A Measure of Happiness (14 page)

Katherine met Zach's gaze.When she spoke, her lips trembled and the words splintered, as though they too were skittering along the wall of cornstalks, stirring up dust. “No. I didn't meet Barry until about nine years later. If I'd been younger, I don't think it would've worked out for us.”

Another fork in the maze rose up before them. Without slowing, Zach chose the right-hand path. Following an innate sense of direction or youthful impulse? Only time would tell.

“You're divorced now, though,” Zach told her.

Katherine laughed, her blunder bordering on ridiculous. “True enough,” she said, and the path through the cornstalks widened. Children's voices grew louder, more boisterous, but they still couldn't see anyone. She and Zach were either catching up to families and nearing a way out or spinning in circles.

Yes, she was divorced—an ugly, hurtful word. She'd filled out the forms. She could've had a sheriff deliver the news, but she thought Barry deserved better. So she'd put on a black dress and served the papers to Barry in a basket of mundel bread. She'd weathered the first and only time he'd responded to her baking with the inquiry
What the fuck?
A judge had answered Barry's inquiry two months later by granting her a divorce.

But in her heart, she was still married to Barry.

“I guess you could say that years ago Barry and I had good timing and then we didn't.” At thirty-two, she'd grown up and grown tired of casual affairs. And along came Barry, the perfect combination of sexy, fun, and responsible. He weighed every decision, always aiming to do the right thing. He answered his patients' calls in the middle of the night. The word
no
simply wasn't in his vocabulary. He made her want to be a better person.

“I've never had good timing with, you know, relationships.” Zach gave a small chuckle. “At least not yet.” He slipped his hand back into his pocket. Looking for the comfort of change?

Zach seemed like a sweet, bright young man, his heart in the right place. But he also seemed untethered as she'd once been, adrift in the world, subject to whimsy. Even if that whimsy told him to try for a relationship with Celeste and then sail out of town.

Not good timing for Celeste.

“Celeste has been like a daughter to me.” The admission stole Katherine's wind and slowed her pace. If she told Celeste, she'd probably make light of Katherine's claim, giving her reason to doubt her heart. All the more reason not to tell her.

“Yeah, I really like her,” Zach said. “She's wicked funny.”

And sexy. Zach wasn't saying so, not in words, but Katherine had seen the way he looked at Celeste. Worse, Katherine had noticed the way Celeste responded to Zach.

Not what her girl needed at the moment.

“She's sassy,” Katherine said.

“Yeah. You could say that.” Without hesitating, Zach chose a left-hand turn in the maze. He raised his hand to his hair. To shade his eyes from the sun or from Katherine?

“Don't know if you've noticed, but she's awfully generous, too.”

“Yup, I've noticed.”

“Celeste isn't as tough as she seems,” Katherine said. “And despite her sense of humor, she's a pretty serious customer. Too serious sometimes. People and relationships matter to her. She's had a lot of changes in her life recently. And dealing with change has never been her strength. Do you get my drift?”

“Not really,” Zach said.

She didn't want to hurt Zach. But if he wasn't good for Celeste, then she wasn't right for him either. “Unless you have something serious in mind, now's not a good time for you to start a relationship with her.”

Zach stopped short, but there was neither a cornstalk dead end nor a fork in their pathway, just a wall of words Katherine had erected. Physically, Zach didn't look anything like Celeste, but his expression bore an uncanny resemblance to Celeste's when Katherine had cautioned Celeste against starting a relationship during this stressful time in her life. Outrage, hurt, and outright confusion.

Zach hunched and slid his hands down his thighs, as though he'd a runner's cramp. When he stretched to standing, the pique was gone, save for a slight flare to his nostrils and a slighter tinge of irony to his grin. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Now I'm not getting your drift.”

“How do you know whether you have something serious in mind without getting to know a girl first? I mean, isn't that what relationships are about? Getting to know people?”

“I suppose so,” Katherine said.

Zach firmed his grin, nodded, and continued walking, as though something had been decided.

Every man she'd ever dated, every lover she'd taken to bed, she'd wanted to get to know intellectually. Including Adam, the lover from twenty-five years ago who'd set her on fire sexually and then skipped town. For all Katherine knew, Zach's biological father had been looking for a possible relationship, too. Just not with her.

