Finding Colin Firth: A Novel by Mia March Page A

it withhim, but every time she reached for her phone she stopped herself. The conversation would move from his jubilantly shouting “I’m going to be a father!” to his talking about the move to Westchester, to the Plan—for Gemma to be a stay-at-home mother and work part-time, if she “insisted,” at the free weekly newspaper. The other night, June had said that sounded pretty darn good to her, from her perspective, and considering June had been a twenty-one-year-old college student who hadn’t been able to locate the father of her baby, Gemma understood what June had meant. Gemma was lucky. She did have a doting husband. Too doting, maybe, but she was blessed. Still, was it wrong to want the career that meant so much to her? If she had to be pregnant now, couldn’t she have both? A baby and a career?
    A month ago, she’d been on assignment in a Brooklyn homeless shelter, sitting on a cot next to a single mother who had nowhere to go, no skills, and no way to work without leaving her two-year-old, who lay sleeping on the cot—alone. Gemma had been so touched by her story that she’d gotten the woman an interview at a day care center to be an aide, but the job had gone to someone else. Twenty-plus calls to day care centers later between the two of them, the woman had gotten herself hired and a slot for her daughter. Within two weeks, she’d be able to leave the shelter for her own small apartment. Gemma’s feature story on three women at the shelter had elicited over a thousand comments on the New York Weekly website—some blasting her and the women for their circumstances, others full of empathy with talk of vicious cycles. This was what Gemma wanted to do—talk to people, tell their stories, some heartbreaking, some controversial, some just stories of everyday folks going through struggles like so many. She wanted to inform, start conversations.Alexander had once said he thought Gemma’s drive to be a human interest reporter stemmed from her wanting people to be heard the way she herself hadn’t felt heard as a child. Maybe so. Sometimes she thought Alexander understood her so well. Other times . . .
    Perhaps she’d call him tonight and tell him the news. After her meeting with Claire Lomax at the Boothbay Regional Gazette. Gemma had gotten damned lucky by running into Claire Saturday at their mutual friend’s wedding. As summer friends, the teenage Claire and Gemma would play reporter, interviewing people on the street and jotting down their answers in notebooks. Claire had always had a knack for coming up with the assignments; it was no surprise she was a big editor now at the well-read regional paper.
    At their friend’s wedding reception, Claire had hugged Gemma as though they were close as ever, and they headed over to a table with their mini crab cakes and Stilton-stuffed grapes to catch up on their lives; they’d last seen each other at June’s aunt’s funeral two years ago. Gemma had been honest when she caught up with her friend, which had gotten Gemma congratulations on the pregnancy, sympathy about her issues with her husband and losing her beloved job, and an invitation to stop in this morning to discuss putting Gemma to work for the week. Claire, in a long-term relationship, related to everything Gemma had told her. Claire would give her a great assignment, a story she could put together in a few days, and just having the assignment, reporting from the field, researching, Gemma would feel stronger, feel like herself again. She’d be better equipped to make her case to Alexander when he started in about how it was a blessing in disguise that she’d been laid off.
    As Gemma passed a shop called the Italian Bakery, she had a sudden craving for cannoli. She peered in the window at a plate lined with the delectable pastry. Just one, she told herself. She headed in and left with four, one for now, one for June, if she saw her later, one for Isabel at the inn, and one for tonight, when