A Measure of Happiness (8 page)

Briar Rose, Hidden Harbor's only bed-and-breakfast, was both full for the night and too expensive. But if Zach ended up there, if he ended up at Abby's door with no place to stay, she'd let him park in her lot. Why wouldn't she? She let strangers stay in her house all the time. Difference was, Abby called them guests. With the possible exception of Celeste, Abby never turned anyone away.

Okay, whatever. Leaving Briar Rose had been Celeste's doing, and Abby was trusting to a fault. But would it kill Celeste to act a little more like Abby? Nothing crazy. Celeste wasn't about to open her apartment door for Zach, but would it kill her to show him one small kindness? Would it kill her to make his life a little bit easier?

“Zach? You and Matilda can car camp in the visitor's spot. I mean, you know, just until you find a place.”

“The visitor's spot that says:
No overnight parking?
”

“Oh, please. Who's going to know? If anyone asks, I'll say you're one of my brothers. I've got, like, a couple dozen of them.”

“If you're sure . . .” Zach said, leaving room for her to reconsider and say no.

As of this week, she was sure of nothing.

“One thing?” Celeste said. “You have to let Katherine know if you're not keeping the job. It's a pain in the butt for her to find decent help. And kids around here are always looking for work. It's not fair to lead her on or take a needed job. So if you're not staying more than a week—if you're not going to appreciate—”

“Oh, I'm staying,” Zach said. “I mean, at least for now. It's gonna take me a few months, at least, to learn all the tricks of the bakery trade, so I can compete against your blueberry muffins and Katherine's lemon bars. Right?”

Zach's tone lifted at the corners, trying to inject humor into his voice, weighed with exhaustion. Or maybe Celeste was projecting again. But she got the feeling he was telling the truth, that he'd stick around because he wanted something from Katherine.

Celeste got the feeling that something had nothing to do with baked goods.

All day Celeste had noticed Zach and Katherine sneaking peeks at each other. When Zach bused the café, loading plates and napkins into a basin, Katherine's gaze followed him across the room. Her face pulled tight in concentration, as though she were—reading glasses perched on the end of her nose—studying one of Celeste's recipes and reviewing it for flaws. And Zach? Every time he checked out Katherine, he fixed the front of his hair. More than that, his posture shifted, his gaze lowered, and he looked like a rejected puppy.

A puppy with a crush on Katherine?

Zach offered his hand to Celeste.

A thank-you handshake for letting him dock Matilda in the visitor's spot overnight or a promise to not take advantage of Katherine's goodwill?

As if anyone could get the better of Katherine Lamontagne. Six days a week her ex-husband came in for a cup of coffee, every day hoping for more, the original rejected puppy. How could Katherine fail to soften under Barry's puppy dog eyes? According to Katherine, Barry had done nothing wrong. He'd done everything right. Then why had she divorced him? Why wouldn't she take him back? Why wouldn't she answer any of Celeste's questions?

The woman was like a rock, like that loaf of Irish soda bread Celeste had baked without the benefit of soda. Once. When it came to baking, she never made the same mistake twice.

“I'm good,” Celeste said, pretending she thought Zach's hand was meant as an assist, and she stood unaided.

Zach returned his hand to his side, and her throat tightened. The feeling of wanting to cry pulsed faintly against her sinuses.

She'd mistaken Matt's friendship for brotherly love. She wouldn't make that mistake twice, either.

“Good night,” Celeste said. “See you in the morning, Zach.” Inside her mouth, his name buzzed with energy, fresh and new, like Zach himself. Novelty had always intrigued her. Yet another instinct she ought to ignore.

Zach was just a guy, a stranger passing through Hidden Harbor on the way to the rest of his life. But something about him seemed familiar, too. Something she couldn't get a handle on. Like a dream that, upon waking, slipped through your fingers. Like a screwdriver-drunk memory that melted with the first rays of the sun.

Zach climbed into Matilda and pulled the door shut behind him with an echoing thud.

