A Measure of Happiness (12 page)

As if something was terribly, terribly wrong with her.

Zach bumped her shoulder. “You okay?” he asked.

When she swallowed, the tears in her sinuses made a moist sound. “I'm awesome.” Celeste blinked at him.

Zach's lips pressed into one of those sympathetic smiles that simultaneously turned up at the corners while the top lip bowed upside down. One of those
I see your sadness, you who refuses to acknowledge your sadness.

“I'm awesome, Zach. Really,” she said, and turned her attention to the sugar cookies. Trays of blank-faced pumpkins, bats, and witch hats covered the better part of the children's table, awaiting frosting and decorations. She slid the colored sugars to the front of the table and then set them back in a line. She straightened the handwritten table tent signs she'd made for the colored frosting. Frightful blue, raging red, outrageous orange, and midnight black. She proactively told her eating disorder—the annoying, lingering, and much-maligned Ed—to ignore the throat-curdling smells of fried dough, French fries, and sausage.

When she'd awoken Zach, she'd been fine. Really and truly fit as a fiddle, as her dad used to say. Whatever that meant. Now she was on the verge of bending at the waist and howling.

At some point every day since she'd come back home, a feeling would pass through her, like a random bout of seasickness. She'd get a hint of knowing that reminded her of a game they'd played in culinary school. First you'd slip a blindfold over your eyes, and then your classmates would hold spices for you to identify beneath your nose. Without fail, you'd miss a scent, knowing but not knowing the smell. Then you'd rip the blindfold from your eyes, revealing your foolishness, the spice obvious now that you'd seen it in the light.

Behind her, Zach hummed, the buzzing directed at her. She deciphered the tune right away but wanted to draw out the game. “Whistle it,” she said.

Without missing a beat, Zach puckered up and held his hands behind his back, making himself look like a kitschy flea market Hummel figurine. In a good way.

“Sing it,” she said, the request coming too late. A traitorous sunshiny smile had knocked out her creeping crud feeling, giving her away. Too bad. She'd really wanted to hear him sing.

“You know the song,” Zach said.

“ ‘Don't Worry, Be Happy' ?”

“Yeah, that's it. Don't worry, be happy.” Zach tilted his head, and the head tilt shook out another kind of smile. Sympathetic, sure. But this time more happy than sad.

Maybe it was the breeze from their neighbor's cotton candy. Maybe she smelled a mixture of buttered popcorn and kettle corn from the cart across the brick path. Maybe what she smelled was something way simpler and way more obvious. She crinkled her nose.

Zach's gaze shifted sideways. “Hey! I showered.”

“Did you use my almond body wash?”

“I got in, I showered, I got out. I followed the rules. Besides, you didn't say I couldn't.”

A twinge of that earlier creeping crud feeling reappeared. How could she have answered a question he hadn't even asked? As though she were having an argument with Ed, she talked back at the irrational fear.
Get a grip, Celeste, he was kidding.

Zach held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Here's what happened. I didn't realize I'd forgotten my soap and shampoo—”

“My shampoo, too!”

“I was soaking wet.And it was, like, either I get out and dry off and run back out to Matilda or . . .”

Celeste folded her arms, tapped her foot. Pretending to be pissed actually made her feel better. She imagined Zach soaking wet, holding a towel around his waist, and running barefoot across the parking lot. She imagined him using her shampoo and body wash and wondered whether he hummed in the shower or maybe even sang.

She held up a finger. “Answer one question for me and you're off the hook.”

“Anything.”

“You didn't . . . use my puff. Did you?” she croaked out in a fake stricken voice.

“Do I look like a guy who would use a puff?”

“Body wash works better with a puff.”

“I didn't use the puff.”

“No?” Celeste asked. And then a hint of vanilla pudding scent tweaked her nose. “Bend down,” Celeste whispered.

“What?” Zach crouched, answering the question he supposedly hadn't heard. A chunk of hair fell before his eyes, shining in the sun that had sneaked beneath the booth's awning.

Celeste lowered her eyelids and inhaled a stronger vanilla pudding–like scent. Her hand rose, hovering near his head. She straightened and lowered her hand to her side, certain now about what she'd discovered. “You used my Flex conditioner,” she told him, the second thought that came to mind. The first thought? She wanted to bury her fingers in his hair, the way she, when Katherine wasn't looking, hand mixed dough without using sensation-filtering food prep gloves.