A hairpin curve turned Katherine and Zach out to a freshly mowed field, picnic tables, and the ocean beyond. Sudden as a nine-foot-high cornstalk dead end.

Katherine squinted through the late day sun. Tacked flat against a wooden beam, a piece of yellowing paper asked and answered Farmer Johnson's cryptic riddle.

 

C
HAPTER
9

W
as Zach the only person electric with fury?

Five-thirty at night, the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival was like a video on rewind, a whir of noise and motion, reversing the morning's start-up activities. When the sun lowered, vendors packed up their goods, took down their easy-ups. Everyone hustled at a frantic pace, ready to rock and roll and hit the road hard.

Zach's need to flee was as great as the day his parents had told him he was adopted, the urge buzzing like a second Zach beneath his skin.

Ten years ago, his parents had put his brothers to bed and then sat him down on the squishy couch in the den. His mother on his right and his father on his left. His mother told him a story, to which he only paid partial attention. Something about his mother having a hard time getting pregnant and how she and Zach's father had really wanted to make a family together. Icky, gross, grown-up talk that had had nothing to do with Zach.

Hand dangling between his knees, legs jiggling, he waited for a break in the conversation, for his mother to draw a breath so he could ask about a soccer camp. He had the paperwork folded in the back pocket of his jeans, the one-hundred-dollar fee circled in pen and pressing through the denim like a stone. More money than he'd saved from his allowance, so he planned on offering to do chores. Not only the chores he was supposed to do and usually forgot but—

“Zach, are you even listening?” his father said. “Did you hear what your mother said?”

“Uh, you guys wanted to start a family?” Zach asked.

An hour later, he'd run away.

Now Celeste waved her two fingers in front of Zach's face. “Anybody home? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Peace, man,” he said, but he couldn't connect to the words. He was really going to miss Celeste, but what could a guy do? He didn't stay where he wasn't wanted, and Katherine didn't want him. Or, at the least, she didn't think he was good enough for Celeste. Not good enough for Katherine decades ago meant not good enough for Celeste today. Because this wasn't a good time for Celeste to start a relationship. A twist on the classic excuse “it's not you, it's me.”

He got it.

Katherine needn't have gone into the elaborate explanation of her effed-up family, her drunk daddy, and how she'd been on her own since she was way younger than Zach. Obviously, she'd proven her ability to kick the shit out of her past and carve out a decent life.

Unlike Zach, Katherine's biological son.

Color-blind women gave birth to color-blind sons 100 percent of the time. Genetics never lied. And yet Katherine still refused to admit their X-chromosome connection.

“Peace, man, to you too?” Celeste said, making the statement sound like a question. “Help me take down the easy-up?”

“Yeah, sure, of course.” Zach met Celeste's gaze. Her eyes were prettier than he'd realized. How had he missed that? Was he that shallow? That focused on her body?

Zach dashed to the canopy leg across from Celeste and bent to unlatch the stake. He'd really wanted to get to know Celeste better. To find out what she liked to do in her spare time. To hang out with her in her spare time. He wanted to hear about her family. All two dozen brothers. He wanted to ask her about her friend Abby who'd stopped by with the cool little kid. Zach really liked kids.

Crazy, but he wondered what Celeste looked like first thing in the morning and when she was falling asleep at night. Did she wrap a fuzzy yellow blanket around her or did she tuck it between her knees? Some of each? And what did she do with all that hair?

Yeah, he was shallow.

Katherine came across the green, having deposited the last of the leftover pastries in her Outback for conveying back to Lamontagne's. She brushed off her hands, clapping them, one against the other. Her apron she must've left in her car, too. But she wasn't dirty. She'd slung pie and ice cream, wiped every ounce of blue frosting from the kids' tablecloth without getting as much as a smudge on her clothing. Zach's apron was frosting splattered, like those tie-dyes he liked to make in summer camp. Dust and dirt from the maze caked the toes of his sneakers. But Katherine remained fresh and clean, untouched, as though some kind of force field surrounded her. Made him want to pick up a pumpkin pie and shove it in her face, following the legacy of the Three Stooges and banana cream pies.