Celeste shivered in the doorway and ducked into her apartment. A stranger's apartment, really. She felt like an intruder, as though she'd broken into someone else's home, leased someone else's life. She could understand why Zach would prefer spending one more night in his dependable old friend Matilda to checking into a cold and impersonal hotel. Fumes from the pleather couch and chair burned Celeste's nose, coated her mouth with bitterness.

She cracked open a window, inhaled through the screen. Decaying leaves smelled like the pumpkin pie her mother always left in the oven until the edges browned to deep sienna and the kitchen's smoke detector emitted a warning call. The ozone of overcast skies reminded Celeste of Katherine's lemon bars, sweet hidden within a tart cream paste. And, drawn from farther off, ocean spray was the sweetest reward of all. The aroma, spicy as a glazed cinnamon bun, and bitter as espresso, reminded her of family.

Lincoln lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts; Grant ended up in Spring Lake, along the Jersey Shore; Jeff had recently closed on a house in Topsail Beach, North Carolina. And, of course, her parents resided in Boca. Her parents and brothers had scattered—the older the family member, the farther his or her distance from Celeste—but somehow they'd all still ended up touching the shores of the Atlantic. As though they'd left Hidden Harbor to search for a facsimile of home.

Why hadn't they just stayed?

Celeste nestled beneath two layers of blankets with only her nose exposed to the cold night air. She rolled, pulling the blankets tighter around her, and tucked the tip beneath her, as though the covers were dough and she the frangipane in an almond croissant. The rich, buttery almond paste with a hint of vanilla was good enough to eat alone. Her stomach growled, speaking of deep, dark hunger.

The suggestion only heightened her hunger. In lieu of counting sheep, she listed ingredients, imagined them floating before her eyes. Vanilla extract she could swig, let the alcohol burn going down.The butter she'd cut into cubes and see how long it took for them to melt on the indented center of her tongue. Sugar she'd scoop from a bin, dip her tongue into the curve of a measuring cup.

Celeste's eyes lost focus. Her eyelids drifted shut. She floated in the abyss of—

An engine revving.

Was she asleep or awake?

She tried wiggling her fingers—forefinger, middle, ring, pinkie—the way Lincoln had taught her.

Her eyes popped open. Across the room, the clock read 11:21. “Shit.” She waited for the car to drive away, for the sound to recede. Instead, the low rumble remained constant, the noise niggling at her rib cage.

Celeste wrapped her blankets around herself and dragged them through the living room. She squinted out the window. Cold night air whistled in through the screen, sending a chill through her torso. Beneath the parking lot light, Matilda idled.

Celeste wasn't the only person awake. Or cold, for that matter. An early fall night in Maine plus windchill could rattle even dependable Matilda. Could rattle an inlander from Massachusetts, far away from home.

She made sure the door to her apartment was unlocked, slid her feet into her bakery clogs, held her blankets around her, and trotted across the lot. Mist wet her cheeks, the first droplets of rain hitting the air. The temperature had dropped about fifteen degrees since she'd last stepped from the door. Below fifty, she'd wager. You could die from exposure in weather like this. A topsy-turvy wind howled between Old Yeller and Matilda, forcing the downed leaves between them to fall up. Matilda's parking lights glowed. The old girl rumbled, her undersides pinging from the change of temperature.

Celeste peered through the window into the backseat. Zach curled toward the seat back. His sleeping bag reached to his armpits. His head angled hard to the left. He looked like a cold, uncomfortable giant. Ill-suited for this seaside town with its winters that arrived while your beach towel still hung on the clothesline.

Celeste knocked on the window.

Zach scrambled to sitting, his arms flailing up like the flurry of leaves. A flicker of rage transformed his features, his eyes wide and ready to defend the homestead. Celeste's insides reverberated, pinging louder than the undersides of Zach's car. And then recognition softened his eyes, and his lips settled into a confused little grin.

