A Measure of Happiness (19 page)

And Zach totally misread her. He moved her hand away from her mouth and held it in his. “For one of my criminal justice classes, the professor took a true crime story and sliced it up. Every student got part of the story pie, with a slice or two missing. The assignment wasn't to figure out who did it necessarily. Although, yeah, you got extra points for that. The goal was to figure out which logical pieces were missing.”

Zach gave her hand a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring. Instead, the gesture pumped adrenaline into her heart. “Hate to tell you, Celeste, but there are logical pieces missing from your story. I think—in my most humble opinion—you should play detective and dig deeper. Was there anyone who saw you drinking before the blackout? You should talk to them. You know, kick ass, take numbers, and figure out the missing pieces of the pie.”

“I hate to tell you, Zach, but in my humble opinion, I believe the saying is ‘shoot first, ask questions later.' Neither of which will get me any answers. Plus, I'm not going back there. Ever.”

Zach notched his head toward the telephone on the side table, that curious invention that supposedly worked both ways. But she'd yet to hear back from her parents. All week, their answering machines had played a wicked game of phone tag until Celeste had lost track and given up. And every time she'd phoned one of her brothers, she got a sister-in-law on the line and a rundown of which niece or nephew had lost a tooth, learned to skateboard, or earned an A on a vocabulary pop quiz. Celeste adored her sisters-in-law, but they kept her one degree of separation from her brothers. The guys who'd seen her at her worst and loved her the best.

“There's this girl Natalie I could call,” Celeste said.

“A friend of yours?” Zach asked.

Celeste grinned. Such a direct question shone light on crap she'd yet to fully consider. “Culinary school is a weird place. Everyone acts all buddy-buddy friendly. ‘You help me, I'll help you.' But underneath the spin, it's a big competition for most people.” Why, then, had she thought her friendship with Matt had been different? That somehow their relationship had been special and unique? That the two of them were like low tide at Popham Beach, where you could walk the exposed sandbar to Fox Island and not get marooned?

The shithead had marooned her.

“Are you like most people?” Zach asked. “Competitive?”

“No,” she said, the word knee-jerk and awkward. First day of class, the dean of students had delivered a speech and urged each student to compete with him- or herself, to strive for his or her personal best. But then the grades for every Monday quiz posted on Tuesday outside the practice kitchen for the other student chefs to see, the high-minded lesson buried beneath the lowbrow subliminal truth. Success was relative.

And Matt was neither her brother nor her friend.

“Anyway, I don't know whether I had any real friends at school. But I could probably call Natalie.”

Zach stroked the back of Celeste's hand with his thumb, as though she were a worry stone, a touchstone, something solid to hold on to.

She met his gaze, and the memory of their kiss—before everything had gone to panicky hell—passed between them.

Zach wasn't Matt, but he wasn't just a friend, either. The kiss and Zach's crush confession had shot that notion to hell.

“I really think you should call this girl who's not a real friend.” Zach nodded, the gesture meant to encourage Celeste's reflexive head wagging.

Celeste wasn't that easy. “I don't know. Maybe I will.”

“Good girl,” Zach said, as though he were trying to insert an inspirational quote into her brain, a voice of reason to rise up and do battle with the naysayers. The part of her that agreed with the way Justin had portrayed her as a sex-crazed slut and the way Matt had lent his voice to second the motion.

“We could call this girl together.”

“There's only one phone.”

“You could call, and I could hold your hand—”

“Seriously?”

“I could hang nearby for moral support.”

Interesting choice of words.

She touched his cheek and rubbed his nighttime scruff. “You're a good guy, Zach Fitzgerald.”

“You're changing the subject.”

“Yes, I am.”

When Celeste had nearly polished off her first drink of the night, Matt had gone to the kitchen to get her another. Celeste and Natalie had wandered into the line for the bathroom. Inside the bathroom, the buzz had hit Celeste like a rogue wave. Everything had slowed down, as though she were swimming underwater. She'd stared at her mirror reflections—the girl behind other people's fingerprints, smudges, and splatters. She'd leaned closer, trailed her fingers across her prominent cheekbones, and wondered at the transformation.

When had she stopped looking like a girl and started looking like a woman? When would her insides match what the world saw? When would she stop feeling like a fraud?

Celeste slipped her hand from Zach and gulped down the rest of her water. The cold numbed her throat and iced her belly.

When she'd stepped from the bathroom at Drake's party, Matt had been waiting. His expression, come to think of it, was a close cousin to the look he'd sported when she'd awoken in his bed.

And Natalie had been right by Matt's side, hanging out, fussing with her short, spiked blonde hair, and letting the girl next in the line for the bathroom pass before her. “Don't you have to go?” Celeste had asked.

