The Sweetness of Forgetting

Annie and Hope are confused by the names of the people whom Mamie has asked them to find. They wonder why Mamie left France. Annie thinks that Hope should go to Paris, and Hope says that someone has to run the bakery. Matt visits the next morning to ask Hope what she is going to do about the business. He remarks that Hope has changed since high school. When business gets slow that day, Hope searches for Albert Picard on the internet. She finds several numbers of people in France and begins calling them.

Hope is confused when some of the people she calls suggest that she contact a synagogue; Mamie is Catholic. Meanwhile, Annie is still angry with Hope. Gavin persuades Hope to confide in him, and when she describes Mamie throwing the Star Pies in the water, Gavin says that it sounds like she was observing Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Gavin’s mother is Jewish, his father Catholic. His mother lost her family in the Holocaust and survived Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany. Gavin helps out with survivors as a volunteer. He says that many survivors abandoned their roots after everything they loved got taken away.