At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)

by Bretton, Barbara

  Noah held out his right hand to Gracie and she took it. Their fingers laced together automatically, the way they had when they were young and newly in love. Nothing had changed. Not the jolt of recognition she felt each time they touched. Not the sense that they were meant to be together forever. He helped Gracie to her feet and they stood close together, foreheads touching, bodies shielding Sophie from the wind as if they had been watching out for her all of her life.

  "Thank you," he said, as the bitter taste of broken dreams filled his throat. "I couldn't have—"

  "We're still a great team," she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

  "It's not enough. I want us to be together. I want—"

  "I know," she whispered, "but we can still be a part of each other's life, Noah. Maybe not the way we wanted but—"

  He leaned forward and kissed her one last time, long and sweet and desperate. "I love you, Gracie. Nothing they throw at us will ever change that."

  "We'd better get Sophie home," Gracie said, taking a step back from the dream. "She needs some warm dry clothes and a cup of hot chocolate."

  He took her hand and they made their way back to the house.

  Storm set up a cheer when she saw them dashing across the driveway with Sophie and the next thing they knew they were surrounded by people, all thanking God and good fortune that Sophie was safe. Ruth stepped out of the shadows near Laquita's car and touched a gentle hand to her sleeping granddaughter's cheek. She had touched Gracie's cheek that way, too, a long time ago.

  "Look at the lot of you!" Rachel exclaimed. "We need to get you all into warm tubs and dry clothing."

  "I'm fine," Gracie said. "I think I'll just head home."

  "You can't go home yet," Rachel said. "You're drenched and shivering."

  "I really should get back," Gracie said. "Ben will be wondering where I am."

  "No, Gracie!" The voice was loud and clear; the tone brooked no argument. "You're not leaving yet."

  Everyone turned to stare at Ruth. They had never heard her use that tone of voice before.

  "What I mean," Ruth said, "is that I'd like you to say a little longer, Gracie. I want to talk to you and Noah once you've changed into dry clothes."

  "I don't think that's necessary," Gracie said, edging toward Laquita's car.

  "Please," Ruth said, looking from Gracie to Noah. "There is something I need to say."

  #

  Ruth took a steadying sip of whiskey while she waited for Noah and Gracie to change into dry clothes. There was no turning back this time. She had made a pact with God and God didn't look kindly on people who reneged on a deal. No matter what else she had done wrong in her life, this was one thing she intended to get right.

  "There's hot chocolate for you on the desk," she told Gracie when she arrived. She repeated the same to Noah two minutes later.

  They looked so bereft, so terribly sad that she thought her heart would break. What had she done to them? What had she allowed Simon to do?

  She took a deep breath then went straight to the heart of the matter. "You asked a question before, Noah, one about paternity. I had started to answer when the commotion with Sophie began. I'd like to finish my answer, if you don't mind."

  "That isn't necessary," Gracie said and Noah concurred. "We know the truth. Now we have to find a way to live with it."

  Ruth arched a brow. "Will you let me tell my story?

  Gracie's cheeks reddened. "Of course."

  "You asked me a question, Noah," she continued, "and the answer is no. Simon was not Gracie's father." She turned to Gracie. "He lied to you, honey, and I'm so sorry I didn't tell you this a long time ago." Simon died. Gracie and Noah left Idle Point. The years flew by and after awhile Ruth convinced herself that anything Simon might have said or done no longer mattered. Surely her son and Mona's daughter had moved onto other loves by now.

  But then Noah returned with Sophie in tow and Gracie came home for Ben's wedding and only a bitter woman, blind to the ways of the heart, could miss seeing that their love for each other had never died.

  Gracie leaned forward and rested her forehead on her knees. She was having trouble taking in the enormity of the statement as a thousand what-if's pummeled her emotions into suspended animation. If only she had stayed long enough to ask questions. If only she had demanded that the adults in her life account for their actions. If only she had been a little older, a little tougher, a little harder to undermine. Oh, Simon had read his opponent well. She had been too young, too brokenhearted to do anything but exactly what he had wanted her to do: walk out of Noah's life—and his—forever.

