A Measure of Happiness (28 page)

Celeste's pulse delivered a solid punch to the center of her chest, as if her heart wanted to break through and embrace Zach, too. “I'll do that,” she said, and her lips trembled into a smile. “With the exception of that one stress specialist person, I've never really discussed my . . . eating thing with anyone before.”

Zach gave her a good, long stare. “What about Katherine?”

Celeste made a
pfft
sound. “No way.” She thought about the conversation she'd had with Katherine last night and how close she'd come to revealing her latest screwup.

At least Katherine and Barry seemed to be getting it together. First thing this morning, Barry had strolled into Lamontagne's with a huge grin on his face, looking as if he were about to vault over the bakery counter and jump Katherine. When Celeste had asked if he wanted a cup of coffee, he'd said, “No thanks,” and hummed Squeeze's “Black Coffee in Bed.”

Katherine had whacked Barry over the head with a baguette.

“Your best friend, Abby?” Zach asked.

Celeste shook her head. She was a terrible friend. Despite the pinkie swear promise to call, she hadn't spoken to Abby since the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival. Celeste couldn't get herself to support the Abby-Charlie reunion.

Even for Abby, Celeste couldn't fake it.

She could sympathize with the way Barry must've felt when a court had granted Katherine their divorce. She could imagine showing up on Abby's doorstep every morning for a cup of coffee and a second chance.

She couldn't imagine that going over well with Charlie.

“Abby helped me eat, but we more like talked around the eating disorder.” Celeste drew a circle in the air. “We never used the word
anorexia
.” When Zach met her gaze and his mouth fell slack, Celeste swallowed and blinked at the ceiling. She took a slow, deep breath, the way Zach had taught her.

Zach sucked his lips into his mouth and shook his head. “I lied to you. I didn't go for a beer run last night.”

“You didn't?”

“Nope.”

“But you bought beer,” Celeste said, her voice getting high and tight. Her mind flashed on the night her mother had told her she and her father were selling their house and moving to Florida. “But you love it here,” Celeste had said, as if anyone needed a reminder of who, or what, they loved.

Was Zach planning on leaving Hidden Harbor, too?

Zach tried for a grin, but it looked more like an apology. “Drove to the state liquor store, after I stopped by Barry's house.”

“Why were you at Barry's?”

“I wanted to talk to Barry about how I could help you with your eating thing. The anorexia,” he said, getting way too comfortable with the term.

Zach had sneaked off to hold a powwow with shrink Barry to try to figure out how to get her to stop making herself sick.

Celeste kind of loved Zach for that. She kind of hated him for it, too.

“Anything else you've lied to me about? Anything you'd like to get off your chest?”

Zach crossed his ankle on his left thigh. He raised and lowered his left leg four times, thudding his heel against the rug. Zach gave his body a half rock. He scrunched up his mouth, as if he were working on another squirt of whipped cream. His gaze dropped to his sling and then came back to her eyes. “I'm somewhat color-blind.”

“No way! Katherine's color-blind, too. She's the only woman—”

“I think I'm Katherine's biological son.”

Celeste blinked. She tugged at her earlobe, as though to clear post-swim water. “Katherine doesn't have a son. She and Barry tried for years. They went through three rounds of IVF. She had to give herself shots, but they never took. . . .” Twenty-four years ago, Katherine and Barry hadn't even known each other. Katherine would've been new to town. She would've been Celeste's age. She could've given away a son. That son could've been Zach.

“Surely you can't be serious,” Celeste said, but Zach wasn't taking the classic movie bait. And he'd never looked more serious. “Why do you think Katherine is your mother?”

Zach said something about a registry and nonidentifying information. He babbled about traveling from town to town and bakery to bakery and then chickening out on the follow-through. He told Celeste his birth date.

Celeste thought about the way Zach and Katherine stared at each other and how she'd mistaken their odd familiarity for a May-September crush. Last night, she'd even sensed that Katherine didn't want Barry and Zach getting too chummy.

Could Katherine have given away a son and not told Barry? Could giving away a son have fueled her desperation for having a baby? She'd made herself into one stressed and obsessed pincushion. Trying to conceive, unsuccessfully, had put a strain on Katherine and Barry's marriage and led to their divorce.

“. . . so I'm, like, ninety-nine percent sure Katherine is my birth mother.”

“Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do,” Celeste said.

“Yeah.
Twilight Zone,
all the way.”

Celeste set her bowl on the coffee table and edged closer to Zach. “Let me get this straight. You've never discussed this with Katherine? You ate your way clean across Casco Bay and managed to get Katherine to give you a job. But you're too much of a fraidy cat to ask her if she's ever given up a kid for adoption?”

Zach's hand fidgeted the cowlick that flopped across his forehead, a close cousin to the lock of hair that escaped the front of Katherine's sculpted hairdos. Zach's features were different from Katherine's. His nose was broader where Katherine's was straight and narrow. But they both had the high cheekbones, square jaw thing going for them.

“We've sort of talked around the issue.” Zach drew a circle in the air. A joke, but his lips and eyes turned down.

“That's pathetic,” Celeste said, trying to tease out a smile.

Zach blinked at her, but his expression didn't change. “I know.”

“Does anyone else know about you and Katherine? I mean, besides you and Katherine?”

“Nope.”

“Thank you for sharing your secret with me,” Celeste said. “Thank you for trusting me.”
Thank you for trusting me with your heart.

Zach leaned his left shoulder against the back of the couch, as if he needed to take a nap. “You're welcome.”

Celeste nodded. “Two pathetic people like us? We kind of, sort of deserve each other.” She cocked her head to the side, leaned forward, and pretended to pout. “Don't you think?” She reached up and touched his hair, ran her finger along the dark, shiny wave.

Zach went still, as if he were afraid to move.

She rose up on her knees and kissed the tip of his nose. Then she dropped a kiss onto the warm pulse of his broad forehead. She ran her fingertips along his face—jawline to chin.

Zach's gaze flicked from her eyes to her lips, but he still held his ground.

Celeste sat back down. “Don't you want to kiss me?”

“I want to do a lot more than that.”

Celeste laughed. “So what's the problem?”

“As I recall, the last time we kissed, it didn't go so good. I don't want to hurt you,” Zach said.

She frowned at him. Melodrama much? She'd had a panic attack, nothing life shattering. Nothing she hadn't gotten over. She stroked his bottom lip, ran her fingertip along the center indentation. “What if we try again?”

“Celeste,” Zach said, his tone pleading, as though urging her toward reason. But then his gaze softened.

“Fraidy cat,” she said, into his face.

Zach gave her hair a tug, like a little boy crushing. He leaned forward, met her in the middle, and took her challenge.

His lips were ice creamy and sticky, sweet and soft against hers. Her pulse pounded, but her throat didn't close. No panic clogged her airway, like a marshmallow in a straw. No pains compressed her chest as if she were going to die.

Zach stroked her hair and he pulled away. “You okay?” he asked, and she answered him with a second kiss.

Celeste rested her hand against his chest. Zach's slow and steady kiss made her head feel heavy and light at the same time. She kind of loved Zach. She wanted to kiss him. She deserved a superhero. She deserved—

Zach smacked his lips. “Still okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, and a wacky ache zipped up and down both of her arms.

“Mind if we get comfy?” he asked, and he kissed the word
sure
right from her lips.

Zach leaned forward slowly, waiting for her to adjust and lean back, until she lay on the couch, with Zach on top of her.

His chest pressed against hers, his cast in the sling between them. He swung his leg over her, and his pelvis dropped down against hers. A flush of heat washed over her, the kind you get when you're about to get sick.

Celeste stroked Zach's hair. She fisted her hand around the back of his flannel shirt collar.

Ever so slightly, her superhero ground his pelvis against hers, and everything went black.

She woke up in a darkened room with a weight on top of her. A noise sounded above her, more of a growl than a man's voice. The room spun like a merry-go-round.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Matt asked.

They were in Matt's dorm room. They were naked. His intentions loomed above her, a gross, pink, bobbing thing wrapped in a rubber.

“Stop,” she said. “I don't want to do this. I want to go home.” For the first time in ages, she thought of the white picket fence house she'd grown up in, and her bedroom with the ball fringe curtains. For the first time in ages, she wanted her mother.

“Ex-fucking-cuse me?” Matt's face took shape in the dark—his straight hair unleashed from its short ponytail and falling to his shoulders, and his narrow lips, but she didn't recognize him. She didn't know him at all.

