The Sweetness of Forgetting (12 page)

I laugh. “Sure. Then I’ll go shopping in Milan. And skiing in the Swiss Alps. Then maybe I’ll take a gondola around Venice.”

Annie narrows her eyes. “You
have
to go to Paris.”

I realize she’s serious. “Honey,” I say gently, “that’s just not practical. I’m the only one here to run the bakery.”

“So close it for a few days. Or I’ll help out after school.”

“Sweetheart, that’s not going to work.” I think about how close I am to losing everything.

“But Mom!”

“Annie, who’s to say that Mamie will even remember the conversation later?”

“That’s why you
have
to go!” Annie says. “Didn’t you see how important it was to her? She wants you to find out what happened to those people! You can’t just let her down!”

I sigh. I’d thought that Annie understood this better, that she realized how often her great-grandmother speaks nonsense. “Annie—” I begin.

But she cuts me off. “What if this is her last chance? What if this is our last chance to help her?”

I shrug. I don’t know what to say. I can’t possibly explain to her that we’re teetering on the edge.

When I’m silent for a moment, Annie seems to make up her mind without me. “I hate you,” she hisses. Then she turns on her heels and stalks out of the kitchen, her duffel bag bobbing behind her. A few seconds later, I hear the front door slam. I take a deep breath and follow her outside, steeling myself for a silent drive to her father’s.

The next morning, after a mostly sleepless night, I’m at the bakery alone, sliding a tray of giant sugar cookies into the oven, when there’s a rattling knock on the glass-paned front door. I put the oven mitts on the counter, set the timer on the oven, dust off my hands on my apron, and check my watch: 5:35 a.m. Twenty-five minutes before I open.

As I cross from the kitchen to the sales floor, through the swinging, slatted door, I see Matt, his hand shading his eyes as he presses his face against the glass and peers in. He sees me and backs up quickly, then waves casually as if he hasn’t just left his nose print on my window.

“Matt, we’re not open yet,” I say after I’ve turned the three locks and cracked open the front door. “I mean, you’re welcome to come in and wait, but the coffee’s not on yet, and—”

“No, no, I’m not here for coffee,” Matt says. He pauses and adds, “But if you get some going, I’ll take a cup.”

“Oh,” I say, checking my watch again. “Yeah, okay.” It shouldn’t take more than two minutes to grind the beans, scoop them into the coffeemaker, and push the Brew button. I hurry to do that, mentally ticking off all the other things I need to do before we open, as Matt follows me inside and pulls the door closed behind him.

“Hope, I came over to ask what you’re going to do,” Matt says while the coffeemaker gurgles and spits its first sizzling drops into the pot.

For an instant, I wonder how he knows about what Mamie said, but then I realize he’s talking about the bakery and the fact that the bank is apparently ready to begin proceedings to take it away from me. My heart sinks.

“I don’t know, Matt,” I say stiffly without turning around. I pretend I’m busy with the coffee preparation. “I haven’t had a chance to work through things yet.”

In other words, I’m in denial. That’s my general approach when things are going wrong; I simply bury my head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass. Sometimes it does. Most of the time, I only wind up with sand in my eyes.

“Hope—” Matt begins.

I sigh and shake my head. “Look, Matt, if you’ve come here to try to persuade me to sell to these investors of yours, I’ve already told you that I don’t know what to do yet, and I’m not ready to—”

He cuts me off. “You’re running out of time,” he says firmly. “We need to talk about this.”

Finally, I turn. He’s standing at the counter, leaning forward. “Okay,” I say. My chest feels tight.

He pauses and picks an invisible speck from his lapel. He clears his throat. The smell of coffee is wafting through the air now, and because he’s making me nervous, I turn and busy myself with pouring him a cup before the maker has finished. I stir in his cream and sugar, and he takes the cup from me with a nod.

“I want to try to persuade the investors to make you a partner,” he finally blurts out. “
If
they’ll take the bakery on, which we still don’t know. They need to come in, view your operations, and run your numbers. But I’m talking you up.”

“A partner?” I ask. I decide not to mention how much it hurts to have it presented to me like a gift that I could have a share in my own family’s business. “Does that mean I’d have to come up with the money to cover a percentage of the purchase from the bank?”

“Yes and no,” he says.

“Because I don’t have it, Matt.”

“I know.”

I stare and wait for him to go on.

He clears his throat. “What if you borrowed some money from me?”

My eyes widen. “What?”

“It would be more of a business arrangement, Hope,” he says quickly. “I mean, I have the credit. So what if we went into this, say, seventy-five twenty-five. Seventy-five percent ownership for you. Twenty-five for me. And you just pay me what you can every month. We could keep a piece of the bakery in your family . . .”

“I can’t,” I say, before I’ve even had a chance to consider it. The invisible strings attached would strangle me. And as much as I hate the idea of strangers owning the majority of my bakery, it’s even worse to think of Matt having an ownership interest in it too. “Matt, it’s such a nice offer, but I can’t possibly—”

“Hope, I’m just asking you to consider it.” He’s speaking quickly. “It’s not a big deal. I have the money. I’ve been looking for something to invest in, and this place is an institution in this town. I know you’ll turn things around soon, and . . .”

His voice trails off, and he looks at me hopefully.