Zach stepped from the car. She took a step back. Was she insane? It wasn't like her to go to a strange man's bed in the middle of the night. So what had possessed her to startle a man dozing in his car?

“What's wrong? You okay? You need something?” Zach's hair stood on end, a bed head without the benefit of a bed.

Celeste stifled the urge to smooth his hair, to lecture him on his choice of socks. Cotton made your feet sweat like crazy. Sweating made you freeze. Zach was a danger to himself. The pounding in Celeste's chest softened, receded.

“You shouldn't fall asleep while you're running the engine,” Celeste said.

Zach bounced from foot to foot in his cotton socks. “You scared the crap out of me to deliver a public-service announcement?”

“You're running the engine because you're cold?”

“Yeah.” Zach tucked his hands beneath his armpits, piss-poor defense against the windswept mist and the temperature drop.

Celeste peeled the top blanket from around her shoulders and scrunched it into a ball.

“I can't take your blanket.”

“You going to run Matil—your car—out in the parking lot every hour on the half hour to stay warm?”

“May-be,” he said, the word drawn out singsong and teasing.

Celeste tossed the blanket ball at Zach. Then she held the sides of the remaining blanket around her and ran back across the lot.

“I don't need—” Zach called after her, but the wind snuffed out the tail end of his denial.

Celeste turned to see Zach gathering the blanket in his arms and hugging it to his chest. “Thanks, buddy!” Zach said, but she'd have none of that buddy crap.

Her blanket delivery was nothing personal, just a desperate attempt to get some sleep. She didn't need a buddy, and she didn't need to find a frozen Zachsicle in her visitor's spot come daybreak. “Shut off your damn engine! Some people need to get up for work in a few hours!”

No verbal response from across the parking lot.

Zach climbed into the front seat of Matilda, slammed the car door behind him, and killed the engine.

All the response Celeste needed.

Inside the apartment, she locked the door, jumped into bed, and pulled the single blanket up over her head. She peeked through the blanket's weave, imagined Zach beneath her blanket's identical twin. She imagined his nose losing its likely chill, his toes defrosting, a wave of warmth crashing down his body. She pictured Zach's body relaxing into the seat cushion, his mind losing its grip on the world, his troubles—whatever they were—floating away.

Celeste's mother's oft-spoken phrase played between her ears. She needed a male friend
like she needed another hole in her head.

The first time her mother had said it, Celeste had been fifteen and had come home with her ears double pierced. And then, eager to further shock, she'd lifted her shirt and floated the notion of a belly button piercing, until her mother had sunk the idea.

The following week Celeste had begged a ride from her brother Lincoln's friend Justin to a house deep in the woods of Phippsburg, where a woman told your fortune and pierced your belly button for twenty bucks, a package deal. At sixteen, Celeste had let her belly button piercing close, given up on the fortune-teller's prediction she'd fall in love with a guy from far away, and told her family she was in love with Justin.

Even Lincoln had seconded her mother on that one. Celeste should've taken that as a sign. Lincoln wasn't warning her about guys in general; he'd been trying to warn her specifically away from Justin. Only she'd been too bullheaded to take the hint.

Nope, a guy friend was exactly what she didn't need. Zach was polite. He worked hard. Like Celeste, he named his cars. And he knew how to snuggle a blanket.

Beyond that, as Katherine was fond of saying, Celeste didn't really know him from Adam.

C
HAPTER
5

E
ver since Katherine was small, she welcomed the rain.

Not drizzle or mist—precipitation that couldn't seem to make up its damn mind and get serious. But torrents that hammered the roof like an imperative, flooded the front yard, and seemed to wash away your sins. Pounding rain that kept her father from driving his rust-riddled pickup down the rutted road to the liquor store. On those rare days, weekday or weekend, she'd awaken to the clatter of spatula against griddle, whisk against bowl, her mother getting busy in the kitchen. The aromas of coffee, bacon, and eggs would slip like a cartoon waft beneath Katherine's bedroom door and tweak her nose. And then, the best part, complete and utter radio silence. Her father, soothed by the rain, for once kept his damn mouth shut.

