Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (7 page)

Bea pulled her car over on the shoulder of the road, by the huge green sign that read
BOOTHBAY REGION
. Her heart was beating too fast. For a moment she thought about turning around, just forgetting this whole thing. She’d almost turned around two and a half hours ago, at the sign reading
WELCOME TO MAINE: THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE
at the Maine–New Hampshire border. The sign had loomed so large.
Keep going this way to meet your birth mother
, it might as well have read.

It had been three weeks since she’d received her mom’s letter, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be here to see her birth mother, let alone meet her. She had no idea what she wanted. Except for some kind of . . . closure. No, that wasn’t the right word. Or maybe it was. Bea knew that sometimes, in order to get closure you had to open a door.

Such as sending away for her original birth certificate, which she’d received in the mail yesterday. Just the sight of “Name: Baby Girl Russo” made her tremble, as did the rest: “Mother’s Name: Veronica Russo. Father’s Name: Unknown. Time of birth: 7:22 p.m. Issued by: Coastal General Hospital, Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was someone else, that she’d started off life as someone else entirely, belonging to
other people, a different family, in a different place. She had to find out who these people were, who Veronica Russo was.

She parked in a public lot and glanced at her little notebook: the Best Little Diner in Boothbay was on Main Street, the main drag she was on now. Bea glanced out her window. Boothbay Harbor was a coastal summer town, crowded with tourists walking along the narrow cobblestone and brick sidewalks, lined with shops and seafood restaurants, and hotels everywhere she looked.

She’d find a cheap motel for the night. She’d give herself a night here, maybe visit the hospital where she was born, walk around, think. Decide if she wanted to meet Veronica Russo. She could stick around town as long as she wanted since she had no home anymore. A few days ago, she’d gone back to the apartment to find one of the new roommates having sex in the living room. Bea had had it with this apartment, these strangers. The roommate had said her sister wanted to move in, and that was that. Now the money she’d been saving for July’s rent could support her here for a while until she decided where to go next. And she could go anywhere, which was scary. The only place she wanted to go was Cape Cod, to her mother’s little cottage. But that wasn’t her mother’s anymore. She’d have to throw a dart or apply to every school district in the United States and go where she got hired. For now, home was her car. Everything but her mother’s furniture was in the trunk of her old Toyota—her clothes, her laptop and books, her parents’ photo albums, the raggedy old stuffed Winnie the Pooh her father had given her on her sixth birthday. Her mother’s furniture was in a cheap storage facility. When she landed somewhere, she’d get back her mother’s belongings. She’d make a home as best she could.

Bea headed up bustling Main Street but didn’t pass the diner or see it on the other side of the street, and she wasn’t ready to. She turned onto a wide pier of souvenir shops and restaurants, the bay opening up in front of her. It was a Saturday in June, a gorgeous early evening, and the pier was packed with people, shopping, biting into lobster rolls, licking ice cream cones, drinking iced coffees, watching the boats. She passed couples, hand in hand, arms slung around each other, and felt a stab of pure envy. She wished she had someone to tell her everything would be okay, someone to be there if it wasn’t okay. Her last boyfriend, someone she’d been dating for a few months, had flaked out on her when her mother had gotten sick; he hadn’t even come to the funeral. She watched as a guy dipped his girlfriend for an impromptu romantic kiss; a few people clapped. Bea had never felt more wistful. Or alone.

She got herself a lemon ice from a cart vendor and stood in the sunshine, trying to orient herself, figure out where she was via the free shopper’s map she’d picked up outside a store. She had no idea where the Best Little Diner was in relation to this pier. The diner was marked on the map; it was barely a quarter mile from where she stood.

Bea put the map away, her heart beating fast again. Just like that, with a snap of her fingers, and she could meet the birth mother she hadn’t known existed until a few weeks ago. This was crazy. As was her sudden realization that any fortyish woman she passed could be Veronica Russo. That one, blond like Bea, in the pale yellow sundress and flip-flops, an outfit Bea might have chosen herself. She watched the woman check her phone, then look around the expanse of pier, as though she was
waiting for someone. Bea’s biological father, maybe. For all Bea knew, her birth parents had gotten married. Had always been married. Had other children, older or younger. Maybe both. Bea could have a sister. Twin brothers.

Bea sat down on a bench outside a weathered restaurant with a giant sign proclaiming
THE BEST LOBSTER ROLLS IN BOOTHBAY
. She had to stop this or she’d drive herself crazy. She’d spent three weeks wondering, speculating. How could she even begin to guess what her birth mother’s circumstances were?

Veronica Russo could be the tall blonde jogging with a yellow lab beside her. Or perhaps Bea had inherited the blond from her biological father, and Veronica was the redhead who’d just walked away from the seafood shack’s takeout window, biting into her lobster roll while gazing at a whale that had just made an appearance in the bay. I have to know something about you, Veronica Russo, she thought. About my birth father. About my birth grandparents. I have to know who I was before the Cranes adopted me.

Bea opened her backpack and pulled out her little red notebook. “Veronica Russo. Home: 225 Sea Road. Tel: 207 555-3235. Work: The Best Little Diner in Boothbay, 45 Main Street.” According to the map, all she had to do was walk a bit up to Main and turn right.

Just go to the diner, she told herself. Just go check her out.

Bea couldn’t pick her out right away. There were three waitresses, two the right age to be Veronica, and one no older than Bea. The one Bea’s age was working the counter, so Bea took
the empty seat that wrapped around the side by the door, giving her a view of the entire diner. The place was crowded; only one table was empty, and almost all the counter seats were filled.

