The Sweetness of Forgetting (2)

“Hey, Matt.” I try to sound neutral and friendly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? On the house, since you had to wait.” I don’t wait for an answer; I’m already pouring. I know exactly how Matt takes it: two sugars and one cream in a to-go cup, so that he can get to the Bank of the Cape, where he’s a regional vice president, to get his paperwork started before they open for business. Since he works just two blocks down on Main Street, he stops in once or twice a week.

Matt nods and takes the coffee from me with a smile.

“What else can I get you?” I ask, gesturing to the glass bakery case. I’ve been here since four, and although I’m not quite done with everything, there are already plenty of fresh pastries. I reach for a miniature pielike confection, which features a phyllolike shell filled with a lemony almond paste and brushed with rosewater and honey. “How about an almond rose tart?” I ask, holding it out to him. “I know they’re your favorite.”

He hesitates for only a second before reaching for it. He takes a bite and closes his eyes. “Hope, you were born to do this,” he says with his mouth full, and although I know it’s a compliment, the words hit me hard, because I never intended to do this at all. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, and Matt knows it. But my grandmother got sick, my mother died, and I no longer had a choice.

I brush the words away and pretend they don’t bother me as Matt says, “Hey, listen, I actually came this morning to talk to you about something. Can you sit with me for a sec?”

His smile looks a little frozen, I realize suddenly. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it earlier.

“Um . . .” I glance back toward the kitchen. The cinnamon pies need to come out soon, but I have a few minutes before the timer goes off. There’s no one else here at this early hour. I shrug. “Yeah, okay, but just for a minute.”

I pour myself a cup of coffee—black, my third of the morning—and slide into the chair across from Matt. I lean on the table and brace myself for him to ask me on another date. I’m not sure what to say; focusing on my husband and daughter for all these years has cost me most of the friendships I once had, and selfishly, I don’t want to lose Matt too. “What’s up?”

From the way he pauses before answering, I have the sense that something’s wrong. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to bad news lately. My mother’s cancer. My grandmother’s dementia. My husband deciding he no longer wanted to be my husband. So I’m surprised when what Matt says is, “How’s Annie?”

I look at him closely, my heart suddenly racing as I wonder whether he knows something I don’t. “Why? What happened?”

“I was just wondering,” Matt says quickly. “I’m being nice. Making conversation.”

“Oh,” I say, relieved that he hasn’t come as the bearer of some sort of bad news. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that my daughter had been caught doing something foolish like shop-lifting or spray-painting her middle school. She’s been different since her father and I split up: edgy, nervous, and angry. More than once, I’ve guiltily searched her room, thinking I’d find cigarettes or drugs, but so far, the only evidence of the change in my Annie is the massive chip on her shoulder. “Sorry,” I tell Matt. “I keep waiting for something else to go wrong.”

He averts his eyes. “How about dinner tonight?” he asks. “Me and you. Annie’ll be at Rob’s again, right?”

I nod. My ex and I share custody equally, an arrangement I’m not happy about, because I think it makes Annie’s life less stable. “I don’t know, Matt,” I say. “I just think—” I search for words that won’t hurt. “I think maybe it’s too soon, you know? The divorce was so recent, and Annie’s really struggling. I think it’s better if we just—”

“It’s just dinner, Hope,” Matt interrupts me. “I’m not proposing to you.”

My cheeks are suddenly on fire. “Of course not,” I mumble.

He laughs and reaches for my hands. “Relax, Hope.” When I hesitate, he smiles slightly and adds, “You have to eat. How ’bout it?”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, and it’s at that moment that the front door of the bakery swings open, and Annie comes in, her backpack slung over her shoulder, her dark sunglasses on, even though dawn hasn’t yet broken. She stops and stares at us for a moment, and I know instantly what she’s thinking. I pull my hands away from Matt, but it’s too late.

“Great,” she says. She rips her sunglasses off and tosses her long, wavy, dishwater-blonde hair over her shoulder, fixing us with a glare that makes her deep gray eyes even stormier than usual. “Were you going to, like, start making out if I didn’t get here?”

“Annie,” I say, standing up. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Whatever,” she mutters. Her new favorite word.

“Don’t be rude to Matt,” I say.

“Whatever,” she repeats, rolling her eyes for emphasis this time. “I’ll be in the back. So you can, like, go back to doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

I look after her helplessly as she charges through the double doors to the kitchen. I hear her throw her backpack onto the counter, the weight of it rattling the stainless steel bowls I keep stacked there, and I wince.