The Sweetness of Forgetting (41 page)

Gavin nods and stares straight ahead. “I don’t want to pry,” he says. “I know you like to keep stuff to yourself. But I’m just saying I’m here if you want to talk about anything. I know how much the bakery means to you.”

I gaze out the window as we begin to pass through Fall River, which looks like an industrial ghost town in the morning mist.

“I’m about to lose it,” I say to Gavin after a while. “The bakery. That’s why Matt keeps coming by. There was a chance that
some investors were going to save the place, but I guess I screwed it up by going to Paris.”

“Is that what Matt said?”

I nod and look out the window again.

“That’s ridiculous,” Gavin says. “No legitimate investor would give up a promising business opportunity because someone has to leave for a few days due to a family emergency. If Matt told you that, he’s an idiot. Or he’s trying to guilt-trip you.”

“Why would he do that?”

Gavin shrugs. “Maybe he’s not such a great guy.”

“Maybe not,” I murmur. It seems that the men I’ve chosen to let into my life over the years all fall into that category.

“How do you feel about the possibility of losing the bakery?” Gavin asks after a while.

I think about this. “Like I’m a failure,” I reply.

“Hope, if you lose the bakery, it’s not because you’ve failed,” Gavin says. “You work harder than anyone I know. This isn’t a failure. It’s just the economy. That’s beyond your control.”

I shake my head. “The bakery’s been in my family for sixty years. My mother and my grandmother kept it afloat through lots of ups and downs. Then it gets passed on to me, and I destroy it.”

“You haven’t destroyed anything,” Gavin says.

I shake my head and look down at my lap. “I destroy everything.”

“That’s crazy, and you know it.” Gavin clears his throat. “So is this what you’ve always wanted to do? Run your family bakery?”

I laugh. “No. Not at all. I was planning to be an attorney. I was halfway through law school in Boston when I found out I was pregnant with Annie. So I left school, married Rob, and eventually moved back to the Cape.”

“Why did you drop out of law school?”

I shrug. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

Gavin nods and seems to consider this for a minute. “Would you go back?” he asks. “Do you still want to be a lawyer?”

I consider this. “I feel like a huge failure for dropping out,” I say. “But at the same time, I have this weird feeling that maybe I wasn’t really supposed to be a lawyer at all. Maybe I was supposed to run the bakery. I can’t imagine my life without it now, you know? Especially now that I know what it means to my family. Now that I know it’s basically all my grandmother brought with her from her past.”

“You know, I don’t think you’re going to lose the bakery,” Gavin says after a minute.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“Because I think that in life, things tend to come through when you most need them to.”

I look at him. “That’s it? Life works out the way it’s supposed to?”

Gavin laughs. “Okay, yeah, I sound like a Hallmark card.”

I’m silent for a moment. “Annie thinks you’re some kind of Mr. Fix-It of people,” I say in a small voice.

He laughs again. “Oh, does she?”

I glance sideways at him. “You know, you don’t have to fix me. Or save me. Or whatever.”

He looks at me and shakes his head. “I don’t think you need me to, Hope,” he says. “I think you’re underestimating your ability to save yourself.”

His words wash over me, and I stare out the window so that he can’t see my sudden, unexpected tears. Maybe this is what I needed all along. Not Matt’s money or his investors. Not someone to rescue me. Just someone who believes that I can do it on my own.

“Thanks,” I whisper, so softly that I’m not sure Gavin will hear me.

But he does. I feel his hand on my shoulder, and as I turn to face him, he squeezes once, gently, and then puts his hand back on the wheel. My skin tingles where he touched it.

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he says.

“I know,” I say. And for the first time, I really mean it.

Chapter
Twenty-four

W
e stop at an exit off I-95 in Connecticut so that we can fill up the gas tank, grab some breakfast, and use the bathroom. As I come out of McDonald’s, juggling two coffees and two orange juices on a tray as well as a bag full of various McMuffins, I glance across the street and notice a big, printed sign in the dim morning light, advertising a Bible study class called “Tracing the Old Testament Family Tree.” I’m about to look away, but then a familiar name catches my eye, and something suddenly slips into place in my mind. My jaw drops.

“What are you looking at?” Gavin asks. He screws the gas cap back on and joins me beside the car. He takes the McDonald’s drinks and bag from me and sets them on top of the car. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Look at that sign,” I say.

“‘Tracing the Old Testament Family Tree,’” he reads aloud. “‘From Abraham to Jacob to Joseph and beyond.’” He pauses. “Okay. So?”

“Joseph was the son of Jacob in the Bible, right?” I ask.

Gavin nods. “Yeah. Actually in the Torah too. And in the
Koran I think. I think all that stuff tracing back to Abraham in the Old Testament is the same in all three religions.”

“The three Abrahamic religions,” I murmur, thinking of Elida’s words. “Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.”

“Right,” Gavin says. He glances at the sign again, then down at me. “So what’s up, Hope? How come you look so spooked?”

“My mom’s name was Josephine,” I say softly. “Can that just be coincidence? That she’s named after the son of Jacob?”

Realization dawns on Gavin’s face. “In the stories, Joseph became the one to carry on his parents’ legacy. He had to be protected for that reason.” He pauses. “You’re saying you think your mom might have been Jacob’s daughter after all?”

