At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)

by Bretton, Barbara

  He bounded down the stairs and took it from her. "Does this secret weapon have a name?"

  "Ask Sophie," she said, turning back to the mirror. "She'll know."

  Rachel was right. Sophie hollered. "Scruncheeee!" then made a lunge for it. Even though Noah was new at the parenthood game, he recognized a power position when he saw it. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

  #

  Gracie woke up a little after six the next day to the sound of the morning paper hitting the front door. Pyewacket slept curled up next to her; his purr almost drowned out the sound of the wind off the ocean. She felt groggy, not quite all there even though she'd managed almost eight hours of sleep. She had been dreaming about Gramma Del, one of those talky dreams where much was said and little remembered.

  You wouldn't recognize this place, Gramma. Laquita made new curtains, recovered your sofa and your favorite chair. She painted the walls white. Can you imagine that? White walls and pale yellow scatter rugs. She even filled the fridge for me with milk and orange juice and eggs and arranged for the paper. And she writes notes. Remember how you were always trying to get me to write my thank-you notes? Bet you wouldn't have had any trouble with Laquita—

  Good grief. She sat up straight, suddenly wide awake. Laquita was about to become Gramma Del's daughter-in-law, or she would be if Gramma were still alive. She would be Gracie's stepmother which meant Rachel and Darnell, the hippies by the river, would be her father's parents-in-law and they'd be related to all of the Adams kids and whoever they ended up marrying—it was all too confusing.

  The note from Laquita was on the nightstand. Gracie rolled over on her side and reached for it. She had been so tired last night that the words ran together like melted candle wax. Okay, it was a simple welcome note. Warm but not too warm. Brief but not terse. Very much in keeping with the low-key manner Gracie remembered when she thought about Laquita. Of course there was also the matter of Laquita's sex life. She had slept with half the men in town by the time she turned twenty years old. Gracie felt like a bit of a bitch for thinking it, but she couldn't help wondering if her father's intended found monogamy a good fit.

  "None of your business," she said out loud. "None of your damn business."

  She swung her legs out of bed then did a few stretches. Faint streaks of light pushed their way through the oyster white fabric shades at the windows. She pushed the shade aside and peered across the yard at her father's cottage. The blinds were drawn. She could see there were no lights on inside. A red Toyota, probably Laquita's, was parked in the driveway next to Gracie's truck.

  Domestic tranquility, she thought then turned away from the window. Who would have thought Ben would find it long before his daughter?

  #

  "We're up shit creek," Andy Futrello announced to Noah the moment he and Sophie walked into the newsroom, "and Levine's got the paddle."

  Noah looked pointedly at his little girl then back at Andy. "Let's watch it, okay?"

  "Sorry. I'm not used to seeing a kid around here."

  "Yeah, well that makes two of us." He helped Sophie out of her jacket then settled her down at an empty desk with her crayons and coloring book. "So what's wrong?" he said to Andy.

  "Ann Levine's in the hospital," Andy said. "Heart attack and it looks like she won't be getting her column in on time."

  "How is she?" Noah had grown up with newspaper types. He knew all about their mastery of understatement.

  "I don't know how she is. All I know is that we've got a hole in the editorial page and it needs to be filled in the next forty-five minutes or we're in trouble."

  "We've been in trouble for quite a while," Noah observed. "Levine isn't going to tip the scales much either way."

  "Check out the list of advertisers yet, Noah? Levine brought in half of 'em. She goes, they go."

  "What is it exactly that Levine writes?"

  "That family shit—" Andy glanced toward Sophie. "I mean stuff. Warm fuzzies, like if you crossed Donna Reed with that Martha Stewart dame and they gave birth to somebody who could write."

  "And that pulled in the house and garden money."

  "That pulled in house and garden and bookstores and it grew from there. Without the revenue Levine pulled in, we'd be dead and buried."

  "They'd bolt after missing one column?"

