“I'm sure it would, but wouldn't that mean people would stop buying them here?”
“I suppose. Well, what do I know, hey? I was never any good at that stuff. I can run the café with my eyes closed and hands tied behind my back, but that marketing stuff is not for me.”
I couldn't help but laugh at Teresa's self-deprecating comment. She was a great businesswoman. My granddad had told me how she had single-handedly kept the café afloat until David was old enough to take over the business.
“My ears are red, which can only mean one thing. My aunt is talking about me being a genius in the kitchen, and she's giving out custard tarts for free,” David said, coming out of the kitchen and giving Teresa a big kiss on the cheek. The petite woman leaned in to put her arm around her nephew with one hand resting on his chest.
“Guilty as charged," Teresa said. "But I'm not lying, and Joel has never had one of your custard tarts. It would be a sin to let him miss out.”
David gave a hearty laugh that went straight to my groin. Fuck.
He said his goodbyes, and we walked out toward the beach and Pedro's.
“Busy morning?” I asked.
“It was as expected until someone decided to change their order on a birthday cake, and I had to redo the whole decoration. Fortunately, the customer didn't change the actual cake itself as baking it all over again would have kept me in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon.”
“In that case, I consider myself very lucky that we were still able to meet. You got my curiosity piqued with that text. I hope it wasn't a ruse to get the Superman doll back,” I said.
David winked and conspicuously tapped his nose, but then his smile left his face.
“I do have something to show you. Something that my mom left me, but used to belong to both our moms. I haven’t looked at it yet. I was hoping we could do it together.”
At the mention of our moms, I immediately understood why he became somber, but I was also quite intrigued. It couldn't be a bad thing, or he wouldn't have come to talk about it in a public place.
I was glad to see Pedro wasn’t behind his bar. As lovely as it would be to see how he'd been, now that I knew the topic of my meeting with David, I just wanted to get to it and not get caught up in more hellos.
We ordered our drinks and mixed tapas, which consisted of a few slices of bread, chorizo, Parma ham, deep-fried whitebait, and calamari. Everything looked delicious.
“So, what is this thing you wanted to show me? I'm beyond curious.”
David reached into his rucksack and took out a strange-looking parcel. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in a silk scarf that had a traditional Portuguese print of the Heart of Viana. It was a quintessential Portuguese symbol that I knew my mom had always loved. The extent of my knowledge about it was summed into its use traditionally in jewelry in the north of Portugal.
David passed the item to me, and I found it to be surprisingly light. I laid it on the table and started to carefully unfold the scarf to reveal a spiral-bound school notebook with a dark blue cover.
“Open it,” David said.
The inside cover was full of colorful stickers, some of which I recognized as characters from cartoons. Others I didn’t know but likely had been on TV when our moms were young. One thing that stuck out was a large sticker of a ladybug on the lower-left corner.
Right in the middle of the inside cover was printed "This notebook belongs to:" followed by three black lines. On the lines in pink ink and children's handwriting, it said, “Paula Lima and Sílvia Pereira—best friends in the world forever. Travel Journal, March 1979.”
I looked up at David again. “Have you read it?”
“No. I remember seeing my mom looking at it and sometimes writing in it, but I never paid any attention. I just figured it was a notepad for recipes.” David shrugged. “I didn't even find it until last year when I was going through some old stuff. It was in a box wrapped in that scarf. At the time, I opened the first page as you did just now and considered reading it, but it was too painful seeing her handwriting like that, so I put it aside. Your mom had just gone back to New York again, so I couldn't ask her about it, and then I decided I was going to wait until she came back this summer.” David looked down as he said it.
I felt my heart tightening at the thought of my mom never returning to this place. I wasn't the only one who would miss her and wondered if wherever she was, she would have found her way to her best friend.
A few tears escaped my eyes, and I was glad to be wearing sunglasses.
David dragged his chair closer and leaned toward me, wiping my tears using both his thumbs over my cheeks. It was such an intimate and comforting gesture that I almost leaned into his touch.
“Are you okay?” David whispered, still so close to me.
“Yeah, sorry, I...um... I'm still getting used to this. I know that I will always come across stuff that reminds me of her, of them, but it’s still hard.”
“You don't have to be embarrassed. I know how it feels. I've lived with my mom's stuff in the apartment ever since she died. It wasn't easy, but eventually, I donated anything that wasn't important and chose to keep only the best memories of her. I mean, I don't need to keep the old dish drying rack just because it was hers, right?” he chuckled.
I smiled and nodded in agreement.
