At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)

by Bretton, Barbara

  Gracie was a hard-working young woman. Ruth kept up with her academic awards through beauty shop gossip. Noah could benefit from being around someone as disciplined and motivated as Gracie. Summer was almost over. In a few weeks Noah would be back in Portsmouth at St. Luke's and Gracie would be engrossed in her studies. Their romance would be nothing but a sweet memory.

  Once long ago Ruth had bent fate to suit her own purposes and the results had been tragic. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

  Chapter Seven

  The gods were kind for the next few years and they watched out for Noah and Gracie. What started out as a summer romance grew into something much deeper and infinitely more important than either had expected or maybe even wanted but it happened just the same.

  There was nothing Gracie couldn't say to Noah, no thought too dark or too silly to share with him. She even shared her worries and they were considerable. Noah took life as it came but Gracie was a worrier by nature. She worried about Gramma Del, about her father, about every animal—big or small—that came under her care. She worried that she would be a failure as a vet. She worried that her emotions would keep elbowing their way into situations where they didn't belong and cloud her judgment. She had been penalized harshly by one of her professors for weeping during a particularly difficult consultation. Gracie had apologized and promised to keep her emotions under tighter control but sometimes she worried that she was sacrificing humanity for efficiency. Noah teased her sometimes and said that worrying was her hobby. She never laughed when he said that because she suspected he might be right.

  Gracie was Noah's anchor, his home in all the ways that mattered. He never told her that, though. At least, not with words. His feelings for Gracie ran so deep that he couldn't begin to gather them together in any one portion of his heart. Nothing that happened to him had any meaning until he shared it with her. He fell asleep at night thinking about her. She was his first morning thought. Gracie was strong where he was uncertain. She knew the where and when and how of her life; all he knew was that he loved her. She was all that he needed. He loved that she was so serious. Making Gracie laugh made him feel like he had conquered Everest and Denali both on a single day.

  He called Gracie at Penn State a few times a week. Her voice, her laughter, carried him through. He would have chucked everything—school and family and all of his dreams—to be with her in Philly if she'd given him the slightest encouragement, but she never did. Not his Gracie.

  He blew off his studies and spent much of his time skiing or surfing out on the Cape. He couldn't remember the last time he'd handed in a paper or shown up for a test. The stack of letters from various department heads were probably meant to enlighten him on that score. He didn't know why he kept fucking up, what made him throw roadblocks in his own way. A counselor had told Noah that it was his way of striking out at Simon, that denying his father's dreams was Noah's way of gaining control, but the whole idea had made Noah angry and he'd walked out with twenty minutes left in the session. He was good at walking out on conversations that got under his skin. Why the hell did they believe that his every move reflected his relationship with Simon? He was more than his father's son. A hell of a lot more.

  Gracie was the only one who never made him feel angry or unsettled. Her dreams for him were even better than his own. She believed he could do anything he set his mind to doing and when he was with her, he believed it too. What she thought about him mattered more than he'd ever realized. He wanted to be her hero in every way.

  The sound of Noah's voice on the phone filled Gracie's heart with a kind of happiness unknown to her before that first blissful summer. She couldn't afford to phone him very often, but she wrote to him every day, long stream-of-consciousness letters that touched on everything from the injured dog she had been unable to save, to how many children they would have after they married. They weren't officially engaged yet—that would mean coming clean to their families and neither one of them was ready for that—but the commitment was rock-solid, just the same.

  Gracie applied herself to her schoolwork with the kind of intense dedication she brought to every endeavor. Nothing in her life came easy; she accepted that fact as one of the givens. In a way she was glad that Noah was far away in Boston because she would never have been able to concentrate with him close at hand. Noah was one of the lucky ones. He learned quickly with little effort. Gracie had to bite her tongue on more than one occasion when he talked about blowing off the whole thing and getting a job down there in Philadelphia. "Rich boy talk," she'd called it once. After seeing the look on Noah's face, she never said that again but the thought lingered.

  Still she knew she was right. Only someone born into privilege could toss aside his education, secure in the knowledge that he could pick it up again any time he liked. When you were on scholarship you didn't have that luxury.

  Sometimes Noah drove down from Boston for the weekend and Gracie found herself torn between her love for him and her need to work. She'd set herself a rigorous schedule which included starting her pre-med courses a year early but that all depended upon her ability to maintain top-notch grades. And since even full scholarships didn't cover every need, she worked part-time as a waitress at a nearby coffee shop.

  Noah teased her about her work ethic. She tried not to look askance at his casual attitude toward education but she couldn't help herself. He'd been given so many gifts. Parents who loved him. A beautiful home. Every opportunity money and privilege could buy. She couldn't be blamed for feeling the tiniest bit jealous every now and again, could she? Sometimes it seemed to Gracie as if he had turned his back on everything she'd ever dreamed of.

  They saw the world through very different eyes, yet back home in the shadow of the lighthouse, their differences fell away. Lying together in the sand in a wash of moonlight, they understood each other in a way impossible for anyone outside their magic circle of two.

