Fine line script word with heart on forearm

The old man finished the sign on Tuesday, probably the last lettering he will ever do. You know the shop on Rua da Madalena, the one with the broken clock above the door. He sat on the step with his brushes standing in a jam jar and asked me to fetch the gold leaf. Then he made me hold his wrist steady while he traced one word in the air before he touched the board. He didn't say what it meant. He only said a word you put over a shop should be one you'd say to a stranger without blushing.

The word was fé. I looked it up later in Father's dictionary, the one with the cracked spine: faith, belief, the trust that a thing will come out right when you can't yet see how. I told him it was a grand word for a fishmonger's. He laughed until he coughed. Everyone who walks in here has been told no by somebody else first, he said. Faith is just the stubborn part that's left over.

He began the line with a little heart, a loop no bigger than a lentil, because he said a line needs somewhere to start. Then he handed me the fine brush and told me to finish the accent. My hand shook and the mark came out crooked, a tilted comma. I wanted to scrape it off. He wouldn't let me.

Yesterday the shopkeeper stood under the sign for a long while. She asked who had painted it. I said nobody, not really, and then I said it was a man who believed in small hearts. I'll be home at Easter, so save me a pastel de nata and don't let Mãe tell you the crooked bit was my fault.

Your sister, Teresa