She liked the diner. It was old-fashioned greasy spoon meets coastal Maine, with pale blue walls displaying the pricey work of local artists, and overstuffed chairs and love seats along with the more typical tables. The ceiling was covered in a lobster net with a giant wooden lobster caught inside. Near the counter where Bea sat was a bookshelf filled with books and a sign:
READ ME
.

Bea glanced at the two other waitresses and looked for name tags, but she wasn’t that lucky. One was heading to a table with four plates balanced in her hands, and she was tall like Bea, but she didn’t have Bea’s blond hair; none of the waitresses did.

“Sorry it’s taken me so long to even give you a menu,” the young waitress said to Bea. She wore a gold nameplate necklace. Katie. “We’re crazed right now, so I’m helping on the floor too.”

“No problem.” Bea ordered an iced coffee and the decadent-looking pie next to the carrot cake.

“Oh, that’s fudge Happiness Pie and intensely good. One of our waitresses is a legend in this town for her pies.” She headed to the coffee station, glancing around until her gaze landed on a woman coming out of a back room. “Oh, there you are, Veronica. I’m about to sell the last of your amazing fudge pie.”

Bea froze.

Her birth mother. Standing not seven, eight feet away. Had Katie not gone to get Bea her coffee and pie, Veronica’s attention would still be on the area where Bea sat, and Veronica might have noticed Bea sitting there, white as her paper napkin and trembling. She closed her eyes and turned her head to look out the large picture window, telling herself to breathe.

My birth mother, she thought, turning to take another look. Veronica gave Katie a pleased smile, then went to the coffee station and filled a large takeout cup. She was no older than late thirties and tall, like Bea. Busty, unlike Bea. Her auburn hair cascaded just past her shoulders in soft waves. And her eyes were just like Bea’s: driftwood brown and round. But Veronica Russo was beautiful in a lush, womanly way that Bea, who an ex liked to describe as looking like a farm girl, even though she’d grown up in Boston and Cape Cod, would never be. Still, there was something in the woman’s expression that was like Bea’s, something subtle.

She wore all white, a sparkly white tank top and white pants. And beaded sandals. Done with her shift, Bea figured.

You’re a complete stranger, and yet my entire history comes from you, Bea wanted to shout. What is your story? What was your story?

Bea glanced at Veronica’s hands as she added a packet of sugar to her coffee. No rings at all. So she wasn’t married.

“Hey, darling,” a man said, and Bea glanced over to see a tall, skinny, half-balding redheaded guy wobbling in the doorway as though he was drunk, his foot stuck in the screen door. He was staring at Veronica. “Is today my lucky day? Gonna go out with me?”

Veronica cut him a sharp look. “Please stop asking me out. My answer is never going to change.”

“She’s breaking my heart!” he shouted, and mock stabbed himself in the chest, and those sitting around the front of the diner burst into laughter.

Bea watched Veronica shake her head good-naturedly and stir her coffee as the guy staggered away.

“Colin Firth’s signing autographs at Harbor View Coffee!” a nasal voice called out from in front of the diner.

Colin Firth? The actor?

Veronica was out the door in a shot. Along with half of everyone in the diner.

Bea had the strongest urge to get up and follow her, but her body wouldn’t listen to a single command. Except for her hand, shaking around her fork, she was frozen. She set down the fork, sucked in a breath, and thought about calling her good friend Caroline to tell her she’d seen her birth mother in the flesh, that she was beautiful, but Caroline was in Berlin for the summer.

Bea looked down at her untouched slice of pie, the gooey fudge, the flaky crust. Her biological mother had made this pie. She took a slow bite, letting herself savor it.

Bea wanted to chase after Veronica and throw some time-stop pixie dust on her so that she could surreptitiously study her every feature—the shape of her eyes, the line of her nose, the structure of her jawline—and look for herself in Veronica’s face, her body, her mannerisms. Something to force her brain to accept that this was all true, that this woman, not Cora Crane, had given birth to her. That someone, a man whose name she didn’t know, had fathered her. Who was he? Had they been in love? Was it a one-night stand? Something awful? Where did I come from, Bea wanted to know. Suddenly, she was itchy to learn Veronica’s life story, Bea’s own history. Who were her grandparents?

Who was Bea?

Bea put a ten-dollar bill on the table and raced out after Veronica.

Main Street was so crowded with tourists and bicyclists, a dog walker with the leashes of at least ten dogs, and a bunch of day campers walking toward her two by two, in neon yellow Happy Kids Day Camp T-shirts, that Bea couldn’t see Veronica in any direction she looked. Harbor View Coffee was five shops down. Bea went in and looked around, but there was no sign of Veronica, let alone a British actor.

“If you’ve come looking for Colin Firth, he’s not here,” the barista called over, rolling her eyes. “Someone obviously thought it would be funny to send every woman in town rushing in here.”

Bea saw a couple leave through the back door with their iced coffees, and she headed out to the small patio. No Veronica. A cobblestone path led to the street running perpendicular to Main, right along the harbor. Veronica must have gone out this way.

Okay, now what? She could come back tomorrow—and this time, perhaps she’d sit in Veronica’s section. Bea headed toward the harbor and tried to think. She’d come to Boothbay to see the town, this place where she’d been born, where she’d begun as someone else’s story. The plan was that when and if the time was right, she’d knock on her birth mother’s door, either literally or figuratively.