Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (15 page)

Veronica nodded. “Molasses and brown sugar crumb topping. I love it, but you don’t see it made much these days.”

“What kind of elixir pie is that?” June asked, picking up a canister of baking soda and peeking in through the plastic top.

Leigh DeMarco was staring at her feet.

“It’s what I call a Spirit Pie,” Veronica said. “It can help you feel close to someone you lost.”

For a split second, it was as though everyone in the room held their breath. Nick was nodding, slowly, and taking his daughter’s hand, and Leigh looked like she wanted to run out the back door, but she didn’t. June and Isabel glanced at each other and were silent. And Penelope seemed subdued.

“I miss my mom,” Leigh said, staring at her sneakers, but Veronica could see she was holding back tears. “Mrs. Buckman, she’s our neighbor,” she added, glancing up at her dad, then around the room. “She had one of Veronica’s Spirit Pies and said she felt like her mother was right in the room with her.”

“Sometimes I feel that way at the inn,” Isabel said. “I’ll be in the foyer, putting brochures on the sideboard, and all of a sudden, I’ll feel the presence of my mom and dad. A few weeks ago, I was in the kitchen, whipping up an Irish breakfast for guests, and for the briefest moment, it was as though my aunt Lolly and uncle Ted were with me, telling me I was doing a good job. Doesn’t happen often enough.”

“If I could eat a slice of delicious pie that would help me feel their presence,” June said, “I’d have a great excuse to eat the whole pie.”

Veronica smiled. “That’s the good thing about shoofly pie. It’s so sweet you can probably only eat one slice. When I make it, and then sit with my tea and have a piece, I do feel my grandmother with me. It’s the most comforting thing.”

“So why don’t we all make a shoofly pie instead of apple pie,” Leigh said. “We can all have a slice and we can all get to feel close to who we want.” She shuffled through the recipes on the island and pulled out the one for shoofly pie.

Penelope turned to Veronica. “Will it work on someone who’s not dead? You said it helps you feel closer to someone. Will it work if they’re alive?”

“I think so,” Veronica said. “You just think about that person while you’re working on the pie, while you’re having a piece, and it should help. Shoofly pie instead of apple?” Veronica said to the class, looking at each student.

Everyone nodded, except Nick. Leigh was staring up at him. “You can tell Mommy you’re sorry, Dad,” she said.

Once again, it was as though the air stopped circulating.

Nick took a deep breath and put his hand on his daughter’s
shoulder, but looked away, his dark eyes once again unreadable. Whoa. Everyone was politely looking at the canisters of ingredients and printouts of recipes on the island, trying to give him—and Leigh—a little privacy.

Nick kept his gaze on the recipe for shoofly pie that Leigh handed him.

“Okay, shoofly pie it is,” Veronica said quickly. “If you didn’t bring an apron, grab one from the pegs by the door, and let’s get started.”

As Veronica tied her apron around her back, she glanced at Nick, who looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but here.

Veronica held up a color printout of the last shoofly pie she’d made, a couple of weeks ago, to celebrate what would have been her grandmother’s eighty-fourth birthday. Veronica’s parents hadn’t made a fuss over birthdays, but Renata Russo always had. “Shoofly pie. It’s very simple to make, but the most important ingredient will come from you, from the heart. While you’re pouring or stirring or mixing or even just waiting for the pie to bake, you just think about the person you want to feel close to, and then when you’re having the pie, you think about that person some more, and you’ll likely feel them with you.”

“If only everything were that easy,” Penelope said with a sigh.

Veronica smiled at her. “I didn’t say it was easy. Just that it seems to work.” She turned to Leigh. “Leigh, why don’t you read out the list of ingredients while I go print out more copies of this recipe so everyone can have one.”

Leigh smiled and took the paper and began reading as
Veronica headed into her small office off the living room. “For the crust,” Leigh was saying. “Flour, sugar, kosher salt . . .”

Veronica came back into the kitchen and handed out the recipes. “Thanks, Leigh. The first thing we’ll do is make our pie dough because we want to let it chill in the refrigerator for thirty minutes.”