  "Who the hell knows but I sure don't want to risk it. I don't have good feelings about this, Noah. We don't have that kind of cushion to play with."

  "If my mother ends up selling to Granite News Syndicate, that won't be a problem."

  "A lot's been happening the last few months and your mother—and don't get me wrong, she's a great woman, really knows what's going on—but since your mother went in for the broken hip and all that, she's stepped away from the fray and let me tell you, it's a lot rougher now than it was." He told Noah that Granite News was getting cold feet and any slip in circulation would be enough to kill the deal.

  There was a part of Noah that wouldn't be disappointed at all if that happened. Granite News was your typical conglomerate, one more concerned with syndicates and cutting costs than with providing good jobs for good people who loved the newspaper business. He had tried on more than one occasion to question his mother about her choice but each time Ruth had neatly changed the subject. He wondered how committed she really was to the venture.

  "So we need some stories while Mary's on the disabled list. You're a writer, Andy. Give us some."

  "I'm a sportswriter. I can't do that home and hearth crap."

  "There's got to be somebody who can handle it."

  "Most of us are straight news guys. We report what we see. Your old man knew how to write the essays that got noticed. Mary knows how to write the ones that bring in money."

  "So you're saying we're up the creek."

  "Yeah," said Andy. "That's what I'm saying." He paused, then continued, "You did some writing over there in Europe, didn't you?"

  "Some," Noah conceded, "but it was mostly ad copy. I sold a few op-ed pieces to the American papers and—" He stopped cold. "I'm not on staff."

  Andy started to laugh. "You own the staff."

  "Yeah," said Noah, starting to laugh himself, "I do, don't I?"

  "So why don't you give it a try. It's not like we have anything to lose."

  Noah glanced over at Sophie who was twirling her scrunchie around a bright blue crayon and humming softly to herself. The moment of absolute powerlessness he'd felt this morning when she refused to come out of the bathroom came back to him in vivid detail. Andy was right. They had nothing to lose.

  He sat down at the word processor and started to write.

  #

  All they did at the newspaper office was yell. Sophie had been playing Go Fish at one of the computers, trying to pretend it wasn't so noisy and scary in there. She hated yelling. Every time grownups yelled, bad things happened.

  Sophie had lived with a lot of different people since she was a baby and she knew all about how these things worked. First the grownups yelled at each other, then they yelled at her, and then the next thing she knew her bags were packed and she was on her way to another new house where the people didn't really want her.

  Even her new father was yelling. He and the fat man were yelling right into each other's faces and it scared Sophie. They spoke really fast in those strange American accents. She could only understand some of what they were saying but she was sure they were yelling about her.

  "I don't know much about bringing up kids," her new father had told her the day they went to court in London to sign the papers, "so I hope you'll help me." He had given her a big hug but she had held herself all stiff in his arms. "We're in this together, Sophie, you and me. We're a family now."

  He said that her new name was Sophie Chase and that she would be his daughter forever.

  Sophie didn't believe him. If he loved her so much and was so happy that she was his daughter, then why was he so busy yelling at people and hammering the computer keys with his big f
ingers? If she ran away, it would probably take him a fortnight to realize she was missing.

  #

  Try as she might, Gracie couldn't find any traces of Gramma Del left in the old cottage. Except for the boxes tucked away in the attic, the place was stripped clean of old memories. It left her feeling disoriented, as if she had made a wrong turn somewhere and this wasn't Gramma Del's at all. She flipped through the Gazette but didn't find much of anything to hold her interest there. She didn't recognize most of the names and faces, something she thought would never happen in Idle Point. Finally she dressed then let herself out the front door to take a walk. She used to walk all the way into town in the days before she was old enough to drive. This seemed as good a time as any to see if she could still do it.