I swallow hard and stare at the sign. Then I shake my head. “You know what? No, that’s crazy. It’s just a name. Besides, the years don’t add up. My mom was born in ’44, long after my grandmother last saw Jacob Levy. There’s no way.”

I glance up at Gavin, feeling silly, and I’m surprised to realize his face looks completely serious. “But what if you’re right?” he asks. “What if your mother was actually born a year earlier? What if your grandmother and grandfather bribed someone to falsify her birth certificate? That couldn’t have been uncommon in those days. It was during the war. Some low-level clerk could have easily changed the paperwork, destroyed the originals. Easy to do before things were computerized.”

“But why would my grandparents do that?”

“So that it looked like your grandfather was the father,” Gavin says. He’s speaking quickly now, his eyes shining. “So that your mom would never think to doubt it. So that your grandmother would never have to explain Jacob to anyone. You say they didn’t move to the Cape until your mother was five. But at that age, it would have been nearly impossible to tell if they’d cheated by a year, especially if they said she was just tall for her age. What if she was really six?”

I feel suddenly short of breath. “This can’t be possible,” I
whisper. “My mom even looked like my grandpa. Straight brown hair, brown eyes. Same kinds of expressions.”

“Brown hair and brown eyes are pretty common features,” Gavin points out. “And we don’t know what Jacob looked like anyhow. Right?”

“I guess,” I murmur.

“You have to admit, your mom being Jacob’s daughter would explain a lot. Like what happened to the baby. And why your grandmother moved on so quickly after losing Jacob.”

“But why
would
she move on so quickly?” I ask. I don’t understand that part.

“She must have believed that Jacob was dead already. Maybe your grandfather was a kind man offering her a chance to survive, and a chance to give her daughter a real life. And maybe she took that chance, because she believed it was the right thing to do.”

“Do you mean that she never really loved my grandfather?” I ask. It hurts my heart to think that. “That he was just the means to an end?”

“No, I bet she loved him,” Gavin says. “Maybe differently than Jacob. But he gave her and your mom a good life.”

“The kind of life Jacob would have wanted for them,” I say.

Gavin nods. “Yeah.”

“But if that’s true, what did my grandpa get?” I ask, suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. “A wife who never really loved him the way he deserved to beloved?”

“Maybe he knew all along that that’s what it would be,” Gavin says, “and he loved her enough that it didn’t matter. Maybe he hoped she’d come around. Maybe it was enough to have her there, to know he was protecting her, to be a father to her child.”

I look away. I wish I could ask my grandfather what he’d felt, how he’d rationalized it all, if Gavin was right. But he’s long gone. I wonder whether the answers and the secrets they’d kept would forever remain buried. I know they will if Mamie never
wakes up. In fact, even if she does awaken, there’s no guarantee she’ll remember anything.

“Do you think my mom ever knew?” I ask. “
If
this is true,” I’m quick to add.

“I would be willing to bet she didn’t,” Gavin says softly. “It sounds like maybe your grandmother just wanted to leave everything behind forever.”

As we get back into the car, I realize I’m crying. I’m not sure when I began, but the hole in my heart seems to keep growing bigger and bigger. Until recently, my grandmother had been merely a slightly sad woman who happened to hail from France and run a bakery. Now, as I peel back layer after layer of who she really was, I’m realizing that her sorrow must have gone far deeper than I’d ever comprehended. And she’d spent her lifetime pretending, wrapped up in secrets and lies.

I want now more than ever for her to wake up, so that I can tell her she’s not alone, and that I understand. I want to hear the story from her own lips, because at this point, so much of it is conjecture. I realize I no longer know where I came from. At all. I’ve never known my father’s side of the family—I don’t even know who my father is—and it’s turning out that everything I knew of my mother’s side was a lie.

“Are you okay?” Gavin asks softly. He hasn’t started the car yet; he’s just sitting there beside me, watching me cry.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I say after a pause.

He nods, seeming to understand this. “I do,” he says simply. “You’re Hope. That’s all that really matters.” And despite the awkwardness of the center console between us in the car, when he pulls me into his arms and holds me tight, it’s the most natural and comfortable thing in the world.

When he finally lets go, mumbling, “We should get on the road before it gets too much later,” it feels like only a few seconds have passed, although the clock tells me he’s been holding me for several minutes. It didn’t feel like enough.

It’s not until we’re on the highway, and I see a tray of cups fly by the window, that I realize we left the food from McDonald’s on the roof. The laughter between us breaks the sad tension.

“Eh, I wasn’t hungry anyway,” Gavin says, glancing in the rearview mirror, where I imagine the remainder of our uneaten breakfast has distributed itself on the road.

“Me neither,” I agree.

He smiles at me. “On to New York?”

“On to New York.”

It’s just past ten by the time we finish fighting traffic and pull off FDR Drive onto Houston Street in Manhattan. Gavin’s following his GPS now, and I look around as he weaves in and out of streets, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and stopped taxis.

“I hate driving in New York,” he says, but he’s smiling.

“You’re really good at it,” I say. I did a summer internship here in college and returned a few times since then, but it’s been more than a decade since I visited, and everything feels different now. The city looks cleaner than I remember it.

“According to the GPS, we’re almost there,” Gavin announces after a few more minutes. “Let’s just find a place to park.”

We find a garage and walk to the exit. As Gavin gets the ticket from the attendant, I nervously shift from one foot to the other. We’re just a few blocks away from the last known address of Jacob Levy. We could be face-to-face with him in ten minutes.