The tension seemed to seep out of everyone as they all got to work, Leigh adding the flour to the bowl of the food processor, Nick pouring in the sugar, and Penelope the salt. Veronica asked Leigh to pulse a few times, then had Isabel add the diced butter, and June the shortening.

“Now, some folks make their piecrusts with either just butter or just shortening,” Veronica said, “depending on the pie, but my grandmother used both shortening and butter for her crusts, so I do too.” Veronica added a little cold water to the mix, then explained how to dust the counter so that the dough wouldn’t stick and how to roll the dough into a ball. “We want to be careful not to work the dough too much or it might get tough.”

“Everyone says making piecrust is so difficult,” Isabel said. “But this was easy.”

Penelope wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron. “I’m so glad I signed up for this class. I think I’m going to bake a few pies a week for the senior citizens center.”

Okay, Veronica really liked this new, nice Penelope. “Now, let’s wrap the dough in plastic and let it chill for thirty minutes while we work on the filling.”

“Wait, I wasn’t really thinking about my mom while I was adding the flour to the bowl,” Leigh said, her face crumpling. “Now the pie won’t work for me.”

“No worries,” Veronica said, aware of Nick’s eyes on her. “Remember, I make Spirit Pies for other people. They sit down with their pies and think about who they want to feel close to. So it works if you make the pie or if you don’t. But in our case, since we’re making the pie, we’ll each think about who we want to feel close to as we’re making the filling.”

Leigh brightened. Nick looked uncomfortable. Penelope seemed relieved. Isabel and June were the only two that seemed to be enjoying themselves. Because they’re at peace with their losses, with their grief, Veronica understood.

Veronica assigned everyone an ingredient for the filling. “Now, as you pour your ingredient into the mixing bowl, think about the person you want to feel close to—you can just picture them, think of a memory, anything that reminds you of them, and close your eyes.”

Veronica watched Leigh dump in the baking soda as slowly as she could, her expression a combination of happiness, sorrow, and determination. Nick added the brown sugar so fast Veronica almost missed it. Isabel put in the butter, and Veronica showed Leigh how to whisk it together, then June poured in the egg. Penelope stood before the bowl and, as she added the vanilla extract, she closed her eyes for a moment as though she was praying, and Veronica couldn’t help but wonder whom she was thinking about. Perhaps she’d offended a friend or a relative and was hoping to be forgiven. Leigh poured the molasses and whisked it again.

“I feel her hand around mine!” Leigh yelped, glancing around. “I feel my mom’s hand!” She stood very still and started to cry, and Nick put his arm around her.

“Leigh? Are you okay?” he asked.

“I felt her hand around mine,” she said again, and even though she was crying, her face held an almost joyous wonder.

Nick squeezed her shoulder and kissed the top of her head, but he was looking out the window.

Veronica added the boiling water to smooth out the filling, startling herself for a moment because it wasn’t her grandmother’s sweet face that came to mind.

It was the baby girl she’d given up for adoption. Veronica had only held her for two minutes, and in those two minutes, Veronica had fantasized about breaking out of the ambulance, where it had been parked at Hope Home, and making a run for it with the baby. But as she’d looked at that beautiful little face, the three-quarters-closed eyes and wisps of blond hair, just like Timothy’s, she was reminded that she had nowhere to go and no way to provide for her child. Her parents had disowned her. Her boyfriend had insisted it wasn’t his baby. And her grandmother, the only person who’d ever been her rock, was almost a year gone by then. With no support from anyone, how could Veronica hope to support a child, emotionally and financially? When the EMT guy gently took the baby back to tend to her, Veronica had squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away, reminding herself over and over that the baby wasn’t hers, really hers, and that she was doing the right thing, the best thing for the baby.

The right thing. How many times had she heard that phrase, over and over and over. Not from the staff at Hope Home, who knew better than to throw around platitudes that weren’t necessarily true. But from strangers. Visiting parents.
Anyone she told her story to.
You’re doing the right thing. You did the right thing
.

I did the only thing I could do, Veronica had thought then.