“I said no!” Her voice sounded wobbly and thin. She wriggled beneath him, her reaction time delayed, her limbs slow with alcohol. “Get off me. Get the hell off me!”

Matt stared down at her, unmoving. “It's a little late for
no.
It's a little too late to change your mind.”

How could she change her mind if she'd never made a decision?

Celeste's adrenaline spiked, her body understanding what was happening, how little leverage she had, half a beat before her mind registered the urgency.

“No!” Celeste's fist connected with a satisfying, bone-cracking
thwap
.

 

Celeste opened her eyes.

She was in her apartment, breathing hard, sitting on her couch, and fully clothed. She squinted against the light. Her scream echoed in her head.

Zach held his left hand to his face.

Celeste's mouth was cottony. Her words sounded like pieces of paper rubbing against each other. “What just happened?”

Zach moved his hand from his face. The skin beneath his left eye glowed red with a fresh, angry bruise. But Zach, her superhero Zach, was apologizing to her. “I'm so sorry. I am so sorry,” he said, his voice thick and hushed. His gaze met hers, both eyes glassy. Both eyes were wet with tears, for her. He held out his hand.

Celeste shook her head and pulled back. “Oh, no.”

“Let me help you,” Zach said.

A current of tremors traveled from her stomach and up her chest and down both arms. Her fingers quivered. Her jaw ached, her teeth chattering as though she'd plunged into the October-chill waters of the Atlantic.

“It's going to be okay,” Zach said.

“Oh, no.” Celeste stood up. She had to get out of here. She had to run somewhere, anywhere. Other girls picked up strangers at bars and got into bad situations. Other girls took shortcuts home, alone, through city alleyways and got jumped by lowlife scumbags.

Zach stood up, his hand outstretched between them. He tried to give her an encouraging smile, but his lips quivered, downturned and telling the truth.

“Oh, no,” Celeste said.

Other girls got raped.

C
HAPTER
18

W
hen you realized the girl you loved had left you, you searched for her in all the obvious places first. When you realized you were in love, you never let go.

At two in the morning, Zach woke up on the sticky couch, with his legs wrapped around Celeste's two yellow blankets but no Celeste. His wrist ached from holding Celeste against him while she'd trembled. His eye socket throbbed from the punch she'd landed. His head tingled from sleep deprivation.

When you realized someone had raped the girl you loved, your heart actually hurt, as if that someone had torn your heart from your body and crushed it in his hand.

Zach wanted to go after Matt and pound his face until even Matt's mother wouldn't have recognized him. Zach wanted to punish Matt for getting away with rape.

With neither a witness nor physical evidence, a rape charge came down to a pissing match of he said, she said. And even if Celeste could manage to get sexual assault charges lobbed against Matt, any defense attorney worth his or her salt would rip Celeste apart on the stand.

Probably the reason Zach's father refused to take on rape cases.

A girl who got drunk and willingly went back to a guy's room didn't stand a chance. The rape wasn't Celeste's fault. But if Zach was going to be brutally honest, he'd have to admit he was a little irked with Celeste for ending up drunk in Matt's bed. Did that make Zach a monster, too?

For the second time in two days and without the benefit of the night sky, that feeling of being lost in time came over Zach. He wished he could go back in time to the moment when Celeste had decided to follow Matt to his room. Better yet, Zach imagined going back to that party Celeste had mentioned, where he'd rip the drink from her hands and hand her life back to her, shiny and bright as a promise ring.

Zach struggled to standing and stretched out a kink in his lower back, his body's way of complaining about sleeping on his side on the squishy couch. His father had a bad back, having thrown it out once playing baseball, another time helping a colleague move filing cabinets. Could you take on someone's physical attributes by virtue of proximity? People who didn't know Zach was adopted often claimed to see a family resemblance, their minds playing tricks on them and superimposing comfort for the truth.

He plodded into the kitchen and scanned the clean counters for new smudges and crumbs. He went to the bathroom and yanked aside the flowered shower curtain, swiped the tub with his hand and found it dry. He knocked on Celeste's bedroom door and then, heart hammering, threw the door wide. He slammed on the lights and tore the top sheet from her bed.

Out in the parking lot, without Old Yeller, Matilda looked worn and tired, the old girl belatedly showing her age.