At five-thirty in the morning, Katherine left Celeste in the kitchen and stood by the front window of Lamontagne's, brushing flour from her apron and enjoying a rare moment of pre-opening peace. Silence echoed through the chilled glass, as though the world were taking a deep inhalation. Then the charcoal skies reached maximum capacity and exhaled.

Rain jackhammered the roadway, painting Ocean Boulevard slick and black as a whale beneath the streetlights. A car
shooshed
through the town center and plowed through the mother of all roadside puddles, splashing the window where Katherine stood. Katherine touched her fingertips to her chest but held her ground. She half-expected to see an ark parked alongside the town green and a man with a shepherd's hook ushering animals two by two into its protective cavern.

In reality, Katherine was waiting for Zach.

The pounding rain boxed her ears, keeping time with her overactive pulse. Her tired body's attempt to outpace the autumn chill that crept around the weather stripping. She'd slept a few winks last night. Flickers of dreams darted in and out of her awareness but nothing more substantial. Mostly, she'd toggled between worrying about Zach and fretting over Celeste.

Was Zach warm and dry and somewhere safe? Had he found a place to stay for the night? She'd given Zach a few suggestions, including Ledgewood, where Celeste had ended up renting, but low-rent apartments were few and far between in this neck of the woods. And with a job description that included wielding a toilet brush, Katherine couldn't exactly pay him top dollar without arousing—or confirming—his suspicions about her.

Her strong suspicions she couldn't confirm, either.

She wondered how long he'd remain at Lamontagne's if she didn't fess up and give him what he seemed to be looking for. She agonized over him leaving. She knew if Zach left, that would be it. Life sometimes gave you second chances, but third chances were as unlikely as a pregnancy had been after she and Barry had decided to halt the fertility treatments and go it alone. The decision to do nothing was a decision nonetheless.

Along those lines, last night Katherine had worried about whether Celeste might've skipped dinner. As soon as Celeste walked through the door this morning, Katherine had reminded her about the importance of eating breakfast.

Katherine didn't pretend to understand Celeste's eating disorder. When Katherine was hungry, she ate. When she was full, she stopped . . . usually. But Katherine had been married to a shrink long enough to understand the way thoughts—insidious thoughts—could grow inside you. These wrong opinions, Barry had told her, festered and became your truth. The story you told yourself. She understood how these damning thoughts might have originated in your childhood. How even the smallest of acts—from the way you took your time washing a Pyrex dish, turned the pages of your dog-eared copy of
That Was Then, This Is Now,
even peeled open a bag of Lay's potato chips—could inspire a barrage of insults, questions with no right answers.

But a whole impenetrable universe wedged between understanding and soul-deep believing.

Most likely the negative thoughts were wrong, but what if they weren't?

A rap sounded through the rain racket and turned her toward the door. A face peered through the glass.

Katherine stared at the face. The face stared back. Katherine's brain scrambled to unite the features with a name. Then the puzzle pieces clicked.

“Oh, my gosh!” Katherine fumbled with the lock and opened the door.

Look what the rain dragged in,
Katherine thought but wouldn't dare utter.

Mrs. Jenkins stepped into the café, wearing her usual beige trench coat but, on this day of days, sans the telling plastic bonnet. Courtesy of the rain, her gray hair hung straight to her shoulders, not a pin curl in sight. Soaked through, her hair appeared more brunette than gray. Even her face looked different. The snap of cold water tightened the pores and pinked cheeks, a trick Katherine's older sister had taught her.

Dare Katherine even think it? Mrs. Jenkins looked younger.

Celeste came out of the kitchen and refilled her coffee cup. Then she did a double take. Bemusement washed across her features before she hid her smile behind her coffee cup, her wide gaze peeking above the lid.