Lying dormant since Monday, Celeste's below-surface and ever-present hum sprang to life, like a guy's hidden erection.

Jerk Justin had once asked her why she was always so horny. That hadn't been fair. A below-surface hum wasn't the same as being ready to go. She was only ready to go for certain guys. She could imagine being ready to go for Zach. In an alternate universe where Matt the Rat didn't exist.

Great. She'd spent so much time with Katherine, her woo-woo voice was making cameo appearances in Celeste's mind.

Zach straightened until he was looking her in the eye. “Guilty,” he said. “You don't tell anyone, I won't tell anyone. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, and then her stupid hand went and touched Zach's hair anyway, the way a dieter snuck a bite of pumpkin pie, when she really wanted a whole slice.With extra whipped cream.

Zach raised his hand to his hair, retracing the path her traitorous fingers had followed. “I generally let the cowlick thingy do whatever it wants. Live and let live. You know?”

“Live and let live,” Celeste said. From the corner of Celeste's eye, she spotted her first customers, a trio who'd surely test her ability to do so.

Abby, Charlie, and Luke stopped to chat with Katherine. But when the word
cookies
broke through the tangle of voices, Luke dragged Abby up to the cookie bar, leaving Charlie behind.

Good call.

“Who's this?” Celeste said. “Spiderman without his suit?”

Too late, Celeste registered Abby's cringe. “Spiderman's wearing his invisible suit today. We're saving his other suit for Halloween, so it doesn't get dirty.”

“Gotcha.”

Luke's big blue eyes peered over the edge of the sugar cookie decorating table. He reached up and dipped a finger into the blue frosting. Abby swooped in and stopped the finger before he popped it into his mouth. “Use a spoon, please.”

“How about a stool?” Zach said, coming around the table to place one between Abby and Luke.

Abby hoisted Luke onto the stool. “Thank you!” she said, and threw a questioning look Celeste's way.

Zach answered for himself. “I'm Zach, Lamontagne's newest hire.”

“Abby, Celeste's oldest friend.”

Luke raised his hand. “Hey! How do I do this thing?”

“Manners, Luke.”

“Hey! How do I please do this thing?”

Zach bent down to Luke's level. “First you choose a cookie—”

“Bat! 'Cause bats are cool.”

“Then you put stuff on it. Frosting, sprinkles, these silver balls. Whatever you want.”

Luke spooned a glob of blue frosting onto his bat. “I like frosting 'cause it smells like Celeste.”

“No way, really?”

The tip of Luke's tongue peeked from the corner of his mouth, as though he were preparing to create a culinary masterpiece. With one hand, then the other, he pressed the blue frosting into the bat's wings. “It's true. Smell my hands.” Luke held up two equally blue palms, and Zach bent to take a sniff.

“Yeah, maybe a little. But it's not good manners to go sniffing girls.”

Luke opened his mouth as though he wanted to swallow the cookie whole and took a bite. Blue smudged the tip of his nose and lined his mouth. He chewed, and his gaze slid from side to side, like a clock pendulum. “Is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Luke asked Celeste.

“I don't know,” Celeste said. “Too soon to tell. I'll let you know when I figure it all out.”

Luke licked his lips and then went in for a second widemouthed bite.

Abby placed a hand on the arm of Celeste's sweater. “Come talk to me,” Abby said to Celeste. The seriousness of Abby's tone, so Abby-like, and the dash of pleading, not usually like Abby at all, told Celeste the subject of the requested talk was Charlie.

“I'm working,” Celeste said, even though at the moment her only customer was Luke and he seemed to be doing just fine.

Abby scrunched her face and held up a finger, as if she were scolding Celeste. “One lousy minute,” Abby said.

“Go ahead,” Zach said. “I used to do kids' birthday parties. I can handle the cookie table. No problem.”

Abby jammed her hands into her pockets. Her gaze wandered over to where Charlie stood talking with Katherine.

Shame on Celeste for pushing Abby further than her three-year-old, Luke, could. Celeste wished she had a neura-lyzer from the movie
Men in Black,
so she could wipe out her own memory and forget everything Charlie had ever done wrong to Abby and Luke. Celeste wished she had another device to make her remember what had happened with Matt the Rat.