  She wondered if Gerson's Bakery was still at the corner opposite the barber shop. She craved bagels and cream cheese and maybe some of those delicious sticky buns with the nuts studded all over the top. Maybe she would buy some freshly-ground coffee beans too—she was sure coffee mania had reached Idle Point by now—and bring them back to share with Ben and Laquita. The more she thought about the idea, the more she liked it. She wasn't a guest; she was family, and family contributed to the pantry.

  Truth was, she was a little apprehensive about actually meeting Laquita again after all these years and seeing how her dad and old schoolmate fit together. Going for a long walk was one way to burn off nervous energy and center herself. Gracie always had a lot of physical energy to burn, and she had quickly discovered that the best thing about living in Manhattan was the walking. Nobody thought you were strange if you walked forty or fifty blocks at a time, Battery Park to the Upper West Side, East River to the Hudson. Still, Manhattan wasn't Idle Point. Manhattan didn't smell like ocean kissed by pine trees. When you could find the sky, it was never storybook blue.

  Not that the sky was blue that morning. It was a deep, brooding pewter grey with rain that was more than a mist but less than a storm. She wore jeans, a heavy black sweater, and her favorite jacket. Tina had told her it made her look like a runaway Trappist monk but Gracie loved it. It was too big and too old to be fashionable, but Gracie had never been one to worry about that. She loved disappearing inside the jacket when she walked the city, letting the hood fall over her face, obscuring her identity. It made her feel mysterious.

  Gerson's was gone and a sandwich shop had opened in its place. The bank boasted a facelift and a brand new name while the grocery store, candy shop, and dry cleaners all looked exactly the way they had when she left. Herb's Camera Shop was still next to Leonard Insurance which was next to Samantha's Bridal which was next to Video Haven which was next to Patsy's. And everybody knew Patsy's was next to the Gazette.

  She was cold and hungry and wet and she needed caffeine. The lights from Patsy's down the block splashed out onto the rainswept street. She remembered Patsy's blueberry muffins with great fondness. A blueberry muffin with a huge mug of hot coffee with lots of sugar and maybe some scrambled eggs. What was she hesitating for? Simon Chase was dead. Noah was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Sure she would probably run into plenty of people she knew but they could never break her heart. Besides, why had she come home to Idle Point if she wasn't going to reconnect with old friends and familiar faces.

  The rain was slicing down faster. She ducked her head and let the hood fall over her face, limiting her vision to just a few inches of sidewalk in front of her. She could almost taste the coffee, hot and sweet, as—

  The little girl came out of nowhere. One second Gracie was the only person on the street, the next second she was almost knocked over by a child with a curly blond ponytail who burst out of the Gazette office like she had the hounds of hell at her heels.

  "Whoa, honey!" She backed up a step and put her hands on the child's slender shoulders. The child was shivering already and no wonder. No coat, no sweater, nobody paying attention. "Where are you running to?"

  The child looked up at her with huge blue eyes framed by dark lashes thick and long enough to make a grown woman weep. She had only known one other lucky person with such beautiful eyes. The child's hair was golden blond. Her skin was fair and pink. She looked positively angelic as she hauled off and kicked Gracie hard in the shin then ran off down the street.

  "Why you little—"

  Gracie took off in hot pursuit. If that little brat thought she was going to get away with a stunt like that, she had another think coming. The kid was fast but short. Gracie was fast and tall. She captured her assailant before they reached Samantha's Bridal and swept her up into her arms.

  "Where are your parents?" Gracie demanded as she marched the wet, wriggling child back up the block toward the Gazette. "How could they let you run around in this rain without a coat?"

  The kid tried to kick her again but Gracie held her out and away from her body the way she once held an angry fox terrier.

  "Oh no you don't. One free kick is all you get."

  "Bloody hell!" the little girl yelled. "Why don't you sod off?"

  Gracie was so shocked she almost dropped her. "Somebody should wash out that mouth of yours with a bar of soap."

  It was the kid's turn to be shocked. Her eyes widened as she stared up at Gracie then she giggled. "Soap!"

  "Yes, soap. Exactly what a little brat with a dirty mouth needs."

