profile, the strong, straight Roman nose. Veronica had almost started hyperventilating. It had been so unexpected. She didn’t think he lived in town; she’d looked him up just so she’d know if she had to accept that she’d run into him in town, but there was no listing for him, and she hadn’t seen him before or since that one time, so perhaps he was visiting relatives.

“Oh. My. God,” Shelley said as she collected the discarded
Sunday Boothbay Regional Gazette
from one of her tables.

“What, Shel?” Veronica asked, coming over.

Shelley, a petite redhead in her late thirties like Veronica, with catlike amber-hazel eyes, was staring at a page of the newspaper. She held up the front section of the Life & People section. “This.”

One glance at the front page and Veronica repeated Shelley’s “Oh. My. God.” A photo of Colin Firth, looking absolutely gorgeous in a tux, next to a brief article about the movie crew that had recently set up some equipment in Boothbay Harbor, near Frog Marsh, to film scenes of a new Colin Firth dramedy. Below the article was a call for extras.

Major motion picture seeks locals as extras. Apply on location at Frog Marsh between 4 and 6 Monday and Tuesday only. Bring a résumé and two photographs paper-clipped together, full-body and headshot, with name, phone, height, weight, and clothing size written in permanent marker on back.

So it was true. Colin Firth was coming to Boothbay Harbor—and could very well have been in Harbor View Coffee yesterday, despite the barista swearing on a stack of Bibles that Colin Firth had not been in the place. Perhaps he’d ducked out the back once word had gotten out that he was in there. The man had probably just wanted an iced coffee and a scone, for heaven’s sake, not screaming fans bombarding him. Such as herself.

“Come by my house tonight and I’ll take a bunch of pictures of you,” Shelley said, ripping out the front page, folding it up and tucking it into the pocket of Veronica’s apron.

“Pictures of me? For what?”

“So you can apply to be an extra!”

Veronica laughed. “Me? I work here. I bake a thousand pies a week. How could I possibly drop everything to work on a film set? I once read that extras are on call all day for as long as it takes to film the scenes on location. They sit around in a tent and read or chat until the director calls them to walk by wordlessly in the background or whatever.” But still, just the thought of being an extra in a Colin Firth movie started an excitement inside her that Veronica hadn’t felt in decades.

“Oh, you’re applying,” Shelley said, well aware of Veronica’s love of Colin Firth. At least three times a month, Veronica
invited Shelley over to watch a Colin Firth film, complete with fun drinks and appetizers and pie and discussion afterward about the film and why she adored Colin Firth so darn much.
Didn’t we just see
Love Actually
a couple of months ago?
Shelley had asked when Veronica had told her she was planning to watch it, if Shelley wanted to join her. As if you could see
Love Actually
one too many times. “You’ve got money, Veronica. Your pie business will allow you to take off a few weeks, even a couple of months. You’re going to miss the chance to be an extra in a Colin Firth movie in your own hometown?”

No, I’m not, Veronica thought, the image of Mr. Darcy walking soaking wet out of that pond coming to mind. There was no way she was missing this. She unfolded the newspaper page and stared at the photo of her heartthrob, then at the ad. She was smiling like an idiot.

Major motion picture seeks locals as extras
. Good Lord, Veronica could be in the same airspace as Colin Firth. She could be an extra—why not? And Shelley was right; her pie business had been doing so well that she could easily take some time off from the diner.

Veronica in same room as Colin Firth. She could look Mr. Darcy in the eye!

She’d be first in line to apply.

Which meant coming up with a résumé for the first time in her life, she realized, as she eyed the kitchen window counter and saw two of her orders were up. She headed over and filled her tray. Veronica had been a waitress at busy diners since she was sixteen and left Maine for Florida. All you needed for that job was to say you had experience and then show it on the floor and you were hired. Was she supposed to list every diner she’d
worked from Florida to New Mexico to Maine for the past twenty-two years? She’d think it over later as she fulfilled her pie orders. If the movie people wanted locals, they wanted real people with local jobs, everyday people, not necessarily a résumé full of accomplishments. She’d tell the truth, go to Shelley’s tonight and have her picture taken, and then she’d apply with fingers crossed.

She’d make herself a Hope Pie too. Salted caramel cheesecake. Just for good measure.

By four o’clock, Veronica’s house was sparkling clean for tomorrow night’s pie class, she had her recipes printed to hand out, and she’d written her résumé. On her cover sheet, she briefly described leaving Boothbay Harbor just months shy of her seventeenth birthday—but not why—and making her way, alone, to Florida, where she’d gotten a job in a diner, then a few years later heading slowly west, to Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and then back to Maine. She wrote a paragraph about working at the Best Little Diner, how she loved her regulars and enjoyed the tourists. She didn’t know if that would be remotely interesting to whoever was in charge of hiring the extras. She went on Google and learned she wasn’t off base about what extras did. Lots of sitting around and waiting. Apparently, there wasn’t much about what made for a good extra, what would make her be chosen over anyone else. But if they wanted “real people,” Veronica was as real as they got. According to the articles she read about extras, the one thing an extra wasn’t supposed to do or be was star crazy, so she’d left off her enduring love of Colin Firth.