  "He had an affair with Gracie's mother after you were married, didn't he?" Noah asked. His emotions weren't in suspended animation; they were there on his sleeve for the world to see.

  "A love affair," Ruth said. "Yes, he did."

  "So it's possible—"

  "No," Ruth said with great certainty. "It isn't possible."

  Gracie was almost afraid to breathe deeply for fear she might pop this wonderful soap bubble of hope. She reached for Noah's hand and held on tight. "How can you be sure?"

  Ruth's eyes darted toward Noah and a prickle of alarm ran up Gracie's spine. "Because, you see, Simon was sterile." A childhood case of mumps had left him unable to father a child, something he had neglected to tell his wife.

  Noah flinched but he didn't look away or let go of Gracie's hand. "So I'm adopted." A statement, not a question.

  Ruth shook her head, looking older and more tired than Gracie had ever seen her.

  "You're my child," she said. "Simon and I separated for awhile a long time ago. I left Idle Point and went to live in New York. I was seeing a wonderful man, an artist named Michael Shanahan. He was the friend of a friend of mine and he swept me off my feet. He was everything Simon wasn't: warm and considerate and focused solely on me. I wasn't careful about birth control. All those years I had believe our childlessness was my fault but it wasn't. I called Simon when I found out I was pregnant and I asked for a divorce. He refused. He told me that he loved me, and that he wanted me back. He would raise my child as his own. What I didn't know was that Mona had just told him she was pregnant with Gracie and determined to make her marriage work. She loved your father, Gracie, and in the end, it was your father she chose to be with."

  She was quiet for a minute or two. "I was always Simon's second choice, but he was the love of my life. I knew he would never love me the way I loved him but it didn't matter. Our lives were bound together and always would be." She left Michael and went back to Simon and they picked up their life together where they had left off.

  "What about Michael Shanahan?" Noah's voice was thick with emotion. "What happened to him?"

  "Michael is a dear friend," Ruth said softly. "Little did I know that our lives would remain bound together as well." She motioned toward a fabric-covered box resting on the lamp table to her right. "Everything you need to know is in there," she said. Years of letters and notes, newspaper clippings, gallery reviews, wedding and birth announcements. Michael Shanahan married two years after Ruth left him and was now the father of three daughters who shared his love of art and music. She saw the question in Noah's eyes. "He knows all about you, your years at St. Luke's, Sophie—" She stopped for a moment. "He told me that you deserved the whole story. It was something I already knew, but hearing him say it—and seeing you and Gracie with Sophie—gave me the courage at last."

  She reached into the pocket of her heavy hand-knit sweater and removed a small white card. "This is Michael's address and phone number. He would like nothing more than to hear from you, Noah. If you choose not to, he'll understand, but I know how much you mean to him."

  "If I mean so much, why didn't he ever get in touch with me?"

  "Because I asked him not to," Ruth said, her voice heavy. "For Simon's sake, as well as for my own."

  For almost thirty years Michael Shanahan had followed his son's life from a distance. In time, he fell in love again and st
arted a family, but a part of his heart would always belong to his first child, the son he had never met.

  Simon was the only father Noah had ever known, but it was Michael's blood that flowed through his veins. Who could say which connection was more important? Both men had had the right to claim Noah as their son, but neither had been able to love the child the way he deserved to be loved, openly and unconditionally. That loss had left shadows on Noah's soul that Ruth could never erase.

  Next to Noah, Gracie cried softly. Ruth wished she could. Anything would be better than the heavy ache of regret inside her chest. But she pushed forward. The time for ducking the truth was long past.

  "You have his smile, Noah. When I look at you, I see the man who gave me the most precious gift in the world."

  "You waited a long time to tell me."

