Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (39 page)

“I think I might have a Mr. Darcy too,” Veronica said, unable to hide her smile. “He was never a jerk, though—he’s just all the good things about Darcy. Honest and honorable, trustworthy, a man of conviction. And drop-dead gorgeous. And you know what, Bea? I’m ready to get back to my life. But not to waitressing. I’ll make tomorrow my last day as an extra and spend tomorrow night scouting out possible sites in town for a pie diner. There’s a place on Main I noticed the other day. It needs work, but just standing there, I could see my blackboard of ten different kinds of pies, Happiness Pies and elixirs.”

It seemed fitting that her last day at the diner would be during the filming of a Colin Firth movie. She wondered if he was really going to show up tomorrow. But Veronica wouldn’t hold her breath. If he was there, great. If not, well, Veronica had already found what she’d been looking for: her heart to blast wide open, finally. And it had.

Bea smiled. “I’ll be first in line at that pie diner.”

“So . . . maybe you could apply for teaching jobs up here in Maine,” Veronica said.

From the smile Bea gave her, Veronica could see that the open invitation to Veronica’s life had been received. “You mean just stay in Maine?”

“Sure. You have a place to stay. A job in the meantime. And you know that my door is always open.”

Bea came around the table and hugged Veronica, and she hugged her back. They lingered that way, neither wanting to pull away so fast. “Maybe I will stay, then.”

“Yoo-hoo, everyone,” a man’s singsong voice called from outside, “Colin Firth just passed me on the street!”

“What the heck?” Veronica said, peering out the window. There was someone out there. A tall, skinny man holding a can stood at the far end of the driveway. She headed to the living room window for a closer look and saw the nudge who wouldn’t stop asking her out, Hugh Fledge.

He’d been behind all the fake Colin Firth sightings? Sending people racing around, hoping to get a glimpse of the actor? What a pest!

He shook the can in his hand and aimed it at the far end of her driveway. Oh, no. That wasn’t beer. It was spray paint. She was about to run out and confront him, then realized she could bring in the heavy hitters: aka the police. She grabbed her phone and called Nick.

“That drunken fool who keeps asking me out—Hugh Fledge—is waving a can of what looks like spray paint on my driveway.”

“I’ll be right there,” Nick said. “I’m patrolling nearby. Wait for me—don’t confront him.”

But Fledge was now spraying on her driveway—with black spray paint. He’d gotten as far as
B I.

No big wonder what letter was next.

She opened the front door and shouted at him. “I’ve called the police. You’d better stop. Now.”

“Go out with me and I will, Va-va-voomica,” he said, shaking his hips at her and continuing with the
T.

“You realize this is harassment of every kind,” she said. “You’re going to get arrested.”

He was wiggling his finger at her in a “come get me” sickening way. She’d march over and try some tae kwon do that she’d once learned, but she had no idea what he was capable of, and Bea could get caught in the crossfire. Just as he was about to spray again, she ran over and knocked the can out of his hand. He was wobbling, she realized. Drunk fool.

Nick arrived in his squad car and rushed over to Fledge. “Veronica, you should have waited for me.”

“I didn’t want him to finish,” she said.

He smiled, then glanced over at Bea in the doorway. “I’m glad to see you have company.”

“We’re baking a chocolate fudge Happiness Pie later.”

“Maybe you could teach me Saturday night. After dinner at Grill 207?”

Now it was her turn to smile. “I’d like that.”

He looked at Veronica, his dark eyes full of so many things. “Pick you up at seven.” He gave her hand a brief squeeze, then secured Fledge in the back of the squad car, who’d gotten in a kick at Nick’s shin. The kick would ensure an even longer stay in jail.

“We could scrub that
B I
away while the coffee perks,” Bea said.

As Veronica worked on the
B,
and Bea on the
I,
all she could think about was that she had met Bea in a driveway for the first time, and now here they were, together again for a new beginning.

The parlor was crowded for Movie Night at the Three Captains’ Inn. The Colin Firth fan club, three women wearing their “Happiness Is Colin Firth” T-shirts, had checked back into the inn since the town was buzzing that the actor was due to arrive in town tomorrow to shoot a scene at the Best Little Diner in Boothbay. The guests from the Seashell and Bluebird Rooms were scattered around the parlor, including two husbands, and according to Isabel, men rarely came to Movie Night, since shoot-’em-ups were rare on the marquee. June was handing out cute bags of popcorn that her son had decorated for the event, and Isabel was handing out slices of Veronica Russo’s pies.

Bea and Veronica were waiting on the big sofa and had saved Gemma a seat. Veronica had brought over three pies for the occasion, and Gemma helped herself to a slice of chocolate fudge pie, since she’d missed out on the one she’d given the newlyweds the other night. The two of them were snuggled up on a beanbag, feeding each other the key lime, their arms entwined. Gemma remembered when she and Alexander used to do sickeningly lovey-dovey stuff like that, and she smiled. She missed Alexander. If she had to go home and face her future, at least she was going home to him.

“Everyone ready for
Girl with a Pearl Earring
?” Isabel asked.

Girl with a Pearl Earring
. Gemma flashed back to one of her earliest dates with Alexander, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when they were twenty-three and didn’t have much money, and they’d looked through postcards of art for their bulletin boards at work. Alex had bought her two Vermeers,
A Maid Asleep
and
Girl with a Pearl Earring,
and she’d always loved both, but especially the “girl’s” haunting face, her eyes, that one beautiful pearl earring. She still had those postcards, but now it was in her big box of stuff from when she’d had to clean out her desk at
New York Weekly.
Suddenly she wished Alexander were here, sitting next to her, holding her hand.

