The Sweetness of Forgetting (112)

“Well, it just so happens that Jacob Levy’s will leaves everything to your grandmother, or to her direct descendants,” Thom continues. “He apparently always believed she had lived and that he’d find her. That’s what his attorney said.”

“Wait, so . . .” My voice trails off as I try to piece together what he’s telling me.

“You’re the next direct descendant of Rose Durand McKenna, who we now, of course, know was initially Rose Picard,” Thom goes on. “Jacob’s estate is yours.”

“Wait,” I say again, struggling to understand. “You’re telling me Jacob had three and a half million dollars?”

Thom nods. “And now I’m telling you that you have three and a half million. After a lot of paperwork, of course.” He peers at the papers again. “It seems that after he came to the United States, he worked his way up from being a busboy in a hotel kitchen, to managing a hotel, to eventually becoming a partial investor in a hotel. That’s what his lawyer explained. Apparently, he was a millionaire by 1975 and started a charity for Holocaust survivors at that point. He turned that first hotel into seven successful properties, and he sold his shares three years ago. Part of his fortune is going into an annuity to fund the charity. The remainder—three and a half million—has been earmarked for you.”

“But he never said anything,” I say.

Thom shrugs. “His attorney said he was very modest. Always lived well below his means. Used his money to hire private detectives to try to find your grandmother. But he never knew the assumed name she’d taken on. He was never able to find her.”

“My God,” I murmur. The news is still sinking in.

Thom nods. “There’s more,” he says. “Your grandmother also leaves behind a small estate. Of course the assisted living home drained most of her funds, as you know, but there’s a little left. About seventy-five thousand after everything. Enough to pay off the remainder of the loan for your mother’s house.”

I shake my head. “Unbelievable,” I murmur.

“And,” Thom adds. “There’s a letter. Your grandmother sent it to me back in September. The letter’s sealed,” he continues. “In the note your grandmother sent to me, she asked me to give it to you on New Year’s Eve at the end of the year she died.”

The lump in my throat is preventing me from replying. I blink back tears as Thom slides a narrow envelope across the desk to me.

“Do you know what it says?” I ask after I find my voice.

Thom shakes his head. “Why don’t you head home and read it? I just need your signature on a few things here, and I’ll get your grandmother’s money routed into your account. Jacob Levy’s attorney is already working to get his money to you too. You should have it soon. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Matt at the bank, if you want me to.”

I nod. “Let him know I’m buying the bakery outright,” I say. “No more payments to the bank. I want it to belong to my family forever.”

“Ten-four,” Thom says. He pauses. “Hope?” he asks tentatively.

“Yeah?”

He sighs and looks out the window. “Your mom would be proud of you, you know.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s true,” I say. “I was always a disappointment to her. I think she wished she’d never had me.”

I’ve never said those words before, and I’m not sure why I’m saying them now, to Thom Evans.

“That’s not true, Hope,” Thom says softly. “Your mom was a tough woman to deal with. You know that. But you were the center of her life, whether you knew it or not.”

“No I wasn’t,” I say. “You were. And all the men who came in and out of her life. No offense.”

“None taken,” Thom says.

“It was like she was always looking for something she couldn’t find,” I say.

“At the end of her life, I think she found it,” he says. “It may have been too late for her to communicate that to you properly, though.”

I look up. “What do you mean?”

He sighs. “She was always talking about how she was too cold to care about anyone.”

“She said that to you?” My mother hadn’t seemed that self-aware. And in fact, I hadn’t known she was communicating with Thom at all. I thought that once people were out of her life, they were gone forever. It startles me to realize that she’d let him back in.

He shrugs. “We talked about a lot of things. Especially at the end. I think that with your mother slipping away, she had a lot of regrets. It wasn’t until the end of her life, Hope, that she realized what she’d been looking for had been right in front of her.”

I blink. “What do you mean?”

“She loved you,” he says. “More than she’d been able to truly understand as a young woman. I think that she spent her life searching for love, doubting her own ability to love, and at the end, she realized it had been there all along. In you. And if she’d recognized that sooner, maybe everything could have been different.”

I just stare at him. I don’t know what to say.

“Go read your grandma’s letter, Hope,” Thom says gently. “And if you learn anything from your mom, let it be that you don’t have to search as far as you think for what’s already there, right in front of you.”