At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)

by Bretton, Barbara

  The explosion of laughter from all quarters was answer enough but Cheyenne couldn't help adding a postscript. "You two are legendary around here," she said over Laquita's protests. "I mean, you both disappear on the same day a million years ago and you give Old Eb a million dollars and Noah goes off to Paris and you're a famous doctor in Manhattan and then boom! You're both home again for the wedding and Noah's carrying you through the rain..." She sighed melodramatically. "I mean, it's only the most romantic thing anybody's ever seen around here."

  "Don Hasty and Joann told Sage that you two used to meet on the beach by the lighthouse every night during the summer. They could see you from Hidden Island." Storm seemed proud of her contribution to the legend. Gracie must have looked shocked because Storm quickly added, "But only when they used their binoculars."

  "Out!" Rachel pointed toward the door. "Take your chili and eat in the den."

  Cheyenne looked legitimately puzzled. "Why? I like it in here."

  "So do we," Rachel said, "and we want Gracie to like it here too. I expect you back here in fifteen minutes to finish the beading."

  Mother and daughter launched into a stream of friendly sparring that made the other girls roll their eyes and retreat with their bowls of chili.

  "Don't you dare take that chili into the front room," Laquita warned, "or I'll kill you."

  "Just cook for us," Cheyenne shot back. "That'll do it." She raced from the room before Laquita could retaliate.

  "Like I said, Gracie, welcome to our family." Rachel reached back and adjusted her ponytail. Her hair was still very dark and lustrous with only the faintest icing of silver around the temples. "Not too many secrets allowed around here."

  Gracie smiled weakly and concentrated on her chili. The truth was, she was beyond speech. The fact that so many people had known so much about her and Noah amazed her. Wouldn't you think one of them would have known Mona and Simon's secret too?

  "There's plenty of chili in the pot," Rachel reminded them, "so help yourselves to seconds."

  Gracie didn't need another invitation. She pushed back her chair and helped herself, amid a flurry of teasing comments about her rail-thin figure.

  "We're all built like my mother," Laquita said with a loud sigh. "Hips the size of a VW."

  "We're womanly," Rachel said. "Our hips are made for childbearing." She gave her daughter a stern look. "Your problem isn't genetics, 'Quita, it's the gallon of Ben and Jerry's you devour every week."

  That led to another spirited discussion of calories, aerobic exercise, and quality of life. Gracie hadn't heard this much conversation since she lived in a dorm. The affection between Laquita and Rachel was obvious. Their teasing was gentle, funny, and inclusive. Not for one second did Gracie feel like an outsider. They meant it when they said she was family and she could feel her guard dropping with every second that passed in their company. She tried to imagine what it had been like for Laquita, growing up the oldest in such a big and boisterous family. She had always seemed older than her years to Gracie, self-contained and serene. A lot had been expected of her. In some ways she was almost a surrogate mother to her brothers and sisters which meant she had been responsible for other human beings since she was old enough to read. Gracie thought about the haven Laquita had created for herself and Ben, a soothing adult oasis of calm and quiet, and another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  #

  Ruth listened to the sounds of laughter floating down the hallway toward the library where she had been sitting for hours. She loved the sounds of family, the sense that the house was barely large enough to contain the lives being lived within its four walls. In the early days of her marriage, she had believed that was how it would be for her and Simon. "We'll fill this house with babies," she had promised them on their wedding night. "Sons and daughters to carry on your name." That was one of many promises she had been unable to fulfill.

  Rachel's family was on their way home for the holiday weekend. The boys were hitching a ride up from Storrs, while the girls made their ways in from various points on the eastern seaboard. They came home, though, each and every one of them, which was no small testament to Rachel and Darnell.

  Wiley stirred slightly in his sleep. He spent most of his time now dreaming of days gone by. They had that in common. Lately Ruth had spent a good deal of time thinking about the past. She had made so many mistakes along the way, kept too many secrets and now it seemed as if they were all coming home to roost.