  "Yes, I did," she said, "and I'm sorry for that." It would take an even longer time to tell the entire story, to make her son understand that sometimes mistakes were made in the name of love and family, mistakes a mother would give her life to undo if only she could.

  In the end Simon had made a grand gesture toward reconciliation but hadn't the generosity of spirit necessary to see it through. Simon never managed to forgive Ruth for her transgression, same as he never managed to forgive Gracie for her very existence. He had loved Noah in his own way and taken great delight in showing off the child but before long the truth of Noah's paternity began to color everything. Ultimately, Noah and Gracie came to represent all that had gone wrong in Simon's own life and when they found each other, something inside him had snapped.

  "Simon was a very proud man," Ruth said. "I learned early on in our marriage to keep his secrets to myself and over the years I became quite good at keeping some of my own." She looked from Noah to Gracie. "Too good, I'm afraid. I wish I could give back to you the eight years you lost but I'm afraid that's beyond my ability. The best I can do is tell you both that I love you and I pray that now that you know the truth, you'll be able to find your way back to each other. There is nothing that would make me happier." She rose from her chair and, leaning heavily on the cane, she left the room.

  #

  Noah and Gracie sat alone in the library for a long time, holding hands like survivors of a shipwreck. She was his anchor. He was her home. Nothing else mattered. Not the secrets or the sorrows, not even the eight years they had lost along the way.

  "The first time I saw Sophie, she was sitting in a lawyer's office," he said. "I walked through the doorway and she looked up at me and I knew there was nothing I wouldn't do to keep her safe from harm." There had been no blood tests, no proof of paternity, only the deepest knowledge that this was where the fates meant him to be. "The lawyers said that we needed blood tests, that proof was required before they handed her over to me, but it didn't matter to me what the tests said. I knew she was mine." He told Gracie of the little girl's courage, the way she'd sat there and watched him with eyes that were far too old, and waited for him to determine her future. "I never want her to doubt that she's loved."

  They both knew how it felt to be small and powerless, wondering why it was so hard to make their fathers love them. Sophie would grow up secure in the knowledge that she had a mother and father who loved her and who would slay dragons to keep her safe and happy. Parents whose love for each other would be the foundation upon which their family would be built.

  There would be time for anger, for discovery, for healing. There would be time for forgiveness.

  This moment, however, belonged to Noah and Gracie and to the future that suddenly loomed before them, golden and theirs for the taking. A future even brighter than the one they had dreamed about when they were young and newly in love.

  They listened to the sounds of the old house as it settled down for the night. Soft voices from other floors. Footsteps padding down long halls. Sophie's laughter. Ruth's low murmur. Bathtubs running, doors closing, the sighing sounds of a family at rest.

  "This is how I want our house to sound one day," Noah said.

  Gracie leaned over and kissed him on the shoulder. "I think you need a big family to get that particular sound."

  "I'm game if you are."

  She pretended to consider the idea. "Nine kids might be a bit much for me."

  "We could compromise at eight," he said, not cracking a smile.

  "I was thinking six."

  "Seven," he said, "but that's my final offer."

  "Much better," she said. "Seven's a walk in the park."

  "Papa! Gracie!" Sophie called down to them from the second floor landing. "You must come tuck me in!"

  "Be right there, Soph!" Noah called back to her.

  Gracie's heart was suddenly three sizes larger than it had been just moments ago. "I've been thinking about what your mother said about the years we lost," she said, choosing her words with great care. "You know I would give anything to get back those years but not if it meant losing Sophie."

  He met her eyes. "Not too many women would say that about walking into a ready-made family."

  "We have a lot of time to make up for," she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Why not get a head start?"

  Life was about compromise. They had lost eight years but gained a miracle, a child who needed their love as much as she needed oxygen. Little did Sophie know that they needed her even more. Sophie was their chance to get it right, to love a child the way all children deserved to be loved, with constancy and respect. They both knew how it felt to be on the outside of family life, looking in, and they would see to it that Sophie never felt that way again. They would create a home that endured.