“Just keepin' you company, sistah,” Natalie had said. Then she'd taken Celeste's empty drink from her hand and switched it out with the fresh drink Matt had been holding for her, a boozy relay race.

Celeste flipped on the TV. Middle of
Cops.
Different episode, same overall feeling of squalor and despair.

A big-ass grin spread across Zach's face.

Distraction successful.

Half-asleep with her eyes open, Celeste nestled into Zach's side. She retrieved his hand. She set her heels on the coffee table and notched up the sound on his show. A man in blue was once again speaking in hushed tones to a sickly, skinny woman.

“Are you sure?” the man in blue asked. “We can write him up, give you some time to think about this.”

The camera zoomed in on the “him” in question. From the back of a police cruiser, hands cuffed behind his back, a bull of a man leaned forward and directed his crazy-ass message through the closed window at the skinny woman.

The skinny woman shivered, but she held her ground. Her man had gotten to her first. “Yeah. I'm sure,” she told the officer. “Let him go. He's calmed down. He won't cause no trouble.”

Another case of double negatives betraying the truth.

Celeste might take Zach's advice and give little miss “just keepin' you company” a ring. Maybe.

Cut to the officer shaking his head at the skinny woman and unlocking the bull of a guy's cuffs. Cut to the skinny woman's face, her eyes red rimmed with spent tears, staring off at the cruiser. Cut to the big scary guy leading her into their split-level house and the cruiser driving off in the distance.

The theme song played, the oh so catchy “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

The bad boy had answered that question, brilliantly. Made Celeste want to don a superhero cape and save that poor woman from ending up on a future episode.

Maybe Celeste would contact Natalie. But there was no way she'd phone within earshot of Zach. When you were digging for the details of one of the worst mistakes you'd ever made, did you really want a witness?

C
HAPTER
12

“M
onday, Monday” played in Katherine's head, The Mamas and the Papas crooning about the lack of guarantees. She hadn't thought of the tune in years. Now it arrived uninvited, clear as the daybreak that was yet to dawn, every word enunciated, on key, and emotionally true. Come nightfall, would Celeste and Zach remain in her employ and Hidden Harbor? Would Barry still love her?

Could she keep her secret about Zach without losing everyone she loved?

Celeste set a carafe full of hazelnut coffee on the Lamontagne coffee bar alongside a sugar dispenser, the lone survivor of Blake's crusade. Katherine breathed in the coffee aroma, more delicious and pulse enlivening than the best toilet water. Earlier, Celeste had ground the beans Katherine purchased from Maine Line Roasters. Katherine's flour came from Portland via a driver Katherine had known for over a decade. Her milk and cream from Bitsy's down the road and cows Katherine had personally petted and thanked. Desperate for a family, she had scrabbled together a bakery-related tree. But at the end of the day, that wasn't enough to sustain her soul.

Her real family came down to three brittle unrelated branches: Celeste, Barry, and now Zach.

Warmth from her kitchen filled every corner of her bakery, but a chill prickled her arms. “Thank you for taking care of Zach,” Katherine said. “Was he comfortable enough to sleep last night?”

“He slept on my couch,” Celeste said. “If that's what you're after.”

“No,” Katherine said. “That's not what I meant at all.” Was Katherine such a bad communicator? Or was Celeste predisposed to imagining people thought badly of her? Katherine's jaw ached with the familiar childhood sensation of knowing everything she said was wrong.

In the month following Katherine's eleventh birthday, she'd used extreme measures to deal with the problem, keeping mum in hopes that her father would follow suit. But then she'd learned that body language could incite suspicion and anger and that her father—who'd never cracked the spine of a book or forked over coin for the daily news—was an excellent reader.

“Are you okay?” Celeste asked.

Katherine swiped her cheek, and her hand came away dry. “I'm perfectly fine.” Her father's voice rang through her brain:
You're not crying, baby Katherine, are you?
Her father's setup was designed to make her cry and then berate her for crying. “But Zach . . . was he in pain?” Katherine cradled her right arm with her left, the way you reflexively healed yourself. Could her healing thoughts touch Zach?
May Zach be well. May Zach be happy. May Zach be at peace.

Celeste shot Katherine a wicked smile. “I drugged him.”

Even though Katherine knew Celeste was kidding, her pulse did a double take. She knew Celeste well, unless she didn't.

“What must you think of me?” Celeste held her hand to her chest, a faux-insulted gesture, but Celeste's tone and expression told the true tale. Celeste had caught Katherine's flash of concern. “Acetaminophen and ibuprofen, just what the nurse ordered. When I left, he was sleeping like a baby.” Celeste fluttered her lashes. She pressed her hands together, held her hands to her cheek, and made her lips into an O.

