The Sweetness of Forgetting (4 page)

I always used to think she was heartless, even though I admit now that I’d looked forward to those brief periods of time between boyfriends, when I’d have my mom to myself for a few weeks. Now I wish I’d understood sooner, in time to discuss it with her.
I finally get it, Mom
.
If you don’t let them in, if you don’t really love them in the first place, they can’t hurt you when they leave.
But like so many other things in my life, it’s too late for that.

By the time I shower, washing the flour and sugar out of my hair and off my skin, it’s a few minutes before seven. I know I should probably call Annie at Rob’s and apologize for the way we left things earlier, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Besides, she’s probably doing something fun with him, and my call would only ruin it for her. Regardless of how I feel about Rob, I have to admit that he’s good with Annie most of the time. He seems to get through to her in a way I haven’t been able to in a long time. I hate that watching them laughing conspiratorially with each other sometimes makes me jealous first, happy for Annie second. It’s like they’re forming a new family portrait, and it no longer includes me.

After throwing on a gray cable-knit sweater and slim black jeans, I stare at myself in the mirror as I brush out my shoulder-length
dark brown waves, which, blissfully, haven’t started to turn gray yet, although they soon will if Annie keeps up this behavior. I search my own face for Annie’s features, but as usual, I come up empty. Oddly, she doesn’t look a thing like Rob or me, which led him to ask me once, when she was three, “Are you absolutely sure she’s mine, Hope?” His words had cut me to the core. “Of course,” I’d whispered, tears in my eyes, and he’d left it at that. Unless you counted her skin, which tanned evenly and beautifully, just like Rob’s, there was virtually nothing of her tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed father in her.

I examine my features as I put on a coat of nude lipstick and swipe some mascara onto my pale lashes. While Annie’s eyes are an uneven gray, just like Mamie’s, mine are an unusual sea green flecked with gold. When I was younger, Mamie used to tell me that her looks—everything but the eyes—had skipped a generation and settled on me. While my mother’s dark brown, straight hair and brown eyes made her resemble my grandfather, I look like a near carbon copy of some of the old photos I’ve seen of Mamie. Her eyes, I used to think, were always sad in old photos, and now that mine carry in them the weight of living, we look more alike than ever. My sharply bowed lips—“like an angel’s harp,” as Mamie used to say—are just like hers were in her younger days, and somehow, I’m fortunate enough to have inherited her milky complexion, although in the last year, I’ve developed an unfamiliar vertical line between my eyebrows that makes me look eternally concerned. Then again, these days, I
am
eternally concerned.

The doorbell rings, startling me, and I run my brush through my hair once more, then, on second thought, I run a hand through it to mess it up again. I don’t want to look like I’ve made an effort tonight. I don’t want Matt to think this is going anywhere.

A moment later, I open the front door, and when Matt leans in to kiss me, I turn slightly so that his lips land on my right cheek. I can smell the cologne on his neck, musky and dark. He’s dressed
in crisp khakis, a pale blue button-down with an expensive-looking insignia I don’t recognize, and slick brown loafers.

“I can go change,” I say. I feel suddenly dowdy, plain.

He looks me up and down and shrugs. “You look pretty in that sweater,” he says. “You’re fine as you are.”

He takes me to Fratanelli’s, an upscale Italian place on the marsh. I try to ignore it when the maître d’ gives my outfit a not-so-subtle once-over before leading us to a candlelit table by the window.

“This is too nice, Matt,” I say once we’re alone. I glance out the window into the darkness, and as I do, I catch our reflection in the glass. We look like a couple, a nice one, and that thought makes me look quickly away.

“I know you like this place,” Matt says. “Remember? It’s where we went before senior prom.”

I laugh and shake my head. “I’d forgotten.” I’ve forgotten lots of things, actually. I’ve tried for a long time to outrun the past, but what does it say about me that nearly twenty years later, I’m sitting in the same dining room with the same guy? Apparently, one’s history can only vanish for so long. I shake the thought off and look at Matt. “You said you wanted to talk about something.”

He looks down at his menu. “Let’s order first.”