“Matt, that means a lot to me,” I say softly. “But I know what you’re doing.”

“What?” he asks.

“Charity,” I say. I take a deep breath. “You feel sorry for me. And I appreciate that, Matt, I really do. It’s just—I don’t need your pity.”

“But—” he begins, but I cut him off again.

“Look, I’m going to sink or swim on my own, okay?” I pause and swallow hard, trying to believe I’m doing the right thing. “And maybe I’ll sink. Maybe I’ll lose everything. Maybe the investors will decide this place isn’t worth it anyhow.” I take a deep breath. “But if that happens, maybe that’s what’s meant to be.”

His face falls. He taps his fingers on the counter a few times. “You know, Hope, you’re different,” he says finally.

“Different?”

“Than you used to be,” he says. “Back in high school, you wouldn’t let anything get you down. You always bounced back. That was one of my favorite things about you.”

I don’t say anything. There’s a lump in my throat.

“But now, you’re ready to give up,” he adds after a moment. He doesn’t meet my eye. “I just . . . I thought you would feel differently. It’s like you’re just letting life
happen
to you.”

I press my lips together. I know I shouldn’t care what Matt thinks, but the words still wound me, largely because I know he’s not trying to be cruel. He’s right; I
am
different than I used to be.

He regards me for a long moment and nods. “I think your mother would be disappointed.”

The words hurt, because they’re meant to. But at the same time, they help, because he’s dead wrong. My mother never cared about the bakery the way my grandmother did; she looked at it as a burden. She probably would have been happy to see it fail while she was still around, so that she could have washed her hands of it.

“Maybe, Matt,” I say.

He pulls out his wallet and takes out two dollar bills. He puts them on the counter.

I sigh. “Don’t be silly. The coffee’s on the house.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t need your charity, Hope,” he says. He half smiles at me. “Have a good one,” he adds. He grabs his coffee and strides quickly out the front door. As I watch the darkness wrap itself around his disappearing silhouette, I shiver.

Annie comes and goes that morning, and once again, she’s barely speaking to me, other than to ask tightly whether I’ve had a chance to look into booking flights to Paris. By eleven in the morning, the bakery is empty, and I’m staring out the front panes at the changing leaves of Main Street. There’s a breeze today, and every once in a while, oak leaves in fiery red or maple leaves in burnt orange waft by, reminding me of graceful birds.

At eleven thirty, with no customers, nothing left to do, and a batch of Star Pies in the oven, I log on to the old laptop
that I keep behind the register—I “borrow” WiFi from Jessica Gregory’s gift shop next door—and I slowly type in www.google.com. Once there, I pause. What am I looking for? I chew my lip for a moment and enter the first name on Mamie’s list.
Albert Picard.

A second later, the search results are up. There’s an airport in France named Albert-Picardie, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Mamie’s list. I read the Wikipedia entry, nonetheless, but it’s clear that this is something else altogether; it’s a regional airport that serves a community called Albert in the Picardie region of northern France. Dead end.

I click back and scan the other search results. There’s a Frank Albert Picard, but he’s an American attorney who was born and raised in Michigan and died in the early 1960s. That can’t be the person she’s looking for; he has no ties to Paris. A few other Albert Picards come up when I add the word
Paris
to my search string, but nothing seems to fit with the time Mamie lived in France.

I bite my bottom lip and clear the search field. I type in
White Pages, Paris,
and after a few click-throughs, I wind up on a page titled
Pages Blanches,
which asks for a
nom
and a
prénom
. I know from my limited high school French that this is surname and first name, so I type in
Picard
and
Albert,
and under the blank asking
Où?,
I enter
Paris.

One listing comes up, and my heart skips a beat. Will it really be this easy? I jot down the number, then I erase
Albert
and fill in the second name on Mamie’s list:
Cecile.
There are eight matches in Paris, including four people listed as
C. Picard.
I jot down those numbers too and repeat the search with the rest of the names.
Helene, Claude, Alain, David, Danielle.

I finish with a list of thirty-five numbers. I return to Google to figure out how to call France from the United States and jot down those instructions too; I work out the overseas number for the first Picard and reach for the phone.

I pause before I pick it up. I have no idea what international calls cost, because I’ve never had to make one before. But I’m sure it’s something just short of a fortune. I think about the check for a thousand dollars Mamie wrote to me and resolve to take the long-distance charges out of that and deposit the rest of the money back into her checking account. It’ll still be a lot cheaper than buying a ticket to Paris.

I glance at the door. Still no customers. The street outside is empty; there’s a storm brewing, and the sky is darkening, the wind picking up. I glance back at the oven. Thirty-six minutes left on the timer. The smell of cinnamon is wafting through the bakery as I breathe in deeply.

I dial the first number. There are a few clicks as the call connects, and then a pair of almost buzzerlike pulses. Someone picks up on the other end.

“Allo?”
a woman’s voice says.

It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t speak more than rudimentary French. “Um, hello,” I say nervously. “I’m looking for the relatives of someone named Albert Picard.”

There’s silence on the other end.

I search my memory desperately for the correct French words. “Um,
je chercher
Albert Picard,” I attempt, knowing that’s not quite right but hoping that it conveys my point.

“There is no Albert Picard here.” The woman speaks clear English with a heavy French accent.