  And it was magic. No other explanation for the intensity of their connection was possible. Their bodies knew each other intimately. Some nights as she lay there in Noah's arms, Gracie found it impossible to tell where she ended and he began. She loved the way her hand looked against his bare chest, the sight of his fingers as he traced the line of her thigh. She had always felt competent but he made her feel beautiful as well. They fit together so perfectly that Gracie was sure they had been made for each other. They didn't need anyone else. Their time together was so precious, what they felt for each other was so intense, that there wasn't room for anything else.

  The most amazing thing of all was that nobody knew about them. Idle Point was a small town and small towns were notorious for gossip. Both the Chases and the Taylors had been the subject of much discussion over the years, but somehow Noah and Gracie remained just beneath the town's radar. Laquita Adams had seen them once coming out of a motel two towns over, but since Laquita was there with a married teacher she had no room to talk. Gracie and Laquita exchanged embarrassed hellos each time they met but neither one acknowledged the incident.

  Much of the old crowd had scattered. Don was working a fishing boat out of Key West for the summer. Joe and Tim were traveling through Texas. Joann was in summer school in New York; Terri was working as a counselor at a resort in Boothbay Harbor. Everyone, it seemed, was someplace other than Idle Point.

  Noah complained about the sameness of Idle Point but Gracie took comfort from that very fact. All around her things were changing at the speed of light and the fact that Idle Point remained as immutable as its rocky coastline gave her a sense of security and history that only Gramma Del had ever provided. She loved knowing that the bank had stood at the corner of Main and Promontory Point since the turn of the last century and that it would still be standing there at the turn of the next.

  Gracie had always believed that Gramma Del would be with them at the turn of the next century too. It fell to Ben to tell her otherwise the day she arrived home for the summer between her junior and senior year.

&n
bsp; "Your grandmother isn't doing well," her father told her. Ben had divorced and moved back to Idle Point the previous winter. He made ends meet by working as a handyman at the church. Gracie would have bet her old Mustang that he had been hired as a favor to Gramma Del. "The doctor says it could be any time."

  Gracie had been expecting this for months but hearing it from her father made it all suddenly real. Ben had been sober for awhile now but the weight of his troubles had taken their toll. Gracie realized with a start that he had grown old when she wasn't looking. His dark brown hair had faded to grey and there were lines and wrinkles where they had never been before. The handsome father she had loved so much now lived only in her memory, along with her dreams of a perfect family.

  How long had it been since they had last lived together as a family anyway? She couldn't remember. She wasn't even sure it mattered. Like it or not, this small and imperfect union of souls was her blood. A lifetime of disappointment wasn't enough to make her forget how much she loved Ben or how much she wished he loved her back. Next to Gramma Del, he was the only other person on this earth who shared her blood and that connection wasn't something she took lightly.

  "I'll need some help on Wednesday nights," he said, almost apologetically. "They shifted the AA meeting time for the summer and your Gramma's church friends can't—"

  Gracie raised her hand to stop him. "Of course I'll help," she said and he thanked her. They sounded like two polite strangers on line at the bank and it almost broke her heart. I'm doing really well in school, Pop. I aced all of my finals and they're letting me start pre-med in September instead of waiting another year. Did you know they ran a little story on me in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month? I'm one of the top three students in my class, Pop, and the only one holding down a full-time job while maintaining the grades. Are you proud of me? Do you think my mother would be proud? I'm standing right here in front of you. Why don't you look at me? You're sober now. Why can't you hear me?

  "Your father does the best he can with what he's got," Gramma Del said last night, "and if it's not enough for you, there's nothing anybody can do about it." Gramma Del still clung to life with a stubbornness and determination that defined courage.

  "Sometimes he acts like he doesn't even know me," Gracie said, trying to make her grandmother understand what she was feeling. "I went to hug him and he took a step back."

  "Don't be looking to change the man," she cautioned. "You can't make things perfect, no matter how hard you try."

  But Gracie was obsessed with the changes in her father. Maybe if he'd been falling-down-drunk, she wouldn't have felt this way but to see him sober and responsible made her yearn for everything she'd missed over the years.

  "If he would just sit down and talk with me," she said to Noah one night in mid-August. "There are so many questions I want to ask him about my mother and—"

  Noah kissed her quiet. "Maybe he doesn't want to answer those questions, Gracie. It's taken him a long time to get over your mom's death."

  "That's right," she said, "and I'll never get over it if I can't even talk about her with him."

  "Leave him alone. He's doing great for the first time in years. Don't mess with it."

  She glared at him. "You sound like Gramma Del."

  "Thanks," he said. "She's one of my favorite people."

  Gracie pushed him away and sat up with her back against an outcropping of rocks near the base of the lighthouse. It was one of those dark and hazy late summer nights that reminded you of why lighthouses were still so important. There was something comforting about the sweeping circle of light. "I wish—" She stopped herself.

  "You wish what?"

  She shook her head. "Just another ridiculous thought."

  "Tell me."

  "No," she said firmly. "It's impossible."

  "Is it about your Gramma Del?"

  He knew her so well. He had this way of shining light into the darkest, most secret corners of her heart.