Over the years, she rarely tried to imagine what her daughter looked like. At birth, the hair might have been Timothy’s, but the face was Veronica’s. The eyes, even just a quarter opened, were Veronica’s. Same with the nose. Maybe the chin and something about the shape of the face were Timothy’s. Veronica liked kids fine, but she tended to keep her distance. Playgrounds made Veronica feel unsettled. Parents walking hand in hand made her feel like she’d once had something and then didn’t, not lost exactly, but just gone. Veronica went to the sink, ostensibly to wash her hands, but really to close her eyes for a moment and let this feeling pass. But it didn’t pass. The baby’s face came to mind again, the feel of that tiny weight in her arms, against her chest. She felt it now, as though she were right back in that ambulance.

Since she’d been back in Boothbay Harbor this past year, she’d have strange dreams about Hope Home and the night she gave birth, quite unexpectedly, in the ambulance. The baby had started coming and that was that; there was no time to get her to the hospital safely, and the EMT guy with the kind face had delivered the baby. Veronica had been having odd bits of dreams, pieces of experience, but she never let herself think too much about the baby girl or where she might be or what she really might look like. It was too painful, and Veronica had learned at sixteen how to tamp those thoughts down so she didn’t fall apart. Maybe these sudden thoughts about the baby while making the pie were about all those bits coming together. Maybe subconsciously, she did always think about the baby.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t feel anything,” Penelope said, worrying her lower lip.

“I’m not sure that I felt my parents’ presence,” Isabel said, “but I did think about a memory I haven’t thought about in a long time, a really good memory.”

“I did too,” June said to her sister. “The seven of us—you and me, Mom and Dad, and Aunt Lolly and Uncle Ted and cousin Kat. Christmas at the inn when we were really little, and that stray cat Lolly took in unraveled all the garland from the tree and then got her nails caught and brought the whole tree down.”

Leigh laughed. “Was your aunt mad?”

“She was at first,” Isabel said. “But our uncle Ted was laughing so hard because the cat finally found his way out of the tree and had garland around his tail. That cat lived a good long life as the inn mascot.”

“Daddy, who were you thinking about?” Leigh asked.

All eyes turned to Nick. “My grandfather,” he said quickly, and Veronica had a feeling he hadn’t been thinking about anyone in particular. “You would have loved Great-grandpa DeMarco.”

Leigh smiled. “Will you show me pictures when we get home?”

Nick nodded, and she put her hand in his.

The filling for the shoofly pie was done, and now it was time to take the piecrust out of the refrigerator and roll it out. Everyone gathered around the island as Veronica demonstrated, and then she gave the rolling pin to Nick, who looked as if he needed something to do. Once the pie tin was laid out and the pie filled, Veronica got them started on the crumb topping, just some brown sugar, flour, cold butter, and salt.

“Can I talk to you privately?” Penelope said to Veronica as she watched over Leigh gently breaking the mixture into a crumbly texture.

“Sure,” Veronica said. “Everyone, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Leigh, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Veronica led the way to her office and shut the door behind Penelope for privacy.

“It didn’t work for me,” Penelope said. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Were you thinking about the person you want to feel close to?” Veronica asked. “I know you said this was a living person.”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, frustration and anger evident. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about her so much as I’m thinking about what I want to happen. Does that make sense?”

“I thought you said you wanted to feel closer to this person.”

Penelope pushed a swatch of her wavy brown hair behind her ear. The diamond ring above her diamond-encrusted wedding band was the biggest one Victoria had ever seen. “I just want this person to like me. That’s all.”

Okay, this was weird and Veronica had no idea what Penelope was getting at or what she could possibly be talking about. “Well, do you like this person?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. But I need her to like me. I thought I could take your class and learn to make one of your special pies that I hear people talk about all the time. Hope Pie or whatever. But when Leigh brought up the Spirit Pie, I thought maybe it would work for this too. I don’t believe in this nonsense, Veronica. But I’m not religious and outside of a genie
coming along and granting me my greatest wish, I’m stuck and will try anything.”

“Stuck wanting something that you’re worried won’t happen because you’re not sure this person likes you?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

Veronica had no idea of the particulars, but there was true desperation in Penelope’s eyes.

“I’ll give you my recipe for my Hope Pie,” Veronica said. “Maybe that’ll help. Make it at home and put all the force of your wish into it. I’m planning to make one later for myself.”