An image of a sleeping newborn Zach flickered before Katherine's eyes. When she pushed the thought away, Zach the man pushed back—through the door and into her bakery. “Speak of the devil, who's not sleeping!”

“Get out of here, Zach,” Celeste said, but she couldn't hide her pique of delight, the smile that filled every corner of her being. “You're making a liar out of me. I just got finished telling Katherine you were sleeping like a baby on my sticky couch.”

Zach bit his lip. He made a slicing motion with his left hand, palm-side up. “I unstuck myself for my shift. Five-forty-five, right?” He looked from Katherine to Celeste and back to Katherine. “Why are you both looking at me weird?”

“I wasn't expecting you to come in this morning,” Katherine said.

“Why not?” Again Zach waved his left hand.

Katherine and Celeste nodded toward Zach's right arm.

Zach peered down his nose at the sling, as though the cast were news to him. “
Pfft,
” he said through his teeth. “No big thing. I've skied with worse.”

“I thought you said you broke your arm playing soccer,” Celeste said.

“You thought I meant—that was the first time I broke a bone. I broke my leg skiing in '92. Broke my collarbone in '93.”

“Skiing again?” Katherine asked.

“Just messing around with my best buddies. A little living room wrestling. I won the match, so it was totally worth it.”

His poor mother.

Katherine's collarbone ached. Her wrist throbbed. The backs of her knees weakened. And her hand reflexively covered her heart.

“Make sure you leave a stack of dishes in the sink at the end of your shift,” Katherine told Zach.

“I might be as slow as a one-armed dishwasher,” Zach said, “but I can still do my job.”

“As a favor to me. Blake's coming by after school. I'm making him work to pay me back for the damage.”

“Brilliant!” Zach said.

“I don't know how brilliant it is,” Katherine said. “He vandalized the place as payback for not getting a job here. I'm kind of giving him what he wanted. Minus the pay, of course.”

“Are you going to be nice to him?” Celeste asked.

“I'm not going to be mean. I'll treat him fairly, the way I treat all my employees.”

“Just be your usual exacting self,” Celeste said, another one of her backhanded compliments.

“I was going to invite you and Zach over for dinner Sunday night,” Katherine said. “Now, I'm not sure I want to.”

“Both of us, together?” Celeste voice went high and squeaky, and she scrutinized Katherine's gaze. When Katherine nodded, Celeste beamed, giving herself away for the second time that morning. She might not need Katherine's approval, but she wanted it.

“A celebration dinner for Lamontagne's employees.” Katherine held her hands up in the push-away position. “No Blake. Employees who aren't paying me back for damages. A welcome to and welcome back to Hidden Harbor celebration.”

“You know it's Halloween, right?” Zach asked.

“Know it?” Celeste said, her tone turning playful. “She's practically a witch. She doesn't even need a costume.”

With the exception of Barry, no one enjoyed teasing Katherine about her proclivity for tarot card readings more than Celeste. “If you're going to be mean, I'm taking back my invitation.” Katherine was only kidding. But the threat to take back what she'd offered Celeste felt mean-spirited and—God help her—familiar.

“All right, I'll be good,” Celeste said.

“Don't be too good or I might not recognize you,” Katherine said.

One for Katherine,
Celeste mouthed, and she pretended to mark a chalkboard.

Katherine hadn't known they were keeping score. “How does an early five o'clock dinner of roast beef and root vegetables sound? Hmm? A good hearty fall dinner before candy and trick-or-treaters?” Katherine directed her question to both Celeste and Zach, but she already knew Celeste's answer. When she was growing up, roast had been Celeste's family's Sunday dinner, a loud affair with Celeste and her brothers jockeying for the crispiest potatoes. Katherine and Celeste shared an undying affection for the humble potato. The meal was one of Celeste's favorites. Food she, Katherine hoped, couldn't resist.

“Sounds great to me,” Zach said. “Should we come in costume?”

“Are you thinking of dressing up like an alien?” Katherine asked.

“Nah,” he said. “Been there, done that, time to move on.” Zach poured himself a cup of coffee. One-handed, he nabbed two creamers and pierced the lids with his forefinger. He tore open two packets of sugar with his teeth. He ruined the rich black coffee as far as Katherine was concerned but managed to keep most of the cream and sugar from spilling on the counter. He stirred the coffee and, aware of his audience, took a loud slurp. His eyes rolled up in his head in exaggerated delight. “Ahh! All right, then. Let's get this party started. I'm ready to rack and roll!”