  "I want her to know about us," she blurted out. "She's going to die, Noah, and I don't want her to go before telling her about us. I can't keep this from her any longer." Lying didn't come easily to her. She had done it, and done it well, the last few years but she owed her grandmother the truth.

  "That's not a good idea, Gracie. You know how she feels about my family."

  "But she always loved you, Noah, I know she did, and she respected your mother. I want her to know how I feel about you. I want her to meet you the way you are now, see how wonderful you are—" She blinked away tears. "If she sees your face it will all come back to her, all of those good feelings. I know she'll be happy for us, Noah. I'm sure of it."

  "Gracie, I—"

  She reached for his hand. "I want her blessing, Noah."

  #

  The only thing Noah was sure of was that they were making a mistake but in the end he gave in because he loved Gracie and he respected her grandmother. He didn't want to be the one who stood between the two women and closure as the clock ticked down. He stood up, knocked sand from the backs of his jeans, then said, "C'mon."

  Gracie looked up at him. "Now?"

  "No time better." Or worse, for that matter. He reached for her hand and helped her to her feet. "We'll take your car. No point letting the whole town in on it."

  Gracie threw her arms around his neck and showered him with kisses. "You won't regret this," she said as they walked toward her beat-up Mustang. "We'll get her blessing, Noah. We'll finally have family in our corner."

  He hadn't realized that meant so much to her. He didn't need his parents' approval to love Gracie. Their approval didn't change a thing. He had managed to scrape by without it since he was five years old. Sure, life would be a hell of a lot easier if he'd fallen in love with someone from the list of rich girls from the right side of the tracks, but he didn't need easy. He needed Gracie and suddenly he had the feeling she was slipping away.

  "We could run away," he said as they neared the docks and the house where she'd grown up. "Keep driving and see where we end up."

  She glanced across at him. "You don't mean that."

  "Yeah," he said. "I think I do." He swiveled in his seat until he faced her. "Just keep driving, Gracie."

  She laughed uneasily. "I'll run out of gas before we reach Portland."

  "I have money." He dug into his pockets and withdrew a fistful of credit cards. "I have enough plastic to float us for a year." He motioned for her to pull over to the side of the road and she did. "We'll go to New York," he said, "or Paris or San Francisco. You name the place and it's yours."

  The look in her eyes was shadowy, intense. He took that as encouragement.

  "Noah, that's crazy. We have school to think of. Jobs. Our futures. We can't go running off."

  "Give me one reason why not."

  "My scholarship." She drummed the steering wheel with her right thumb. "Maybe you can afford to take off whenever you feel like it, but I can't. If I lose that scholarship, Noah, I lose everything."

  "Take a hiatus."

  "I'll lose momentum."

  "We'll get married," he said. "I'll support you."

  She started to laugh. "Doing what? You're a student too, Noah."

  He waved the credit cards at her and she made a face. "I have savings," he said. "Trust funds. Books I can hock. We can make it work, Gracie. Hell, we really could go to Paris."

  "We could stay here in Idle Point."

  "Paris has the Eiffel Tower."

  "Idle Point has the lighthouse."

  "Marry me, Gracie," he said again, taking her hands between his. A sense of urgency was building up inside of him, almost a sense of desperation. "We could do it this weekend, just drive down to Portland and get a license, pick a judge somewhere and do it."

  "Noah!" She sounded breathless and pleased but not quite as enthusiastic as he would have hoped. "Where is this coming from? We can't just run off and get married like that."

  "We'll elope. We've loved each other for a long time,
Gracie. This will make it official."

  She hesitated and in that moment of slight hesitation Noah felt his world begin to shift and change forever.

  "Noah, I—"

  "Forget it," he said, leaning back in the passenger seat. "You're right. It wouldn't work."

  "I never said it wouldn't work."

  "Listen, if you have to think about it, it isn't right."

  "But you're asking me to change all my plans on a moment's notice. I'm not a rich man's daughter. I can't turn away from a scholarship. I might not get a second chance."

  Her words hurt. She didn't mean them to. He knew she was trying to make him understand how much school meant to her. He shouldn't have said anything about marriage. There was something elusive at the core of Gracie's personality. The more he pushed, the more she withdrew. He must've been nuts to think she'd toss everything aside to run away with him. School meant everything to her. Hell, she wouldn't even cut class to see a movie.

  No matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to understand how it felt to worry about money. If he never worked a day in his life, he would still be okay. It wasn't something he thought about down at school but with Gracie it was a major issue. "We'd better get moving if you want to talk to Del before she goes to bed."

  She brushed his words aside. "You know I love you, Noah. I've loved you since we were five years old. It's just that I—"

  The sound hit them first. A piercing wail that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. Gracie looked at him, her eyes wide, and before he could say a word they were hit with the lights. An ambulance and a squad car were bearing down on them full speed. Gracie fumbled for the stick shift but he stopped her.

  "Wait," he cautioned. "They're not coming for us. Let them pass."

  "They're heading toward the docks, " she said. He could see that her hands were trembling.