Maybe he was being a worrywart. Two o'clock was early for Celeste's shift, but maybe she'd gone in to work on a batch of biscotti or a three-tier wedding cake or to blow off some steam. He stared into middle space, finger combing his hair, and then gave himself a shake and found Katherine's number programmed into the phone.

Katherine answered on the first ring, as if she'd been waiting for his call. When she asked what was wrong, Zach took a chance and told her about the rape. She needed to know Celeste's state. Zach needed an ally. Celeste could punch his other eye out later.

Fifteen minutes later, Zach and Katherine met at the door to Lamontagne's. He'd tossed a hoodie over his flannel, but he shivered in the night air. Katherine turned the key in the door. She squinted beneath the lights. “What happened to your eye?”

Zach squinted back at her, only his squint was lopsided. “Celeste.”

“Did you deserve it?”

“Not really.”

Katherine's dark eyes glowed, bloodshot, as if she'd been crying for Celeste. Katherine glanced down at Zach's sling and then brought her gaze back to his shiner. She shook her head. “This town is bad for your health.”

For the first time since the shiner, Zach grinned. “Tell me about it.”

Inside the kitchen, the counters were squeaky clean. Blake had washed, dried, and put away every last dish, pot, pan, and mixing bowl.

A seam of light seeped from around the closed stockroom door. Katherine and Celeste's blackboard to-do list, usually propped by the door, lay on its side. Katherine opened the stockroom door. Rolling ladder, bins, shelves stacked with canned goods and mason jars, chest freezer and marble worktable. Same as the kitchen, nothing was out of place.

When Katherine went into the room, Zach intended to right the blackboard. Instead, he discovered the to-do list erased from Celeste's column and a note taking its place:

 

Zach's left eyelid ticked. The smiley face made him want to puke.

Inside the stockroom, Katherine was on her knees before the skirted worktable, as if she'd read his mind.

Zach thought of the Arlington Unitarian church, the voices rising up in prayer, and offered up the prayer first spoken by his mother:
Find her.
Then he added a prayer of his own:
Save Celeste.

Katherine lifted the skirt, bent her head beneath the worktable, and riffled through something Zach couldn't see. “Celeste left us a note,” he told the back of Katherine's head. “She's gone to New York.” Zach thought of the right hook Celeste had landed and the man she'd intended to punch.

The man Celeste meant to punish. “She's gone after him,” Zach said.

“
Merde,
” Katherine said, the first time Zach had heard her speak a word of French. The cussing didn't bother him, but the inflection was hushed and understated, similar to the way Celeste had said, “Oh, no,” last night, right before she'd collapsed in his arms. In the warm, closed space, Katherine's inflection shot a web of shivers up the back of Zach's head.

Zach got down on his knees beside Katherine.

A two-foot-by-two-foot metal safe sat beneath the worktable. Its combination door swung wide.

“She got into the safe,” Katherine said.

“Celeste would never steal money from you,” Zach said, even as his mind wondered how much money she'd have in her pocketbook and whether, in her state of mind, she could've borrowed from the till.

Katherine turned to Zach, her eyes widened, as though a cold blast of air had shot her in the face. “She didn't steal money from me. She borrowed my loaded gun.”

“Oh, shit,” Zach said.

“Exactly. She's going to kill the son of a bitch.” Katherine's eyes watered and she rolled her lips into her mouth, but she almost sounded glad about it. Her voice rose an octave, as though she'd announced the daily bread on special.

“Let's hope not,” Zach said, but a tiny corner of his mind imagined Celeste getting away with murder. A tiny corner of his mind hoped for vengeance.

He was better than his worst thought.

Katherine threw him a look. “I know we can't let her. We'll have to call ahead, of course, let the school know—”

“What?” Zach asked. “That a girl hell-bent on revenge is coming after one of their students with a loaded gun? The school would call the police. The police would be waiting for her. . . .” Zach's mind unspooled the scenario. He imagined Celeste bursting into a classroom or—this one made him sick—Matt's dorm room. He imagined men in blue just doing their jobs and taking Celeste into custody, instead of the rapist. God bless the American justice system for believing a person was innocent unless you could prove him guilty in a court of law.

Usually that thought came around
without
a generous helping of sarcasm.

“I don't think Celeste is capable of murder,” Zach said, his statement not sounding as sure as he'd intended. Who knew what another person was capable of when pushed to the brink? Right now Zach wouldn't trust himself near Matt with a loaded gun and a clear shot.