Until Zach turned ten and got a hold of the
TV Guide,
he'd actually thought the New Year's Day Three Stooges marathon was in honor of his birthday. At eleven, he'd still believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a St. Patrick's Day leprechaun that hopped across your kitchen counters, leaving behind olive-green footprints and gold coins.

Give the kid a star for his ability to suspend disbelief.

Zach bent to a second post, let out a grunt, and gave the stake a mighty yank. The anchor let go, knocking him on his ass and taking a plug of grass and soil with it. A really big plug.

Katherine squatted down beside Zach, like one of those golfers you see on TV. Cool and collected, looking for the straightest line to putt the ball into the hole. “Everything okay?” she asked.

He considered telling her no, everything was not all right. In fact, everything pretty much sucked. He was a big, fat idiot for coming to Hidden Harbor and thinking she'd be glad to see him. And she was an even bigger, fatter idiot for not welcoming him. He considered admitting that, yeah, he knew he was a little immature, but what the hell? She owed him an explanation for why she gave him up—something only she could tell him—and why Carol and Everett Fitzgerald had waited so long to let him in on the joke, something Katherine would have no way of knowing.

But there was no way he was going to tell her how he felt. What was the point? What was the effing point?

Freshman year in high school, a drama coach had taught Zach how to substitute somebody from his life for a so-called fellow actor. So he looked Katherine in her brown eyes and replaced them with Celeste's goldish showstoppers.

“Beautiful,” Zach told Katherine.

Katherine tilted her face and squinted at him sideways. Again, a golfer looking for her straight-line shot. “Good.” She stood and brushed nonexistent dirt from her jeans.

He'd finish the booth takedown and meet Katherine and Celeste back at Lamontagne's. He'd carry in the table and chairs and leave Celeste's loaner blanket in the stockroom. Then he'd fire up Matilda, rock and roll, and hit the road hard.

Zach picked up the grass plug and replanted it back in its hole. A bare indentation rimmed the repair. He scooped displaced soil and pressed it down beneath his hands. Moist crumbs of soil clung to his fingertips. Within a day or two, grass would grow and fill the circle. To anyone who didn't know about Zach's little fit and repair, the lawn would appear seamless.

 

If you asked Zach to recite the capitals of all the U.S. states in alphabetical order, he could get as far as Raleigh, North Carolina, before doubting his memory. He remembered all the countries in Europe, but the spelling always messed him up. He'd stare at
Azerbaijan
and the word would start to look weird, causing him to transpose the
i
and the
j
and then switch them back again. But the moment when his parents told him he was adopted? When his father had made him pay attention and his mother had said the actual word? He remembered every detail, as if it had just happened. As if, in fact, it was happening now.

He remembered the way his dad's lips were chapped, the bottom lip dryer than the top. He remembered how the light from the reading lamp reflected off his mother's bad perm, making her hair look gray instead of blond, and the way she did that sour lemon thing with her mouth. He'd never forget the way one word,
adopted,
stripped away his entire identity.

The bell above Lamontagne's jingled. In front of Zach, Katherine carried a box of extra pies into her shop, and the lowering sun reflected off her dark hair. The air went from late day autumn chill and smelling like a campfire to the rich aroma of pastries, and the temperature rose at least fifteen degrees. Zach carried the foldaway table sideways, the edge jammed beneath his armpit. Celeste slammed Katherine's car door.When he glanced back at her, she gave him the same encouraging thumbs-up he'd offered her friend's kid and took up the rear. Zach hoped years from now he'd remember this, too.

Katherine flipped on the overheads and dropped the pies.

Broken sugar dispensers and spilled sugar piled beside the door, as if someone had stood in one place and systematically emptied and smashed every last dispenser. Half a dozen lids stood in a row on the nearest four-top. The tidiness alongside the mess made Zach think, strangely, of an apology. Of the way he'd, years ago, made his bed, hospital corners and all, before running away.

Celeste came up behind Zach, a paper bag in her arms. “What's with the slow-up?” she said.