We choose our meals in silence; Matt picks the lobster, and I choose the spaghetti Bolognese, the least expensive item on the menu. Later, I’ll offer to pay for my own dinner, and if Matt refuses, I don’t want to cost him a fortune. I don’t want to feel obligated to him. After we’ve ordered, Matt takes a deep breath and looks at me. He’s about to speak, but I cut him off before he can embarrass himself.

“Matt, you know I think the world of you,” I begin.

“Hope—” He cuts me off, but I hold up a hand.

“Let me finish,” I blurt out, gaining speed as I go. “I know we have so much in common, and of course we have all this history together, which means a lot to me, but what I was trying to
tell you this afternoon was that I don’t think I’m ready to date anyone right now. I don’t think I will be until Annie goes off to college, and that’s a really long time from now.”

“Hope—”

I ignore him, because I need to get the words out. “Matt, it’s not you; I swear. But for now, if we could just be friends, that would be so much better, I think. I don’t know what will happen down the line, but right now, Annie needs me focused on her, and—”

“Hope, this isn’t about me and you,” Matt interrupts. “This is about the bakery, and your loan. Would you let me talk?”

I stare at him as the waiter brings us a basket of bread and a little plate of olive oil. Red wine is poured for each of us—an expensive cabernet Matt selected without consulting me—and then the waiter disappears and Matt and I are alone again.

“What about my bakery?” I ask slowly.

“I have some bad news,” he says. He avoids my gaze, swirls a piece of bread in the olive oil, and takes a bite.

“Okay . . .” I prompt. It feels as if all the air is vanishing from the room.

“Your loan,” he says, his mouth full. “The bank is calling it in.”

My heart stops. “What?” I stare at him. “Since when?”

Matt looks down. “Since yesterday. Hope, you’ve been late on several payments, and with the market as it is, the bank has been forced to call in a number of loans with irregular payment records. I’m afraid yours was one of them.”

I take a deep breath. This can’t be happening. “But I’ve made every payment this year so far. Yeah, I had some rough months a few years ago when the economy collapsed, but we’re a tourist town.”

“I know.”

“Who didn’t have problems then?”

“A lot of people did,” Matt agrees. “Unfortunately, you were among them. And with your credit score . . .”

I close my eyes for a moment. I don’t even want to think about my credit score. It wasn’t exactly helped by my divorce, taking over my mother’s mortgage payment after her death, or juggling a large revolving balance between several credit cards just to keep the bakery stocked.

“What can I do to fix this?” I finally ask.

“Not a lot, I’m afraid,” Matt says. “You can try other lenders, of course, but the market’s tough right now. I can guarantee that you won’t get anywhere with another bank. And with your payment history and the fact that a Bingham’s just opened down the street . . .”

“Bingham’s,” I mutter. “Of course.” They’ve been the bane of my existence for the past year. A small New England doughnut chain based in Rhode Island, they’ve been steadily expanding across the region in an attempt to go head-to-head with Dunkin’ Donuts. They opened their sixteenth regional location a half mile from my bakery nine months ago, just when I was climbing out of the financial hole I’d found myself in after the recession.

It was a storm I could have weathered if not for the financial impact of the divorce. But now I’m hanging on for dear life, and Matt knows it; all my loans are with his bank.

“Listen, there’s one option I can think of for you,” Matt says. He takes a long sip of his wine and leans forward. “There are a few investors I work with in New York. They’re always looking for small businesses to . . . help out. I can call in a favor.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. I’m not sure I like the idea of having strangers invest in what has always been a family business. Nor do I like the thought of Matt calling in favors on my behalf. But I’m also aware that the alternative may be losing the bakery altogether. “How would that work, exactly?”

“They’d basically buy you out,” he says. “So they’d assume the loan with the bank. You’d get a cash payout, enough to pay off some of the bills you’re facing right now. And you’d stay on
to manage the bakery and run the day-to-day operations.
If
they go for it.”

I stare at him. “You’re telling me that my only option is to entirely sell my family’s bakery to some stranger?”

Matt shrugs. “I know it’s not ideal. But it would solve your financial problems in the short term. And with some luck, I could persuade them to let you stay on as the bakery’s manager.”

“But it’s my family’s bakery,” I say in a small voice, aware that I’m repeating myself.