Tomorrow, she thought, the warring feelings settling down some.

The lights went off and the movie began, and Gemma was transported to the seventeenth-century Dutch republic, as a poor teenage maid named Griet, played by Scarlett Johansson, slowly dares to assist and model for the master of the house, the reclusive painter Johannes Vermeer, who has a very jealous, pregnant wife.

Between the exquisite period detail and the intensity of Colin Firth’s performance, Gemma was riveted to the screen, as was everyone else.

“The longing between them!” June said as the lights were turned back on. “Aside from how beautiful the movie was, the photography, the absolute longing that was captured between Griet and Vermeer almost made me uncomfortable.”

“Because it couldn’t be and because their connection was so special,” Bea said.

“Did Colin Firth look incredibly hot with that longish hair or what?” one of the members of the Colin Firth fan club said. “All those smoldering gazes!” She fanned herself.

There was general agreement on that.

The discussion continued for a while, some saying the movie didn’t have enough action, but Gemma thought it was beautiful—and very sad—as it was. The newlyweds left for their room, giving each other exaggerated haunting gazes à la Griet and Vermeer, and Gemma had to smile. The Colin Firth fan club insisted that Colin Firth would be here tomorrow; someone who knew someone who knew someone had gotten word to one of them that he was arriving in the morning to film scenes in the diner, but Veronica, beset by the fan club for details and information, swore on a stack of imaginary Bibles that even she—and the assistant director—couldn’t say for sure if he’d be there.

Gemma smiled at how important she’d thought an interview with him would be. And it would be important to editors who’d relish a story on him, especially from the perspective Gemma had in mind of a travel piece. But now all she wanted was to go home and see her husband, feel his arms around her, and slowly morph into the new Gemma—mother to be, a role that she would put her heart and soul into, whether it was incredibly difficult for her or not. She was ready to go home, wherever that home turned out to be. She’d make her new life work for her, somehow, someway.

Slowly, the room began clearing out. Bea and Veronica left for Harbor View Coffee, and Gemma helped Isabel and June clean up the pie crumbs and pieces of popcorn from between sofa cushions and from the floor. And then it was time to go,
up to her room, for her last night of sleep as the old Gemma, intrepid reporter.

Someone knocked on the front door of the inn, and Isabel wondered out loud if she’d missed getting ready for a late arrival as she headed to the door, but when she returned, there was Alexander.

Gemma stared at him. “Alex? What on earth?”

“You think I’d let my beloved pregnant wife drive seven hours hunched over the wheel of our little Miata?” he said. “I flew up to drive you home tomorrow morning.”

He was wonderful that way. “Thank you.” She hugged him, breathing in the scent of him, the security of him. Sometimes it felt very, very good.

She couldn’t believe he was really here, standing a foot in front of her, looking a bit tired, his sandy-blond hair mussed, but otherwise absolutely wonderful.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “Show me that yellow house you texted me a picture of. I want to see what you have in mind. I want you to be happy.”

She knew he did. Holding hands, they walked out into the warm July night, a beautiful breeze lifting the ends of Gemma’s hair. They walked down to Main Street, then turned onto Meadow Lane. “That’s it,” she said, pointing to the craftsman she loved with the widow’s walk and porch swing.

He looked at it, then turned back to her. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the past couple of days. I think you should accept the job offer from the
Gazette,
Gemma.”

She stared at him, her stomach dropping. “Are you saying you want to split up?”

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Of course not.”

“Well, Dobbs Ferry, New York, is a long commute to Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

“True, but this isn’t,” he said, pointing at the yellow bungalow.

“What?”

“I told you that somehow we’d find a way to make this work for both of us,” he said. “And here’s what I came up with. We have a lot of money socked away. I can take off a few years if we’re careful, if we live here in Boothbay instead of New York, and if you’re the breadwinner, supporting us with your full-time job.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re going to be a stay-at-home father?”

“Why not? I could use an extended break from my job. When Gemma Jr. starts preschool, I’ll go back to work. But for these three years, we’ll cut expenses. We’ll get three times for our apartment what I’ll pay for a house here. My parents won’t be thrilled we’re moving so far away, but it’s an hour-and-a-half plane ride from New York. You’ll be a working mother, and I’ll be the stay-at-home dad. We’ll both change diapers.”

Gemma’s eyes filled with tears. “I am the luckiest person on earth.”

“We both are.”

In the morning, both Bea and Gemma were invited to the movie set, thanks to Tyler and Veronica, and the special passes around their necks helped them navigate through the crowds behind barricades lining Main Street. But when they arrived at the Best Little Diner in Boothbay, they learned the shoot was delayed for three hours—and no one was confirming if Colin Firth was on set or not.

The extras were dismissed until two o’clock, so Veronica led Bea and Gemma out the back door to the coffee bar that had been set up behind the diner, along with trailers and equipment Veronica wouldn’t have thought could possibly fit back here.

“Hey, everyone, it’s Colin Firth!” a man’s voice called out.

Gemma rolled her eyes. “I love how no one’s even bothering to look. We’ve all had enough of the loser who called wolf.”