  Don't blame yourself, Ruth. How could you have known it would turn out this way?

  Noah and Gracie had been little more than teenagers at the time, barely old enough to drive, much less fall in love. Ruth couldn't have been expected to understand the depth of what they had felt for each other. She couldn't possibly have known the repercussions. Who could blame her for believing it was a teenage romance that time and distance would turn into a dim memory.

  The paper lay open on her lap, folded neatly to the page with Noah's essay.

  I waited at the edge of town for her... the marriage license was tucked in the glove compartment...

  How well she remembered that day. Blazingly hot, too hot even for August. The air had hung heavy as a wet sponge. Simon had been agitated for days since Del's death. She remembered that the doctor had been worrying about him. "Watch him carefully, Ruth. Stress is the worst thing for that heart of his." Oh, how carefully she had watched him. She had watched him fall more deeply into a depression that not even the doctor's strongest mood elevating drugs could touch. "Give it time," she had begged Simon. "You're recovering from a heart attack and major surgery. Your body needs time to heal." But he was beyond hearing her. Del's funeral had cast a bright light on Noah and Gracie. When Noah defended her against her father, their relationship became fodder for town gossip.

  Simon talked endlessly about Noah, about how he could do better than Gracie Taylor, how he owed it to himself to see the world and not settle for some plain little townie with a drunk for a father. Ruth told herself it would blow over in a matter of days. Gracie was getting ready to return to school in Philadelphia. Noah would go back to Boston and see if his father's influence could re-open the doors to B.U. one more time. Life would shift back into a more recognizable pattern.

  When Simon took off in his Town Car that last afternoon, every fiber of Ruth's being had registered alarm and she did something she had never done before, she searched his desk. She wasn't certain what she was looking for but when she discovered a faxed copy of a marriage license in the names Noah Chase and Graciela Taylor on top of the copy machine and the carbon of a withdrawal slip in the amount of ten thousand dollars she knew exactly what Simon was up to.

  She could have done something to stop him. She could see that now with the wisdom of hindsight. She could have headed him off at the bank or followed him to the Taylor house by the docks. But the truth was, she did neither of those things. She sat by the window in the library and she waited while her husband played God with the lives of two good kids who deserved better than the families life had parceled out to them.

  Three hours later, her husband was dead, her son had vanished, and Gracie Taylor had left town for good.

  The fire in the hearth was barely an ember. She considered calling Darnell and asking him to build a new fire but it was the night before Thanksgiving. She was sure he had many other things to do. There had been a time when she could tend to such chores herself without thinking twice about it but those days were gone. She was old now, in body and in spirit, and she was alone.

  There were some people in this world who were meant to be together. She understood that now. You could call it fate or destiny or whatever New Age term you might care to conjure up, but it was a force that should never be trifled with. Simon had turned away from Mona when he was young and acquisitive, more concerned with social status than with love. He found her again in middle age, that dangerous time when a man begins to feel the cold breath of eternity at the back of his neck. Ruth had f
ought back the only way she knew how, with the oldest weapon in a woman's arsenal. She went away for awhile and when she came home they had a son named Noah. A man like Simon might walk away from his wife but he would never walk away from his son. She had counted on that and she had been right.

  She closed her eyes as tears slid quietly down her cheeks. What should have been the happiest time in their lives had been filled instead with anger and bitterness. Simon felt trapped. He wanted to love Noah but he couldn't find it in himself to separate fatherhood from paternity.

  Ruth had always believed that as long as Mona Taylor lived, her marriage didn't stand a chance but she quickly learned that happiness could never spring from tragedy. Mona Taylor's death had breathed life into Ruth's marriage but at a terrible cost. A husband whose heart would never belong to her alone. A son who grew up in boarding schools because his mother didn't want to rock the boat. A widower who found solace in a bottle of booze. A little girl who lived on the fringes of other people's lives.