Veronica put away her laptop, made a neat pile of her recipes, and did a check of her cupboards, pantry, and refrigerator to make sure she had everything she needed for tomorrow’s class. Enough flour, shortening, baking soda, and sugar, both white and brown. She’d have to replenish her salt supply, pick up eggs, sticks of butter, and a pound of apples and a few pints of blueberries. She added cherries, blackberries, bananas, Key limes, and chocolate to her list. She used her jar of molasses so infrequently that she didn’t have to worry about coming up short for Leigh DeMarco’s shoofly pie.

For the first class, she’d focus on good old apple pie—even though it wasn’t apple season—and making piecrust from scratch, but if students wanted to make special elixir pies, they would be able to; Veronica had a professional oven that could handle many pies at once, and every possible kind of pie filling at the ready, from fresh fruit to good chocolate to coconut to custard.

Her phone rang. Hopefully it was Penelope Von Blun dropping out of class.

“Hello, Veronica speaking.”

“I’d like to order a pie, a special pie.” The voice was raspy, thirties, Veronica thought, and there was a tinge of anger, of bitterness, but also sadness.

“Sure. What kind would you like?” From the woman’s tone, Veronica had the sense she’d order Amore Pie or maybe Feel Better Pie.

“The kind of pie that would get someone off someone else’s mind. Do you make that kind?”

Her boyfriend or husband was having an affair. Or in love with someone else, Veronica thought, but that didn’t seem quite it.
Usually Veronica could tell so much by just a voice, but there was something complicated here that Veronica couldn’t put her finger on. “Well, I’ll need to clarify if you mean in a romantic sense or just someone you’re trying to purge from your life.”

“Maybe both,” the woman said.

Cast-Out Pie. Veronica had made a few like that, just twice here in town and several times down in New Mexico. The first time, one of the busboys at the diner, an emotional wreck of a young man who cried while clearing the tables of any woman who had red hair, like the ex who’d broken his heart, had been on the verge of getting fired for all his crying. So Veronica had stayed late and found herself using peanut butter for its stick and coconut for its grit, figuring a lighter cream-based pie that felt airy couldn’t dislodge and lift, whereas the heavier peanut butter and the texture of coconut could get in there, take those feelings of gloom and doom, and carry them away from the stomach, such a source of upset. She’d baked up her Cast-Out Pie and given the poor guy a slice the next morning while having a chat in the kitchen. She told him that he was stronger than he thought, that he was in control of his own destiny, his own future, and maybe it was time to let old hurts go. Maybe it was time to focus on the new. Reel off and cast in.

As he ate the slice of pie—he’d had one and a half slices, Veronica remembered—he told her that he did have a bit of a crush on Jenny, the dark-haired waitress with the big blue eyes, and maybe he’d ask her out. The Cast-Out Pie had been a success and so Veronica had stuck with the peanut butter and coconut.

“I call that Cast-Out Pie,” Veronica said into the phone.

“It’ll really work?” the woman asked, the voice suddenly more hopeful.

“I’ll be honest—it’s one of my special elixir pies that doesn’t always do its job. I suppose you really, really, really have to want that person out of your heart for it to work. You have to be ready. If you’re not, it doesn’t seem to work. Some people are ready, they’re there, but memories keep pulling them back. Others truly aren’t ready to let go, even if it’s self-destructive.”

“Well, sometimes you don’t always know what’s best for you,” the woman snapped.

Veronica had a feeling this person was not ready, that the pie wouldn’t work. But the pain in the woman’s voice had gotten under Veronica’s skin. The woman was prickly. Prickly was a very uncomfortable way to be. Veronica wanted to help her.

“I’ll tell you what,” Veronica said. “When you pick up the pie, don’t pay me. If it works, you can leave the money in my mailbox. Fair enough?”

The woman was quiet for a moment. “All right. Tomorrow then?”

Tomorrow? She had her résumé and cover letter to go back over, the little photo shoot at Shelley’s tonight, and class to prepare for tomorrow. Plus, she was working the morning shift tomorrow and had to bake two special pies for clients after work and her own salted caramel cheesecake Hope Pie for herself. Tomorrow afternoon she’d need a good couple of hours to do some grocery shopping for her pie class and get everything set up.

And had the woman even said thank you for Veronica’s offer not to pay if the Cast-Out Pie didn’t work for her?

“Please,” the woman said, and again, something in her voice seemed so desperate that Veronica couldn’t say no.

Veronica breathed out a silent sigh. “If you come by around five p.m. tomorrow, I’ll have your pie ready.”

“Thank you,” she said finally, and hung up.

For a full minute, Veronica couldn’t shake the woman off, there had been something unsettling in her voice, something Veronica couldn’t pinpoint. She couldn’t get the woman’s bitter voice off her mind. Then again, that would be very helpful in making a Cast-Out Pie.

On Monday morning at nine thirty, Gemma left the office of Dr. Laura Bauer, OB/GYN, with a confirmation of pregnancy—a second positive urine test anyway—a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and a due date.