  Family bonds were forged in many ways. Some were forged by blood; some by circumstance. If you were very lucky, the bonds were forged by love.

  "I'm waiting!" Sophie called down to them and they looked at each other and started to laugh.

  Still holding hands, they climbed the stairs to the second floor and went to check on their daughter.

  Epilogue

  Christmas Day—the lighthouse

  "Tell me again," Sophie said. "Do I throw them or drop them?"

  Gracie knelt down next to Sophie and took a handful of rose petals from the basket looped over the little girl's arm. "You scatter them like this." Rose petals fell at their feet in a graceful arc. "See? All you have to do is walk very slowly and scatter the petals into the wind."

  "Storm told me that flower girls are terribly important." Sophie's expression was quite serious as befit the subject. "She said that weddings aren't weddings without them."

  "Storm is right," Gracie said. "I don't think your daddy and I could possibly get married today if we didn't have you here to lead the way."

  Sophie's sober expression broke apart into a smile that turned Gracie's heart inside out. Lately that had been happening at least ten times a day. It seemed that her heart had an infinite capacity for love. The more she loved Noah and Sophie, the more love she had to give to everyone else who crossed her path. Why hadn't anyone ever told her about this amazing phenomenon or was everyone meant to discover it in her own way.

  Ruth appeared in the doorway. She was dressed in a bright red wool coat with a huge corsage made up of red poinsettia and white roses pinned to her left shoulder. It fairly screamed "mother of the groom" and made Gracie smile every time she saw it.

  "Father Tom wants to know if you're ready," Ruth said as she smoothed a hand over her granddaughters' mass of shiny blond curls. "The wind died down and he would like to take advantage of it."

  "We're ready," Gracie said and the two women met eyes over Sophie's head.

  "You look so beautiful, Gracie."

  Gracie blushed and did a pirouette that made Sophie giggle. "Rachel and the girls really outdid themselves on this one, didn't they?" The dress was floor-length and slim, high-necked with long tight sleeves and a fitted bodice. Laquita, a newlywed now herself, had embroidered seed pearls on the mandarin collar and along the turn-back cuffs.

  "The dres
s is lovely," Ruth said, "but you're the beautiful one." She took a deep breath then continued in a rush. "You've always been special to me, honey. I'm so happy to be part of your family."

  There had been a barrier between them since the night Ruth told her and Noah the truth. It was never easy to discover that one of your idols was only a mortal woman after all. Ruth's decisions, born of loyalty and love, had changed the course of their lives. But each time Gracie felt the pain of those lost years, she looked at Sophie's sweet face and the love she felt for the child made her regret and anger fall away. It hadn't been so easy for Noah. It would take a lot of hard work to re-establish a relationship with his mother but the fact that both Noah and Ruth were willing to work on it bode well for a happy future for all of them.

  Gracie reached out her hand and a second later the two women were hugging while Sophie tugged at Gracie's skirt, eager to be included. "Mommy," she said, "don't forget about me."

  Gracie bent down and kissed the top of her head. "As if that could happen."

  "Hate to break up this gabfest," Ben said as he too appeared in the doorway, "but it' s time we got this show on the road."

  Ruth hurried outside to claim her place near the makeshift altar.

  "Ready?" Gracie asked Sophie who was beginning to look a little nervous.

  Sophie nodded. "I'm ready."

  "Good luck, little lady," Ben said as Sophie straightened her tiny shoulders and straightened her basket of petals. "We'll be right behind you."

  Sophie nodded. "I shall do my best, grandfather," she said then marched out the door.

  "Grandfather," Ben said with a shake of his head. "I kind of like the sound of it."

  "I'm kind of partial to mommy myself," Gracie said. "We've come a long way, Dad. I'm glad you're here with me today."

  "No place else I'd rather be." He cleared his throat, the classic male prelude to an emotional statement. "Your mother would be proud of you, Graciela," he said, his voice cracking in the middle of the sentence. "Just as proud as I am."