“Good morning, Mrs. Jenkins,” Katherine said. “What can I help you with today? Can I—may I take your coat?” Katherine didn't usually take customers' coats, but the woman was dripping on the floor, standing in one place, making a puddle. Katherine had the urge to grab a hand towel from the back room and dry the woman's hair, squeeze out the sodden ends.

“There is something you can help me with.” Mrs. Jenkins strode toward the bakery cases, as though she usually visited the shop half an hour before Lamontagne's opened for business. As though today weren't even Thursday.

Mrs. Jenkins groomed her shih tzu, Annabella, on Sunday after church, delivered Meals on Wheels on Mondays, visited her widowed sister, Mrs. Something or Other, in Bath on Thursdays. She picked up her muffin order on Wednesdays and Fridays. Never on a Thursday.

Celeste scooted behind the counter and set her coffee beside the register.

In the last twenty years, Mrs. Jenkins had deviated from neither her schedule nor her muffin order.

Mrs. Jenkins turned to Katherine. “Those blueberry muffins I purchased yesterday—”

The woman's eyes went half-mast, her hand stroked the length of her sleeve, her shoulders rose, her head canted to the side, and her lips curled into a sleepy grin reminiscent of Meg Ryan in
When Harry Met Sally
. The famous faked orgasm deli scene.

Only Mrs. Jenkins looked as though she were about to hit a high note for real.

Then she righted her head, opened her eyes, and straightened her shoulders. “Luscious,” she said, and her eyes blinked twice, as though she was as surprised by her word choice as Katherine.

“I—I'm so pleased,” Katherine said.

Celeste slid a white bakery box out from under the counter, assuming the sale, the way Katherine had taught her. To the untrained eye, Celeste's expression didn't change. But Katherine read
I told you so
in the way she straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and sniffed the air.

“Whatever did you put in those muffins?” Mrs. Jenkins asked Katherine.

“Oh, I've no idea,” Katherine said. “They're Celeste's recipe.”

“Celeste?”

“It's a secret.” Celeste swiped a sheet of bakery tissue. “Your usual order, Mrs. Jenkins? Two blueberry, two corn, and two lemon poppy seed?”

Mrs. Jenkins shook her head. “Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like something different. How about”—she bit her lip, narrowed her gaze—“four blueberry muffins, one corn, and one lemon poppy seed?”

“Four blueberry muffins it is.” Celeste scooped muffins into the box. Then she lifted the lid to close—

“Wait.” Mrs. Jenkins bit her bottom lip. She leaned over the muffins and inhaled deeply, audibly.

When Mrs. Jenkins stepped back, Celeste tied up the box and set the muffins in Mrs. Jenkins's outstretched hands. Her gaze slid from Celeste to the bakery box, as though she'd woken from a sultry dream to find herself in a room full of strangers. “Well, you two have a nice day.” She swung her head. Water droplets flung from the ends of her hair and splattered the bakery case.

The door jingled, and Zach stepped into the café, as wet as Mrs. Jenkins but none too pleased about it. He held the door for Mrs. Jenkins. “Why, thank you.” Then—if Katherine could trust her eyes—she could've sworn she saw her most conservative customer check out the back of Zach's jeans before exiting Lamontagne's.

“Morning, Kath-ther-ine,” Zach said, using the same three-syllable pronunciation as yesterday. “Celeste,” he said, pausing on his way into the kitchen. Nothing unusual about the way he pronounced her name. If anything, the word tumbled from his lips, either an afterthought or trying to resemble one. But it was the way he held her gaze a second too long, the way he pressed his lips into a quarter grin, the way Celeste mirrored his expression. Infused with meaning.

Katherine had been around long enough to recognize the day after a hookup's wordless lingo. And, heaven help her, but if she wasn't mistaken, she'd both given and received that same laden look from Adam.

The skin beneath Celeste's eyes glowed faintly mauve. Not as raw looking as yesterday, but she still moved slower than usual, and she was working on her third cup of coffee.

