Free Finding Colin Firth: A Novel by Mia March

daughter.
    Times like this, she wondered if coming back to Boothbay Harbor was a mistake, after all. If she’d ever really settle in and face anything of her past. Boothbay Harbor still didn’t feel like home again, even a year later. And though she’d made some friends, Shelley, of course, right over there at table nineteen, explaining the difference between a Western omelet and a country omelet, and had a lot of acquaintances, especially her clients, who seemed to rely on her as if she were a fortune-teller, Veronica felt . . . lonely. Lonely for something she wasn’t evensure of. Was it love? A big group of close girlfriends, something Veronica had never had except for her seven months at Hope Home? Something was missing, that was all she knew.
    People will come and go from your life for all kinds of acceptable and crappy reasons , her grandmother had always said in her saucy, straightforward style. So you’ve got to be your own best friend, know who you are, and never let anyone tell you you’re something you know you’re not .
    Veronica had been thirteen when her grandmother had said all that, over a girl who’d told Veronica she couldn’t be her friend anymore because her mother thought Veronica looked “too grown-up.” She’d worn a C-cup bra in eighth grade, had a thin, curvy figure, and no matter how conservatively she’d dressed, the boys had come chasing. In ninth grade, girls—including Penelope—had started rumors about Veronica “sleeping around” when she hadn’t so much as French-kissed a boy. The few boys she’d dated had made up stories about how far they’d gone, so Veronica had broken up with them. By sixteen, when she’d started dating Timothy Macintosh, she’d had a reputation when she hadn’t ever let a boy see her bra. Timothy had believed her too, said he thought she was beautiful and interesting and would never say a word about her to his friends. Girls had always kept their distance from her, so Timothy had become her first real best friend. Until a very cold April afternoon when she’d told him she was pregnant.
    Bringing herself back to that day sent a fresh stab of pain to her chest. Maybe it would always hurt, even thirty years from now. Stop thinking about him, she ordered herself, calling out Penelope Von Blun’s and her mother’s order at the open window to the kitchen, which got an extended eye roll from Joe,the cook. She wished she could stop. But in the first few weeks of her return to Boothbay Harbor, she’d actually seen Timothy, from a distance in the supermarket, and she’d been unable to sleep well ever since, memories waking her up. She’d been so stunned to see him that she’d jumped back behind a display of bananas. She hadn’t been sure, at first, if it was really him, but then she heard his laughter as he listened to something the woman with him had said. Veronica hadn’t gotten a look at her, just the back of her head—a precisely cut bob—and an amazing figure. Timothy’s arm had been around her, and he turned to look at something, and there was that profile, the strong, straight Roman nose. Veronica had almost started hyperventilating. It had been so unexpected. She didn’t think he lived in town; she’d looked him up just so she’d know if she had to accept that she’d run into him in town, but there was no listing for him, and she hadn’t seen him before or since that one time, so perhaps he was visiting relatives.
    “Oh. My. God,” Shelley said as she collected the discarded Sunday Boothbay Regional Gazette from one of her tables.
    “What, Shel?” Veronica asked, coming over.
    Shelley, a petite redhead in her late thirties like Veronica, with catlike amber-hazel eyes, was staring at a page of the newspaper. She held up the front section of the Life & People section. “This.”
    One glance at the front page and Veronica repeated Shelley’s “Oh. My. God.” A photo of Colin Firth, looking absolutely gorgeous in a tux, next to