A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  “Katherine told me you’ve worked for her for the past six years.”

  “Yup, with the exception of two months at culinary school in New York.” Celeste’s stomach dropped, a lesser cousin to the falling sensation of hypnagogia. She shook her head. “I’ve been nowhere else.”

  “So why are you still working for Katherine?”

  The events of the last two days rushed through Celeste’s chest and backed up in her throat.

  “I mean you can bake,” Zach said. “You obviously know what you’re doing in the kitchen. And I saw how you and Katherine butt heads. . . .”

  Celeste had gone to Culinary America to get more varied experience, not just with baking but also with bakery management. She needed to see the world outside of Hidden Harbor. Wasn’t that what Katherine had told her months ago? “I’m doing this for your own good,” she’d said, as though Katherine were her mother, and she the baby bird reluctant to leave the nest.

  Yet here she was, nesting once again in Hidden Harbor.

  “I didn’t finish my degree at Culinary America. I barely started. I wanted to, but then stuff happened,” she said, hating the defeated tone of her voice. She wasn’t a quitter. And yet she’d quit.

  Zach slid his hand a few inches along the concrete toward Celeste, and then he pulled it back, as though his instinct were to touch her hand in solidarity, rub her back in sympathy.

  Early in their friendship, Matt had done that, the lightly placed touch, but without the retreat. Never a retreat. God freaking forbid he should retreat.

  She’d seen Matt scorch the top of a crème brûlée and then, rather than start over, peel off the leathered skin and marry two ramekins. He’d undercooked German chocolate cake and tried passing the raw batter off as filling. Concealed a sunken in the middle vanilla cake beneath two extra bowls of buttercream. Instead of owing up to and learning from his mistakes, he covered them up, a master of the effed-up follow-through.

  The cement step numbed her flesh, but not enough. Hardly enough. She still felt raw, roughed. Her heartbeat pulsed like a ragged thing between her legs, evidence of the mistake she couldn’t ignore. She shifted a couple of inches farther from Zach.

  She hadn’t signed up for Matt’s bullshit bragging. Whatever had happened between them should’ve remained private.

  “I didn’t finish my degrees, either. Stuff has a way of happening,” Zach said, his voice world-weary. Then, “Who am I kidding? I didn’t finish because I didn’t see the point.”

  Celeste turned her gaze from Zach to the parking lot. Zach’s car, Matilda, looked as forlorn as her owner, in need of a good night’s sleep.

  Or maybe Celeste was projecting.

  “So, Celeste,” Zach said. “Is there a campground around here?”

  “Hermit Island’s down the road. Too bad it closed Labor Day.”

  “Story of my life. A day late and a dollar short.” Zach got up and brushed off the back of his jeans. “Well, it’s been real, Celeste Barnes. I’d better find a place for me and Matilda.”

  If Zach managed to find a bed-and-breakfast vacancy in Phippsburg, he’d need to turn out his pockets before turning in for the night. Unless he happened upon an apartment in Hidden Harbor or Phippsburg where the building manager kept long hours, Zach would end up driving all the way to Bath and staying at the dreaded Holiday Inn.

  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.

  Stop thinking about food.

  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.

  Celeste, you need a belly button ring like you need another hole in your head.

  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.

  Celeste, you need a boyfriend like you need another hole in your head.

  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.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ever 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.