Zach dashed into the kitchen. The door to the employee bathroom closed with a telling whine, and water ran through the pipes.

“Sleep okay last night at your new place?” Katherine asked.

“Decent,” Celeste said. Zach came out of the kitchen with his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, tying an apron around his waist and somehow looking fresher than when he'd entered. “What's up first, boss?” he asked Katherine.

Again that look between Celeste and Zach, thick as the bread aroma filling Katherine's lungs and just as evocative of shared warmth. Celeste picked something from Zach's collar, held up a bit of yellow fluff. “Don't let this drop into the pastry. We'd have to charge extra.”

Zach grinned, snatched the lint from Celeste's fingers, and tucked the fluff into the pocket of his jeans. “Your blanket was warmer than it looked.”

Celeste's
blanket?

Katherine knew none of the rumors from years ago about Celeste were true. She'd seen firsthand the price Celeste had paid, in pounds, at the hands of her high school boyfriend's false claims she was promiscuous. In the past four years, Celeste had dated. Of course she'd dated, but on that subject Celeste rivaled Katherine's ability to keep her mouth shut.

The oven timer dinged three steady beeps. “Rye, sourdough, and baguettes,” Katherine said. “Ready to rack and roll?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Zach touched two fingers to his forehead and ducked back into the kitchen. Half a dozen racks of bread would keep Zach busy for a while. Had he kept Celeste busy last night?

“I suggested Ledgewood to Zach. Did you happen to see him there after work?”

“He was there,” Celeste said, too offhand to be meaningless. “So . . . Mrs. Jenkins . . .”—Celeste perfectly replicated the tilt of the woman's head, her muffin happy dance—“seems to have enjoyed my blueberry muffins. She kind of scared me. For a second there, I thought she was going to launch into a striptease. I mean, what do you suppose she's wearing beneath that trench coat? Maybe she's a stripper over at The Gentleman's Club? A throwback to the olden days, heavy on the tease, light on the strip? Can you imagine?”

“I'd rather not.” Katherine barked out the laugh she'd been holding back since the original Mrs. Jenkins performance.

Celeste only grinned. “What did you think of the muffins?”

“Oh, Celeste, I apologize.” After Katherine had offered the job to Zach, she'd suggested he have something to eat, if he was hungry and while he had the chance. That something had ended up being the muffin intended for Katherine. “I haven't tried one yet.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

“Apparently, not to you.”

How could Katherine argue with such an assertion? She could tell Celeste she mattered to her, that she was more important than a recipe, good or bad. Katherine could offer the truth of having been distracted yesterday by Celeste's surprise return and hiring Zach. She could admit that Celeste's recipes were often good, sometimes amazing. At the most, she could admit defeat and tell Celeste she'd been right to change up a recipe, Katherine's mentor Hazel May's recipe. The recipe that had served the town since before Celeste was born.

Whatever Katherine said would be wrong.

All these years later, Katherine could still hear her father's words. The tone scraped across her nerves and sucked the spit from her throat.

In the end, it hadn't mattered that she'd shielded her mother from the worst of her father's drunken tirades. That she'd given half of her salary to her father. That despite the saying about sticks and stone and words not hurting you, she knew differently. The sharp point of a carefully selected insult sliced beneath your skin and stripped you bare.

The best defense? Keeping your damn mouth shut.

Katherine had long ago given up wondering what had been going on in her father's head, but with Celeste she came closer to understanding. Words were cheap. Celeste wanted proof.

Katherine swiped a blueberry muffin from the bakery case and, before Celeste could say another word, Katherine took a bite. Then, like a sommelier, she focused on the notes of flavor—sweet butter and tart blueberries and a surprising, enlivening zest of lemon. The texture was at once richly satisfying yet light enough to gobble. No wonder Zach had eaten two. No wonder Mrs. Jenkins had adapted. No wonder Celeste had taken offense.