  She couldn't undo any of it. She wasn't a good enough woman to wish that she could. Her life had been an imperfect one but it had been her choice each step of the way. She had stayed with Simon because she loved him. She would make no apologies for that. But Simon was gone and she was here and her mistakes were settling in around her in a way she could no longer ignore.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He wrote about a Thanksgiving ten years ago, about turkey sandwiches and clam chowder at a little hole-in-the-wall in Plymouth, about watching the snow fall while they cuddled in a booth and talked about their future.

  She wanted four children, two boys and two girls. I said I would settle for six. We would live in a house by the ocean and we would be happy together for the rest of our lives.

  Gracie sat on the edge of her bed Thanksgiving morning and saw it all through Noah's eyes. She hadn't thought about that day in many years. Like so many other days, it had been lost in the daily rush of living and her powerful need to forget. With six hundred perfectly chosen words, Noah had given that snowy Thanksgiving Day back to her, with all of the sights and sounds and smells as real and vibrant as they had been at the time.

  She saw him with Sophie last night. She had been standing in the doorway, looking out at the rain while Rachel pressed some seams when he pulled his rental car into the driveway. The rain had finally stopped and a few stars twinkled tentatively overhead. She closed her eyes for a moment and made a wish, the same wish she had made every night since she was five years old and starting kindergarten. Keep him safe from harm.

  The rhythmic sweep of the lighthouse's beam washed the sky, punctuated by the occasional bleat of a foghorn in the distance. She was half-drunk on the sheer smell of the night, a potent combination of wet leaves and pine and the ever-present smell of the sea.

  He flung open his door then climbed out of the car. She watched, scarcely breathing, as he looked up at the sky. She knew what he was doing. He was wishing on a star too. She had taught him that their first summer together in the shadow of the lighthouse, in their summer of love. It's the same for you, isn't it, Noah? No matter how far we run, this will always be home. He had wanted to see the world, to shrug off the traces of Idle Point and create himself anew. Are you happy, Noah? Is it all you thought it would be?

  She had watched, scarcely breathing, as he opened the back door and, after a minute or two, lifted a sleeping Sophie out of the car. The little girl murmured something—the soft sweet sound lifted and rose on the wind like a prayer—then curled up against Noah's chest. All of her fire, all of her fears, forgotten in the secure circle of her father's embrace. One day when Sophie was all grown up, she would remember that feeling of being deeply loved and she would gain strength from it.

  I see her as she was then, reflected unexpectedly in my daughter, and I want to make things right for both of them...

  Noah didn't know what he was doing, dredging up all of these memories. There could be no happy ending, not the kind of romantic resolution they had dreamed about years ago. He needed to know that and he needed to know why or none of them would ever find happiness. Sophie deserved a family, a real family, with a mother and father who loved her and each other, and that was something that could never happen unless she told Noah the truth.

  Ben knew the truth. He had told her as much yesterday afternoon. She was reasonably certain Ruth Chase suspected the truth as well. She would ask Noah to help her shield them as much as possible but hurting them was a chance they had to take for Sophie's sake.

  #

  One thing Noah had learned since he became an instant daddy three months ago was that Murphy's Law was not only true, it had probably been discovered by a single father. No matter how much time he allotted to getting Sophie ready, he always fell short by at least twenty minutes. He wasn't taking any chances today. He decided to start right after breakfast so they'd have a shot at making it to the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner at three o'clock.

  And it was a good thing he had because it seemed just combing her hair might take most of the day.

  She had pulled another one of those disappearing acts last night that aged him another five years. Not at the First Thanksgiving re-enactment where Sophie had been enthralled by the Pilgrims with their shiny shoe buckles and exaggerated manners, but at the Gazette again. They had stopped at the office so he could knock out his column and when he looked up she was gone. She had left her shoes behind, her coloring book, her sweater, and disappeared. One of the local cops found her peering in the window of Samantha's Bridal where Noah caught up with them..

