The Sweetness of Forgetting (91)

“I don’t know,” I say softly. Maybe he’s right. But if he is, that means I’ve been living my life incorrectly all these years. I’ve tried to do things by the book at every turn. I married Rob because I was pregnant with his baby. I moved home to the Cape because my mother needed me. I took over the bakery because it was our family business and I couldn’t let it die. I abandoned my own dreams of being an attorney because it no longer fit under the heading of what I was supposed to do.

Now I’m realizing that by always choosing the safe road, the one that was expected of me, I might have given up more than I ever understood. Had I left behind the person I was supposed to be too? Had I lost my real self somewhere along that road of doing everything right? I wonder whether there’s still time to figure things out and start playing by my own rules. Can I salvage the life I’m meant to have?

“Maybe it’s not too late,” I murmur aloud.

Gavin glances at me. “It’s never too late,” he says simply.

We’re silent as we drive across the arching Sagamore Bridge, which spans the Cape Cod Canal. Dawn is still a couple of hours away, and I feel like we’re all alone in the world as we cross to the mainland in the darkness. There’s not another car on the road. On the inky surface of the water beneath us, lights from the bridge and from the homes on either shore reflect back up toward the sky, pointing toward the stars. Mamie’s stars. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to look at the night sky without thinking of my grandmother and all the evenings she has spent waiting for the stars to come out.

It’s not until we’re on I-195 heading toward Providence that Gavin speaks again.

“What’s happening with the bakery?” he asks.

I look at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

He glances at me and then turns his attention back to the road. “Annie told me that she thinks something’s going on. She heard you and Matt Hines talking.”

My heart sinks. I hadn’t realized Annie knew anything was amiss. I didn’t want her to know. “It’s nothing,” I say, avoiding the subject.

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.”