“Okay, let's go talk,” Celeste said, her heart like a wild thing, caged, and Abby gave her the slightest hint of a smile.

That wouldn't last long.

Celeste loved Abby, but she refused to pretend she was happy about Abby getting back with Charlie. She wasn't going to lie.

Because the thing about telling a lie, even a lie that saved someone else's feelings? You had to first make yourself believe the delusion. You had to buy into the fantasy. You had to forget everything you knew. And what the hell? Sooner or later, everyone, Abby included, needed to face the truth.

C
HAPTER
8

Robert Frost's “The Road Not Taken” echoed through Katherine's head, simultaneously bringing her back to her seventh-grade English class, where she'd sat amidst a roiling sea of fidgeting kids and bulging backpacks, light-headed and nauseous from hunger, and anchoring her in the present, where she stood before her bakery's booth of pies and cookies and she never went hungry.

“I don't understand women . . .” Charlie Connors told her.

Abby Stone's off-again on-again boyfriend and the father of her three-year-old son, Luke, let his statement dangle, as though hoping Katherine would both represent and explain her gender.

Katherine followed Charlie's gaze to the side of Lamontagne's booth, where Abby and Celeste were embracing, after having looked anything but pleased with each other. You might be able to school your face into a desired expression, but body language never lied. Abby had jabbed her finger at Celeste, Celeste had folded into herself, and Katherine and Charlie had watched some kind of sisterly drama unfold. The subject of which was most likely Charlie.

Celeste had supported Abby through all of her Charlie breakups. Unlike Charlie, Celeste had been present for the birth of their son. On that frigid day, a late winter storm had blanketed Hidden Harbor, one of the few times Katherine had closed Lamontagne's due to weather. The next day, Celeste had staggered into work, as devastated by lack of sleep as by worry for her best friend.

If Katherine knew Celeste, she'd right now be waiting and worrying Charlie would, once again, take Abby out at the knees.

Past behavior was the best predictor of future outcomes, and all that jazz.

Yet the second Charlie graduated from college and returned to live and work in Hidden Harbor, Abby had taken him back. The same town gossips who'd four years ago frothed at the mouth at the delicious news about “sweet as pie” Abby's pregnancy and then declared, “Like mother, like daughter,” had risen up and cheered.

For the child's benefit? Or for Abby's? Did Abby still believe the fallacy that a single mom's love was second best, even after having herself been raised by a loving, capable single mother?

From Katherine's experience, being raised by married parents guaranteed nothing.

When no general explanation regarding women was forthcoming from Katherine, Charlie continued, “I don't even know why Abby's ticked at Celeste. She asks me whether she should stop by her booth or ignore her. Then she goes and does whatever she wants to do anyway. Why'd she bother asking?”

Here Katherine had some expertise. “She didn't want you to tell her what to do. She only wanted you to listen, so she could figure it out for herself.” Katherine's masculine ex-husband, the very man who'd returned a button-down he claimed appeared more pink than red, made his living listening like a woman. Dear lord, had Katherine only now figured this out?

“Huh,” Charlie said. “That's weird. Why didn't Abby talk to herself, then?”

Katherine considered her audience. Charlie might look like an adult—he taught at the high school, he took responsibility for his son, he played the part. But inside, most men and women in their early twenties were still children, finding their way.

“Because she didn't want the Briar Rose guests to think their innkeeper was a crazy person,” Katherine said. “That's generally bad for business.”

“Ah, good point,” Charlie said.

A woman in a French-blue fleece, who could've passed for either Mrs. Jenkins's daughter or a youthful doppelgänger, passed before the popcorn booth and slipped into the crowd.

“Hey, I thought you said you weren't hiring just for weekends!”

Katherine startled and turned to find Blake, the kid she was never going to hire, staring in the direction of her newest hire. Blake's slender hands were clean, but he wore the same attitude that had put her off from hiring him months ago: the proverbial chip on his shoulder. He expected to be treated badly. In Katherine's experience, you always got what you expected.

Katherine shook her head and breathed through the boy's negative vibrations. “First of all, you may call me Katherine. You may not call me
hey.
Second of all, I didn't hire anyone just for weekends.”