  After the cop left, Sophie took Noah's hand without any prompting and he understood again why parents would lay down their lives to keep their children safe.

  He had a clear vision of Gracie at that age, reaching up for his mother's hand on the way home from kindergarten. She had looked uncertain at first, then hopeful, and then when his mother took her hand, almost giddy with delight. It hadn't made sense to him at the time. What was so special about holding his mother's hand anyway? His mother's hand was always within reach. It wasn't until he was sent away to St. Luke's that he began to understand what Gracie and Sophie had known almost from birth. The parent-child connection was as deep and wide as the ocean, as mysterious as heaven, as impossible to explain as love. The best he could do was follow his heart and pray.

  "Papa!" Sophie squirmed out of Noah's reach. "Ow!"

  "Sorry, Soph." He kissed the top of her head. "I'll be more careful."

  Her perfect little face contorted into a scowl. "I'm a girl," she reminded him.

  "I know that," he said, barely containing a chuckle. He knew his fierce little girl wouldn't appreciate that one bit. "Hair is very important to girls, isn't it?"

  "Very," she agreed. She twisted around in her chair, trying to see his progress in the mirror.

  "Not bad, huh?" He wasn't above soliciting compliments wherever he could get them.

  She shrugged and he had the feeling she was almost disappointed to see he could cope with a French braid.

  "You know, Soph, your curly hair is so pretty it seems almost a shame to scrape it back into a braid."

  "I like braids," she said. "Marla at school wears her hair braided and everybody likes her."

  Dangerous parenting territory dead ahead. "I'll bet Marla doesn't bite or kick."

  "Maybe she does," Sophie said. "I only met her last month."

  "I remember when I was your age. The popular kids never bit anybody."

  "That was a long time ago."

  "That's true," he said, "but I'll bet it's the same at your school too. I'll bet your friends don't like it when you kick them."

  "No," she said. How a five-year-old managed to sound like the Queen Mother was a mystery to him. "I think they like it quite a bit."

  Okay, so he wasn't Dr. Spock but it was a start.

  #

  The first person Gracie saw when she stepped into Rachel's kitchen was Noah. He was sitting at the counter with So
phie on his lap and the two of them were topping and tailing string beans. She pulled Laquita into the alcove. "I thought you said he wasn't supposed to be here."

  "He wasn't," Laquita said, looking as surprised as Gracie felt. "Ruth must've changed her mind about going out."

  She forced herself to walk over to father and daughter and say hello. "Is this your first Thanksgiving, Sophie?" she asked, making sure she was out of kicking range.

  Sophie nodded. "Uh-huh. The Pilgrims bought the turkey from the Indians."

  "Or something like that," Noah said.

  "I like your dress, " she said to Sophie. "You look very pretty." She looked more than pretty. The child was beautiful with her huge blue eyes and blond curls, both set off perfectly by a sapphire blue velvet jumper and lacy white blouse. Noah's child. The range of emotion she felt made her dizzy.

  "Gracie paid you a compliment, Sophie. What do you say?"

  Sophie thought about it for a moment. "Thank you."

  Rachel motioned to her from across the room. God bless the woman's timing. She offered a fake smile to Noah and his daughter. "Looks like I'm being called to KP duty," she said, then hurried away before either one could say another word.

  "Mrs. C. and Noah and Sophie will be joining us for dinner," Rachel said to Gracie. "I don't know why she changed her mind at the last minute, but I'm so pleased she did. She suggested we use the big dining room so we need to move everything from here to there. We could use an extra pair of hands, if you don't mind."

  Gracie could have kissed Rachel for giving her something to take her mind off her decision to tell Noah everything. She had never been very good at sitting still, especially not when she was feeling uncomfortable or apprehensive. She gratefully disappeared into the smaller dining room and began to gather up the silver ware in a large soft towel. She was admiring a particularly beautiful serving spoon that looked like it belonged at Windsor Castle when she realized Sophie was standing next to her.