Matt looks away. “Hope, I don’t know what else to tell you. This is pretty much your last option unless you have a half million dollars lying around. And with the debt you’re in, it’s not like you can just pick up and start over in another location.”

I can’t formulate words. After a moment, Matt jumps back in and adds, “Look, these are good people. I’ve known them for a while. They’ll do right by you. At least you won’t wind up closed.”

I feel like Matt has just dropped a grenade in my lap, pulled the pin, and then offered to clean up the carnage, all with a smile on his face. “I need to think about this,” I say dully.

“Hope,” Matt says. He pushes his wineglass aside and reaches across the table. He folds his hands around my much smaller ones in a gesture I know is supposed to tell me I’m safe. “We’ll figure it out, okay? I’ll help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” I mumble. He looks wounded, and I feel terrible, so I don’t pull my hands away. I know he’s just trying to be a nice guy. The thing is, it feels like charity. And I don’t need charity. I may sink or I may swim, but I’d at least like to do it on my own.

Before either of us can say anything else, I hear my phone ringing from inside my purse. Embarrassed, I pull my hands away and grab for it. I hadn’t meant to leave the ringer on. I can see the maître d’ glaring at me from across the restaurant as I answer.

“Mom?” It’s Annie, and she sounds upset.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I ask, already half standing up, ready to go to her rescue, wherever she is.

“Where are you?”

“I’m out at dinner, Annie,” I say. I avoid mentioning Matt, lest she think it’s a date. “Where are you? Aren’t you at your dad’s?”

“Dad had to go meet a client,” she mumbles. “So he dropped me back at your house. And the dishwasher is, like, totally broken.”

I close my eyes. I’d filled it with detergent and turned it on a half hour before Matt got there, assuming that the cycle would be nearly over by the time I left. “What happened?”

“I didn’t do it,” Annie says quickly. “But there’s, like, water all over the floor. I mean like lots of inches. Like a flood or something.”

My heart drops. A pipe must have burst. I can’t even imagine how much it will cost to fix, or how much damage has been done to my old hardwood floors. “Okay,” I say in an even tone. “Thanks for letting me know, honey. I’ll be right home.”

“But how can I stop the water?” she asks. “It’s, like, still totally flowing. The whole house is going to be flooded.”

I realize I have no idea how to shut off the water to the kitchen. “Let me try to figure it out, okay? I’ll call you back. I’m on my way home.”

“Whatever,” Annie says, and hangs up on me.

I tell Matt what happened, and he sighs and summons the waiter to ask for our meals to be boxed up.

“I’m sorry,” I say as we hurry outside to the car five minutes later. “My life is one disaster after another lately.”

Matt just shakes his head. “Things happen,” he says tightly. It’s not until we’re driving back toward my house that he speaks again. “You can’t put this business thing off, Hope,” he says. “Or it’s all going to go away. Everything your family’s worked for.”

I don’t reply, both because I know he’s right and because I can’t deal with it right now. Instead, I ask him whether he knows
how to turn off the water supply to the kitchen, but he says he doesn’t, so we ride in silence the remainder of the way home.

“Whose Jeep is that?” Matt asks as he pulls up in front of my house. “There’s no room for me to park in your driveway.”

“Gavin’s,” I say softly. His familiar dusty-blue Wrangler is parked beside my old Corolla. My heart sinks.

“Gavin Keyes?” Matt says. “The handyman? What’s he doing here?”

“Annie must have called him,” I say through gritted teeth. My daughter doesn’t know that I still haven’t paid Gavin in full for the work he did around my house over the summer. Not even close. She doesn’t know that one July afternoon on the porch with him, after getting a statement from the bank, I’d broken down in embarrassing tears, and that a month later, when he’d finished his repairs around my house, he’d insisted on letting me pay him in free pastries and coffee from the bakery for the time being. Annie doesn’t know that he’s the only person in town other than Matt who knows what a mess my life is, or that because of that, he’s the last person in the world I want to see right now.

I walk inside, with Matt a few steps behind, carrying my meal from Fratanelli’s. In the kitchen, I find Annie with a stack of towels and Gavin bent over with his head under my sink. I blink when I realize my eyes have gone directly to the thigh of his jeans, to see whether the hole I’d noticed this morning is still there. It is, of course.