The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristin Harmel

confirmation. “He was shot down somewhere in northern France or Belgium, I think. I never heard the whole story; everyone here spent months believing he was missing in action. I was sure he was dead. But he somehow escaped to Spain, and your great-grandmother was there too.”
    Annie nods solemnly, like she knows this story by heart, although my grandfather died twelve years before she was born.
    “She’s French of course, your great-grandmother Rose. But the way I understand it, her parents died when she was young, and she wanted to leave France because the country was at war, right?” Mrs. Sullivan picks up the thread of the story, glancing at Mrs. Koontz.
    Mrs. Koontz nods. “We never found out exactly how they met, but yes, I think Rose was living in Spain. But it was, what, 1944 when we heard he was back in America, and he’d married a girl from France?”
    “Late 1943,” Mrs. Sullivan corrects. “I remember it exactly. It was my twentieth birthday.”
    “Oh yes, of course. You cried into your birthday cake.” Mrs.Koontz winks at Annie. “She had a silly schoolgirl crush on your great-grandfather. But your great-grandmother stole him away.”
    Mrs. Sullivan makes a face. “She was two years younger than us, and she had that exotic French accent. Boys are very easily swayed by accents, you know.”
    Annie nods again, solemnly, as if this is something she knows instinctively. I hide a smile as I pretend to concentrate on a particularly tough spot to wipe up. I’ve never heard my grandmother talk about how she and my grandfather met. She rarely talks about the past at all, so I’m interested to hear what the women know.
    “Ted got some sort of job in New York, at a secondary school, after he received his doctoral degree,” Mrs. Koontz says. “And then he and your grandmother moved back to the Cape. That’s when he took the job at the Sea Oats.”
    My grandfather, whose PhD was in education, had been the first headmaster of the Sea Oats School, a prestigious private school one town over. It used to serve grades K through twelve, but now it’s only a high school. It’s where Annie will go from ninth grade on, on a legacy scholarship.
    “And, um, my grandma was there too?” Annie asks. “When Mamie and my great-grandpa moved here?”
    “Yes, your grandmother Josephine must have been what, five years old? Six years old when they moved?” Mrs. Sullivan says. “They moved back to the Cape in 1950. I remember clearly, because it’s the year I got married.”
    Mrs. Koontz nods. “Yes, Josephine started first grade when they moved here, if I remember right.”
    “And Mamie founded the bakery then?” Annie asks.
    “I think it was a few years later,” Mrs. Koontz says. “But your mother would probably know.” She calls to me. “Hope, dear?”
    I pretend I haven’t been listening to their whole conversation. “What’s that?” I ask, looking up.
    “Annie here was wondering when your grandmother founded the bakery.”
    “In 1952,” I say. I glance at Annie, who’s staring at me. “Her parents had owned a bakery in France, I think.” I’ve never heard any more about Mamie’s past than this. She never talked about her life before she met my grandfather.
    Annie ignores me and turns back to the two women. “But you don’t know anyone named Leona?” she asks.
    “No,” Mrs. Sullivan says. “Maybe she was a friend of your great-grandmother’s from France.”
    “She never really had any friends here,” Mrs. Koontz says. Then she shoots me a guilty look and amends hurriedly, “Of course, she’s very nice. She just kept to herself, that’s all.”
    I nod, but I wonder whether that was all Mamie’s fault after all. She’s quiet and reserved, certainly, but it doesn’t seem as if Mrs. Koontz, Mrs. Sullivan, and the other women of the town exactly welcomed her with open arms. I feel a pang of sadness for her.
    I look at my watch again. “Annie, you’d better get going. You’re going to