  "You can't tell me what to do."

  "I can tell you you're not going to kick me in the shin and get away with it." She tucked the child under her right arm. "Now who do you belong to?"

  The girl thrust her little pointed chin out and pressed her lips tightly together.

  "Silent treatment, is it?" Gracie muttered. "Don't worry. I'll find out." She pushed open the door to the newspaper office. The place buzzed like an angry hive.

  "Does anybody here own this child?" she called out.

  Nobody paid any attention. They went on running to and fro, typing away at their workstations, ignoring her.

  The kid, however, landed another sharp right that made Gracie cry out.

  "If somebody doesn't claim this child in the next thirty seconds, I'm taking her to the police station before she breaks my leg."

  The kid tried to make a break for it but Gracie held on tight.

  "Papa!" The kid had a pair of lungs on her a hog caller would envy. "Help!"

  "Sophie?" A male voice rang out from one of the cubicles.

  That voice... . Sweat broke out on Gracie's brow. It couldn't be. God wouldn't possibly play a trick like this on her. She heard footsteps. She knew that rhythm, hard right soft left hard right soft left. The rhythm of his walk, the sound of his voice, the smell of his skin—they were all part of her soul's language. She put the little girl down. Every instinct told her to run but she couldn't move. She had been running for eight years and she couldn't do it any longer.

  Chapter Twelve

  The woman stood in the middle of the front office. Her tall, slender body was hidden inside a jacket that was easily three sizes too large for her. Her face was obscured by a hood that made her look like the Ghost of Christmas Future. Sophie, soaking wet, extremely angry, and inexplicably barefoot, stood next to her.

  "Sit down over there," he ordered Sophie, pointing toward the chair against the wall. "I'll deal with you in a minute." She muttered something dark and terribly English but did as she was told. He wasn't fool enough to think compliance meant anything at all

  "Thanks," he said to the mystery woman. "I'm going to have to put a bell on—"

  "Hello, Noah."

  He knew before he knew, if such a thing was possible. There was an instant before the realization coalesced into thought when he registered her presence with his very skin.

  "Gracie?"

  She shook off her hood in a gentle arc of raindrops and the years fell away when he saw her again. Damn you. He couldn't control the anger that ripped through him. Damn you for leaving.

  "I didn't know you were back in Idle Point," she said, all cool and calm as if they'd
seen each other the day before yesterday. "How long have you been here?"

  So this is how you're going to play it, like you didn't walk out on me on our wedding day. "A few weeks. What about you?"

  "Last night."

  "You know about Ben and Laquita."

  "That's why I came home."

  "To try and stop it?"

  "To be Ben's witness."

  She had lived a life he knew nothing about, would never know anything about. "Things are okay with you and your father?"

  She nodded and her hair, the same soft shiny brown he saw in his dreams, drifted across her cheeks. "We've come a long way."

  That was good. He was a father now; he knew how much it mattered. He wanted to tell her that, but he was choking on his anger. It was always you, Gracie. There's never been anyone else.

  She glanced toward Sophie. "She kicked me."

  He nodded. "She does that."

  "Who is she?"

  "Her name is Sophie," he said. "She's my daughter."

  Gracie looked like she'd been stabbed. Of all the things he could have said or done, nothing could have hurt her more deeply than this living proof that he had loved somebody else. He couldn't wish Sophie away, though. He wouldn't. She was the one shining triumph in eight dark years.

  Noah watched her carefully. His words had found their mark. He could see the pain in her eyes and he was glad. That's how it feels, Gracie. Now you know.

  "She's beautiful."

  He nodded his thanks. "She's having trouble adjusting. Mrs. Cavanaugh put her on a two-day suspension."

  "Kicking?"

  "Biting."

  "She sounds English."

  "Her mother is from London."

  "Oh." Her gaze swept the room. "Is your wife here?"

  He shook his head, pushing away the question, the conversation. "I can't do this, Gracie."