Katherine watched Celeste watch Zach's toosh walk into the kitchen. The sound of a metal tray clanging to the floor echoed into the shop. “I'm okay!” Zach yelled.

“This could be interesting,” Katherine said.

“If by
interesting,
you mean funny as hell,” Celeste said, “then I agree.”

Zach peeked into the shop. The white cotton strap of his apron looped around his neck; the smock dangled over his chest. “Uh, Celeste, can I get your help with something?”

“That didn't take long,” Celeste whispered to Katherine.

In the doorway to the kitchen, Celeste secured the ties of Zach's apron. From the back, Zach looked even more like Adam than from the front. His height and his broad shoulders. The way he stood tall and never slouched.

When Zach turned back around, he lowered his gaze, and his hair fell across his forehead. Her biological son was smitten with Celeste. Her nonbiological daughter?

Katherine shook her head. Zach might stay in Hidden Harbor, giving her more time to get to know him. He might even choose to never share the true reason for his trip to Hidden Harbor with Katherine. But Katherine knew the price you paid when you hid a truth of consequence from someone you loved. How long would it take for Zach to spill the beans to Celeste? How long before Celeste blabbed said beans to Barry?

How long before Katherine's secret broke Barry's heart? How long before Barry's justifiable hatred broke her?

Taking fertility drugs had made her crazy, the mother of all PMS attacks, squared. She'd tried to keep the crazy to herself, but sometimes the crazy leaked, and she'd snapped at Barry. For the way his knife scraped his dinner plate. For taking all the bedcovers. For
giving
her all the bedcovers. Then Barry would snap back. Even a gentle reminder that he too was a parent without a child undid her.

The day she and Barry had married, she'd handed him her heart and the power to crush it.

“Morning!” A woman breezed into the shop, wearing jeans and a French-blue fleece jacket. Tousled, shoulder-length gray hair. A pleasant, familiar face. She walked up to the counter, gazed up at the menu board, and then set her bright-eyed gaze on Katherine. “I'm here for more of Celeste's Wild Blues.”

The woman Katherine had seen in passing at the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival had been neither the daughter of one of her oldest customers nor a youthful doppelgänger.

“Mrs. Jenkins!” Katherine said.

“Call me Judy,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

This might take some getting used to—the first name, the unbuttoned attitude, the French-blue fleece, unzipped to reveal a womanly figure. How many years had Katherine known Mrs.—Judy? Katherine had only ever seen the outer trappings. The shapeless beige trench coat, the horrible clear bonnet. Her clothing protected her from elements real and imagined. Her clothing kept her protected from the world. What a shame her clothing kept the world from seeing her.

You could be acquainted with a woman for decades without ever getting to know her.

Katherine reached beneath the counter for a bakery box, but Judy held her focus. Her enviable hourglass figure, her hair's smooth, sultry swirl. Katherine shook open the cardboard box and bent back the cover. “How many Wild Blues?”

“A dozen.”

“Anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

And just like that Katherine's customer, who'd been tied to a routine for a decade, doubled her count and dropped corn and lemon poppy seed muffins from her order.

“Don't get me wrong,” Judy said, mistaking Katherine's surprise for feeling insulted. “All your muffins are delicious, but the blueberry muffins are my favorite. And when you find what you really want”—Judy kissed her pinched fingers—“there's nothing better. Why settle for anything else?”

“You have a point,” Katherine told Judy. And then Katherine called into the back room, “Celeste! Could you come out front for a moment, please?”

Something fell to the kitchen floor, more of a dull thud this time than a clatter. “I'm okay!” Zach said. Celeste's laughter, as sweet and tart as Maine's wild blueberries, inspired a chuckle from Zach.

The ability to poke fun at your various mishaps, especially those you'd brought on yourself? Nothing better.

Celeste emerged from the kitchen with a bounce in her step and stopped short. “Good morning?” she said to Judy, her voice sweet and singsong. The tail-end upswing, the hint of a question mark, told Katherine that Celeste had no clue whom she was greeting.

“Mrs. Judy Jenkins would like a dozen of your Wild Blues,” Katherine told Celeste.

“That's right,” Mrs. Judy Jenkins said.

Celeste tilted her face. Katherine could almost see the realization cross Celeste's features:
Mrs. . . . Judy . . . Oh my God.
When Celeste glanced at Katherine, she read:
No freaking way!

Then Celeste schooled her features into the professionally acceptable
pleased to see you
. “Mrs. Jenkins—”

“Judy,” Judy said.

“Judy.” Celeste nodded and patted one of her own French braids. “I love what you've done with your hair.”

Celeste pinched bakery tissue, slid open the back of the bakery case, gathered her wild blueberry muffins.