The next afternoon, I close the bakery early and head over to Thom’s office, which is just a few blocks down Main. The sun is shining brightly, although I know that in just a few hours, it will disappear into the sea for the last time this year. Annie is spending tonight with her father, who has agreed to take her, Donna, and two other friends over to the big First Night celebration in Chatham, and I plan to spend the evening alone at the beach, even though I’ll need several layers of thick wool to steel myself against the cold wind blowing in from the bay. I’ve been thinking lately of all the nights Mamie spent searching the heavens, and it seems right to see the year off doing the same thing, from the place where the view is the clearest.
I take off my coat and hat and peek my head into Thom’s office, where he appears to have nodded off at his desk, although there’s no liquor bottle in sight. I pause before knocking. He must be nearly seventy now; I know he graduated high school the same year my mother did, and for a moment, seeing him brings back the past, making me long to see my mother.
I rap lightly on the door, and he wakes up instantly. He shuffles some papers and clears his throat in an apparent attempt to pretend he wasn’t just sleeping. “Hope!” he exclaims. “Come in!”
I step into his office, and he gestures toward one of the chairs facing his desk. He stands and riffles through his file cabinet, while we make small talk about how quickly Annie is growing up and how much his own great-niece, Lili, liked the gingerbread cookies he’d picked up from my bakery on Christmas Eve on his way to Plymouth, where Thom’s sister and her family live.
“I’m glad they were a hit,” I say. “That was one of my grandmother’s favorite things to make every holiday.” When I was Annie’s age, I’d taken my job as the bakery’s official gingerbread froster quite seriously; I’d dress all the little figures up with sugary hats, gloves, and sometimes even Santa outfits.
“I remember,” Thom says, smiling at me. He finally extracts a folder from the cabinet and comes back to sit at his desk. “Lili asked me to make a request for next year. She wants to know if you can make the gingerbread men with ice skates.”
I laugh. “She’s into ice skating now?”
“In the last year, she’s been obsessed with horseback riding, ballet, and now ice skating,” he says. “Who knows what it’ll be this time next year.”
I smile. “You know,” I say gently. “I’m afraid the bakery probably won’t be here next holiday season.”
Thom arches an eyebrow at me. “Oh?”
I nod and look down. “The bank’s calling in the loan. I don’t have the money. It’s been a rough few years with the economy and all.”
Thom doesn’t say anything for a moment. He puts his glasses on and studies one of the papers he’s pulled out of the folder. “You know, if this were It’s a Wonderful Life, this would be the part where I’d tell you all the townspeople will pitch in to help save the bakery.”
I laugh. “Right. And Annie would be running around telling everyone that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” The movie is my favorite; Annie and I had watched it on Christmas Eve, with Alain, just last week.
“Do you actually want to save the bakery?” Thom asks after a moment. “If you had a choice, would you prefer to be doing something else?”
I think about this for a minute. “No. I do want to save it. I don’t know that I would have said that a few months ago. But it means something different to me now. I know this is my legacy.” I half laugh and think back to the movie again. “Where are the generous townspeople when you need them, right?”
“Hmm,” Thom says. He studies the document in his hands for another moment and then looks up at me, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “What if I told you that you didn’t need the townspeople to save the bakery?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Let me put it this way,” he says. “How much money would you need to cover all the costs and get it back up and running again?”
I snort and look away. From anyone else, the question would have been rude. But I’ve known Thom forever, and I know he’s not being intrusive; this is just his way. “Much more than I have,” I say finally. “Much more than I’ll ever have.”
“Hmph.” Thom slips on a pair of reading glasses and narrows his eyes at the page. “Would three and a half million do it?”