Zach propped the foldaway table against the building. “Stay outside,” he said, pretty much an invitation for Celeste to leave the paper bag on the sidewalk and plow right past him.

“Not again!” Celeste said.

“Again?” Zach asked. “This has happened before?”

Katherine glared at the mess. Zach bet if there had been an intact sugar dispenser, Katherine would've smashed it on the floor with the rest. “No,” she said, but she wasn't responding to his question, she was yelling at the mess. “No, no, no.”

“Get out of here,” Zach said. “Go see if another shop is open and call the police.” His voice sounded tight, his mouth filled with cotton. Whoever had broken in was most likely long gone, a Harvest Festival reveler gone bad. No big deal, right? But Katherine's anger seemed to vibrate the air around her, electric, different from her usual cool force field.And Zach could feel it—the energy of her anger, as if she'd transmitted her anger directly to him and he was absorbing the shock.

“The police? Really? That's your solution? That's what I did last time.” Katherine opened her hands and mimed pushing motions toward the mess.Then she met his gaze and shook her head. “I'm sorry, Zach. I know you mean well. But this is my bakery. I'm not going anywhere.”

Zach thought of the regulars who came into Lamontagne's—every last one of them as devoted to Katherine as to her pastries. That devotion flowed both ways. The shop was more than a job to Katherine. This was her home. And she was defending it.

“Damn straight,” Celeste said, agreeing with Katherine. And then she looked as though she wanted to spit on the floor. “Douche bag,” Celeste said.

Under normal circumstances, Zach bet Katherine would've had a few non–cuss words to say about Celeste's word choice. Instead, she gave Celeste a nod, flexed her fingers, as though she were readying for a boxing match, and headed across the shop.

“Hey, wait!” Zach grabbed Katherine's arm. “I'll check out the kitchen.” Most likely the vandal had gone, but what if he hadn't? “Don't go in.”

“She's not going to listen to you,” Celeste said, hustling to keep up with Katherine and Zach. Zach's criminal justice classes had taught him that for every shop owner who'd caught a burglar in the act, fought back, and ended up on the front page of the
Boston Globe
kneeling on the perp's neck, there were two tales of average Joes or Josephines that had ended badly.

Those articles ended up in the obits.

A thud sounded through the closed stockroom door. Zach yanked the door open.

A skinny boy, wearing a black hoodie and jeans with the orange tip of a Marlboro box peeking from his back pocket, clung to the wall of shelves. His hand reached for the top-shelf flour-filled mason jars. Another jar lay on the floor beneath him, unbroken, beside the rolling ladder.

“Hey!” Zach yelled. “Get the hell down from there!”

The boy looked Zach in the eye. Surprise and numbness passed over his face, and the kid settled on a smirk. “Make me,” he said, and knocked another mason jar to the floor.

Zach took the offer as a dare and went for it.

From behind him, Celeste yelled, “Zach!”—which made sense. And Katherine called out something that sounded like,
Bake!

Zach launched himself at the boy.

The overhead bulb reflected off the whites of the boy's eyes. The boy cringed, and a tiny bead of blood welled at the center of his bottom lip.

Zach landed on a shelf, grabbed the boy by the hood, and lost his balance. They fell backward. The weight of the kid on top of Zach, the two of them flying through the air, Katherine and Celeste both calling Zach's name. Zach's lower back smacked the top of the ladder with a
whomp.
The boy bounced from his arms.

The voice in Zach's head told him not to use his hand to break the fall. And then he heard a snap.

 

“Don't move!” Katherine said, assessing the situation. Or trying to assess the situation, as it were. Zach and Blake lay on the floor of her stockroom with their bodies twisted in unnatural angles reminiscent of the white chalk outlines of cop shows. If they'd injured their spines, moving would make a bad situation worse.

The sound of Zach hitting the ladder thrummed through her brain like an aftershock.

Blake sat up, his face pale. “I didn't mean to!”

Mean to what? Break into her bakery today? Weeks ago? Cause injury to her son?

Her son.

Zach lay on his side, facing away from her. His legs bent, as if he were running away in his sleep.

“Are you all right? Are you all right? Are you okay?” Celeste headed for Zach, a shaking hand outstretched to him.