Beneath her glare—she was trying not to glare—the boy's eyes watered.

The boy was rude and spoke out of place, but she had the urge to hug and console him. The impulse thrummed like a hollow ache in her belly. “Blake,” she said, “come have a piece of pie with me.”

“I don't have any money,” he said, his tone an accusation.

She inhaled deeply, intending to calm herself. Instead, the stench of cigarette smoke caught in her throat, dank and distinct. Secondary smoke from Blake's parents or personal use? “On the house.”

“I don't need your charity,
Katherine.
I need a job.”

Blake turned his skinny self around and stomped across the green.

“Blake, wait!”

“You didn't hear it from me,” Charlie said, “but he's having a rough time of it at home.”

The back of Blake's black hooded sweatshirt slipped between the popcorn cart and the bandstand and disappeared.

From the time Katherine was ten, she'd needed a job, too, for so many reasons. To prove herself capable. To have worth that her father couldn't disparage. To get out of the house and away from the loud, damaging chip on her father's shoulder. The chip that worked tirelessly to prove her incapable, worthless, and damaged.

“Is Blake in one of your classes?”

“No, but I wish he were.” Charlie shrugged. “Maybe I could help him,” he said, debunking Katherine's assumption about men in their early twenties in general and Charlie in particular.

Over at the cookie table, Luke licked his palms. When Zach handed Abby a stack of napkins, Luke slid from the stool and ran toward his father. And some women in their early twenties, like Abby, had been born old. Abby was just like her mother.

The summer after Katherine had given up her son, a long-legged sixteen-year-old blonde had come to Hidden Harbor for a job at Hermit Island, gotten pregnant, and stayed. Abby's mother, Lily Beth, was one of the most self-reliant women Katherine knew.

And yet here Abby was, back with the man who'd caused her so much grief.

How was Lily Beth taking the news? How did you keep your children safe from heartbreak? How could you stand back and watch them fail?

Could Katherine have gone it alone, been that self-sufficient single mom, and shown herself the way? She'd been pondering that question since the day she'd given up her son. And over the years, whenever Lily Beth had come into Lamontagne's with Abby, Katherine had silently offered up a heartfelt
huzzah!
Then she'd spent the rest of the day restless, contemplating the nature of fate versus self-determination and whipping up key lime pies so tart they'd stung her eyes.

Now Abby and Luke drew tears to Katherine's eyes. What was wrong with Katherine? She'd made her choice and so had Abby.
Huzzah!

Charlie bent down and Luke scrambled up onto Charlie's shoulders.

Abby waved a wad of napkins in the air, even though Charlie's fisherman sweater had taken the brunt of the frosting mess. Luke's blue handprints climbed the pale knit, from Charlie's midsection to his shoulders.

Luke held on to Charlie's ears. “Whoa, buddy,” Charlie said. “Mom wants us over there. Steer me back to the right.”

“I want to play in the corn maze!”

“After you get cleaned up.” Charlie faked to the left, pretending to wander in the direction of Luke's steering, before heading over to Abby.

“This car doesn't drive right. I want to play in the corn maze!”

Charlie bent down and set Luke in front of Abby and Celeste.

“Gotcha!” Celeste scooped Luke up and deposited him on her hip.

Abby nabbed Luke's hands and swiped off the remaining frosting. Luke hugged Celeste around the neck and rested his head on her shoulder.

“Aw, sweet boy,” Celeste said.

Luke raised his head and turned to Zach. “I didn't really sniff her. I only smelled her on accident.”

Zach gave Luke a thumbs-up. “Good job,” Zach said, as if he understood what Luke was talking about. “Manners are hard to remember,” he added, and Luke nodded, his little face serious.

Zach and Luke seeming to connect. Celeste holding Luke on her hip. Zach and Celeste sharing an unmistakable, as-yet undefined connection. The sight made Katherine feel light-headed and uneasy and lost in time.

“He wants to go to the corn maze,” Charlie told Abby.

“First we're visiting Gran's booth, then we go to the corn maze.
Remember?
”

“I never played in a corn maze,” Luke told Zach.

“Yeah? Me neither. Looks like fun, though.”

“It does look like fun. Someday I should go, too,” Katherine said.