“I'm going after her,” Zach said.

“
We're
going after her.”

The phrase,
Surely you can't be serious,
played in his head, churning out an image of Celeste so crisp he half-expected her to appear in the doorway, wearing her starched apron and sarcastic grin.

“What? It's my gun,” Katherine said. As if Zach would believe Katherine cared anything for material goods.

“You know, maybe you shouldn't have given her the combo to your safe.” Zach knew he wasn't being fair, but there, he'd said it anyway. Yeah, hindsight sounded like an angry, finger-pointing thirteen-year-old boy. The one that lived inside him.

“I didn't,” Katherine said. “I was wondering how she figured it out myself,” she said, her expression a cross between an open question and an accusation.

Typically, people chose the most obvious combinations for their safes. Their wedding anniversary, their birthday, their spouse's birthday, or—number one on the list—the birth date of one of their children.

Zach's ears clogged, same as when Matilda crested a hill faster than his body could adjust to the altitude.

He closed the door to the safe and spun the dial to reset the lock. He turned the dial twice to the right and fit the black notch of number 1 against the white indicator. He turned the wheel twice to the left and stopped on 1 a second time. From behind him, Katherine took an audible breath. His skin warmed. His pulse pinched his eardrums.

He could stop right now, leave the lock, hit the road with Katherine, and continue to circle the issue of his identity. Inside Zach's head, Celeste called him a fraidy cat. Zach glanced over his shoulder, and Katherine nodded for him to continue. Slowly, Zach turned the wheel to the right—past 90, past 80, all the way to 76.

He turned the handle and opened the door.

Instead of his pulse doing a crazy dance, the pounding slowed and settled. He breathed into his stomach and turned to face Katherine.

Zach might be a fraidy cat, but he'd done his research. Before leaving Arlington, he'd stopped at the library. He'd researched adoptee reunion scripts. He'd read about breaking the news to the birth mother gently. He'd absorbed the importance of not acting too fast and scaring her away.

Maybe he'd taken the advice too much to heart. “I know this might come as a shock to you,” he said. “But does the date January 1, 1976, mean anything to you?”

Katherine's expression didn't change. She looked numb, but tears flowed from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She didn't bother wiping them away. She didn't even seem to notice. “I'm so sorry, Zach. I was afraid I wouldn't make a very good mother. What I told you about my family . . . I'm still trying to figure out. I came from such a horrible place. I didn't want to hurt you. I've never wanted to hurt you. I only wanted you to be happy.”

“I'm happy to hear that,” Zach said, his voice suddenly formal and shy with a woman he'd known for weeks. A woman he'd grown to care for and respect.

Katherine wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands. “Do you want to see something?” She tucked her hair behind one ear, hunched in the safe. Something plastic looking poked from her fisted hand. Two somethings. She handed them to Zach.

Lamontagne, Katherine
was printed across the longer, thicker plastic strip, a hospital ID bracelet. On a tiny ID bracelet, someone had handwritten
Baby Boy Lamontagne
. Zach laid the bracelet across his wrist.

“You wear it around your ankle.” Katherine laughed and covered her mouth. “Wore it around your ankle. Hard to imagine . . . ”

“Not for you.”

“No,” she said, “I haven't forgotten a thing. Every single day since I gave you away—” Katherine took a shaky breath. “I've regretted it.”

Zach handed the bracelets back to Katherine. “Don't.”

“Don't cry or don't regret it?”

“Both, I guess.”

Katherine rubbed the ID bracelets between her fingers, the way Zach worried his St. Anthony token to find his center. “Your middle name, the one you despise so?” Katherine said.

“That was my doing, the name I put on your original birth certificate. I named you after my mother, Francesca. Your parents are incredibly generous to have kept that name. I imagine they're wonderful parents.”

“They are,” Zach said. “At the moment, sorry to say, they're not exactly thrilled with me. My dad—he hoped I'd follow in his footsteps to Harvard Law. I'm kind of a big disappointment.” Zach thought of the way, ten years ago, his father had responded to his phone call and picked him up in Harvard Square. Bleary-eyed and slack-skinned, Everett Fitzgerald had looked worse for wear than Zach. But his father hadn't even yelled at him. Everett had told Zach to get in the car. Then his father had locked the car doors, hung his head, and sobbed.