“You're kidding.” Celeste looked from Zach to Katherine. “My brothers used to take me every year and try to lose me in there.”

“Oh, very nice.” Katherine grinned, but a tremor ran through her lips, electric with the notion of getting left behind.

“They couldn't get rid of me that easily. They would've gotten in wicked trouble. Besides, I have a great sense of direction. And taste.” Celeste nibbled Luke's cheek. “Yum, yum, yum.” Luke giggled, and she passed him to Abby.

“You can walk,” Abby told him. She set him on the grass and took his hand. “Call me,” Abby told Celeste. “Okay?”

Celeste nodded and drew a cross over her heart.

“Pinkie swear!” Luke said.

Abby dropped Luke's hand and held up a pinkie before Celeste. “You heard him.”

“Fine!” Celeste clasped Abby's pinkie in hers and set her face in a campy sneer.

“Ow!” Abby said. “You can let go now.”

Celeste held up her hands. “Have it your way.”

Charlie and Abby took Luke by either hand. Luke bent his legs and swung between them, yanking Abby sideways. “And we're off!” Abby looked to the sky and shook her head. “See you later.”

“Bye, Luke,” Katherine said. “Take care,” she told Abby and Charlie, sending up a silent wish that they'd make it this time. That Abby would get the perfect little family unit she so richly deserved. “Tell your mom I said hello.”

“Will do,” Abby said, and they headed into the thickening crowd.

“I cannot believe you two have never walked a corn maze.” Celeste lowered her head and raised her gaze to Zach. An impish grin tweaked her lips. She gestured from Katherine to Zach. “You guys should, you know, go together.”

Quick as a wink, Zach mirrored Celeste's impish grin.

If Katherine didn't know better, she would've thought Celeste was trying to set them up on a date. Payback for Katherine intimating Celeste had started something with Zach?

Every Harvest Festival, Katherine had driven by the Johnson Farm maze, noting the SUVs and minivans parked alongside the road, the families unloading picnic baskets and strollers, retrievers on leashes. She'd wondered whether her son was with another family at another corn maze in another state. She'd wondered whether he was helping his folks unload brown-bag lunches and water bottles. In recent years, she'd even wondered whether the boy she'd given away was unloading an SUV and a family of his own.

Her sinuses swelled. Her jaw ached. Her heart kicked hard and fast, the way her son had once moved inside her. “Sure, why not, later, after we shut down?” Katherine asked. “If Celeste doesn't mind starting cleanup without us.”

“Not a problem,” Celeste said.

“You up for it, Zach?” Beneath the weight of trying to be light, Katherine's voice cracked.

“Why not?” Zach said, his voice sounding equally strained. Or was Katherine projecting, a mother imagining similarities between herself and her son?

She wasn't Zach's mother.

Zach turned his attention to a preschool boy headed their way, dragging his mother by the hand. On their heels, a woman pushed a double stroller. An infant in a blue bunting occupied the backseat, snoozing beneath the awning. The front seat was vacant, but a dad with a soft-looking middle took up the rear and carried a boy on his shoulders.

Customers converged on the pie side of the booth, and Celeste and Katherine moved into their practiced roles: Celeste taking the money and the orders and Katherine scooping vanilla ice cream onto slices of apple pie, dropping dollops of cinnamon-nutmeg whipped cream onto the pumpkin. Their first ever cookie decorating table was a hit, due to Zach's extra set of hands and his ease with the little ones. In between customers, every time Katherine looked at Zach, she caught him either looking her way, his expression narrow and impossible to decipher, or checking out Celeste's bottom with a look Katherine reserved for a steaming-hot pain au chocolat. No deciphering necessary.

In between customers, Zach and Katherine sampled pie. Apple for Katherine and pumpkin for Zach. But Celeste, the keeper of the impish grin and obvious digs? All morning and into the afternoon, she didn't eat a damn thing.

In between customers, Katherine caught Celeste staring off into middle space, wearing a hungry expression Katherine hadn't seen since the days when Celeste had starved herself, as though trying to make her exterior reflect what was eating her away inside.

No denying it, at least not to herself. Katherine had found her biological son, the child she had not raised. But her favorite girl, who didn't share Katherine's DNA but had nevertheless grown inside her heart? That child was at the center of a maze, left behind, and lost.