At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)

by Bretton, Barbara

  "Whatever it is, it's between them," Ruth said primly in an attempt to hide her own complicity. "I wouldn't dare ask either one of them about it."

  "Not suggesting you should," Jim said easily. "Just making conversation."

  Ruth slipped off her reading glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry if I sounded sharp, Jim. The holidays stir up a lot of old memories, some of which are better left undisturbed."

  "Don't I know it," he said, rising to his feet. "It's just when it comes to Gracie, I can't seem to help hoping for the best."

  "I feel the same way," she said. "About both of them."

  "I just wish there was something I could do to make things right." He bent down and kissed her on the left cheek. "Guess it's best left in the hands of God."

  Ruth sat staring into the fire for a long time after Jim said goodnight, wishing she had the courage to try and make things right but the thought of disturbing the graves of so many long-buried secrets was more than she could contemplate.

  If Noah and Gracie were meant to be, they would find their way to each other without any help.

  #

  For the first time in the three months he'd known Sophie, Noah felt some of the tension leave his body. It was the sound of her laughter that did it. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard it before, certainly not so much of it or so freely given.

  Noah went to place Sophie in the warm tub but she wanted Gracie to do it.

  "Are you a poodle?" Gracie teased his daughter.

  "No!"

  "Are you a cocker spaniel?"

  "No!"

  "Then I'm not sure I know how to give you a bath."

  A moment later Sophie was immersed in bubbles with nothing but her heart-shaped face and halo of blond curls visible.

  "You'd better take your coat off," Noah suggested to Gracie. "She splashes."

  Gracie looked surprised. "My coat! I completely forgot I was wearing it."

  She shrugged it off and hung it from the hook behind the door. "Now where were we?" She pushed her sleeves up over her elbows. "That's right. I was going to bathe a cat."

  Sophie loved every second of it. Gracie claimed no prior knowledge of bathing young children but she handled it like a pro. Certainly a hell of a lot better than he had his first time around. She made sure no soap got in Sophie's eyes. She protected her ears with tiny wads of cotton. And when the bath was over she rinsed Sophie squeaky clean then wrapped her in the biggest, warmest towel she could find.

  "Do you have a blow dryer?" she asked Noah.

  He removed one from the vanity beneath the sink.

  "Oh good," said Gracie. "It has a diffuser."

  "A diffuser?"

  "See this?" She pointed toward the wide attachment over the mouth of the dryer. "That's for curly hair."

  "Yes, papa," said Sophie. "Everyone knows that."

  "First I've heard of it," he muttered then stepped back into the shadows where he belonged.

  Gracie put the dryer on the lowest setting and in no time at all Sophie's hair was a mass of shiny sweet-smelling curls. There had always been a sadness about Gracie even during her happiest moments but the air of sadness about her that night was almost palpable. The look in her eyes when Sophie took her hand for the walk from the bathroom to the bedroom would stay with Noah for a long time.

  "You look beautiful, mademoiselle," Gracie said as Sophie did a pirouette in her pink terrycloth bathrobe.

  "Okay, Soph," he said, as he slipped her prettiest nightgown over her head, "time for bed."

  "No!" She stomped one tiny bare foot on the thick pale pink carpet. "Not yet!"

  "It's late," he said, "and you've had a long day."

  "No, I haven't."

  "Sophie, I'm telling you—

  "No!"

  Gracie quietly went into the bathroom and when she came out she was wearing her big floppy coat.

  "Don't go!" Sophie cried out. "I don't want you to leave."

  "And I don't want to leave," Gracie said calmly, "but if you and your daddy are going to fight, I think I'll go home."

  "I don't want to fight with Papa."

  "Remember when we talked about how sometimes grown-ups talk real loud because they think that's the only way they can be heard?"

  Sophie nodded.

  "That's what you were doing."

  Sophie looked up at him with big teary blue eyes and he was tempted to run out to Toys R Us and buy her a dozen Barbie's Dream Houses to make her smile again.

  "Gracie's right, Soph," he said instead. "But we're both learning, aren't we?"

  Sophie was quick to anger but equally quick to forget what she had been so angry about. A moment later he had her laughing again and she was still laughing when he tucked her into bed. He read her another scene from a Harry Potter book while Gracie gently stroked her hair. Then it was Gracie's turn and she told Sophie a story about her brand new cat Pyewacket and his adventures on the road from New York City to Idle Point that actually had Noah sitting on the edge of his seat.

  Sophie's eyelids fluttered closed. They waited a moment and then when they were sure she was asleep, starting to tiptoe from the room.

  "Does Pyewacket ever go home to New York?" Sophie called out as they reached the door.

  "I don't know yet," Gracie said, glancing at Noah. "Pye will have to let me know."

  Sophie yawned. "What about my seagull? Did you and Doctor Jim make him all better?"

  #

  Gracie's heart sank to her feet. She had been waiting for this question and when it hadn't come by lights out, she'd thought they were home-free.

  "Did he—?" Noah whispered.

  "Yes," she said. "I don't want to lie to her."

  "I don't want you to either."

  It was a small thing but she deserved the truth.

  "The gull was hurt very badly, honey," Gracie said, crouching down at the side of Sophie's bed. "Doctor Jim and I did everything we could to make him comfortable."

  "Is he all better?"

  "We lost him, Sophie. I'm so sorry. We tried our best but he was hurt too badly for us to be able to save him."

  "You mean he's gone?"

  "Yes, honey."

  "Then I should go find him."

  "No, Soph, you don't have to do that," Noah bent down to talk to her. "What Gracie's saying is that the gull died."

  Sophie thought about that for a moment. Neither Gracie nor Noah knew just how well she understood the concept of death.

  "Where is my seagull now?"

  "Doctor Jim has him," Gracie said. "He'll take him back to the beach where he belongs." Nature was unforgiving, at best, but there was comfort to be found in the notion of life renewing itself. At five-and-a-half, Sophie was too young to understand that concept but in time she would.

  They waited until Sophie's eyes grew heavy a second time, then slipped from the room. Sophie's pink nightlight was on. Its faint glow spilled out into the darkened hallway. The house seemed very quiet after the Thanksgiving Day commotion.

  "Listen," Gracie said, tilting her head to the right. "Not a sound. She's out like a light."

  His face was inches away from hers. The look in his eyes was filled with both pain and wonder. "You were great with her."

  "I think we speak the same language."

  "She's had it rough," he said. "She's been passed around since the day she was born then some guy from another country comes along and says, 'I'm your father, kid,' and takes her across the ocean."

  "She's lucky you found her. You'll give her the family she deserves."

  "No," he said. "I'm the one who's lucky. She's the one good thing to happen to me since I lost you."

  "It hurts so much, Noah," she whispered, her voice breaking. He was so close she could smell the dried sea spray on his skin. "When you told me she was your daughter, I hurt so much I thought I was going to die."

  "Now you know," he said, his tone fierce with rage and longing. "That's what you did to me, Gracie, when you left me."r />
  "I never wanted to hurt you. That's the last thing I wanted to do. I was scared. I didn't know which way to turn. I did the only thing I could do. I had no choice. It was the only option left to me."

  "I pushed too hard," he said, his mouth only inches from hers. "I asked you to give up everything you'd worked for. I wanted you all for myself."

  "No, no, that's not what I mean... oh God, this is so hard... seeing you again... seeing you with Sophie—"

  They fell into each other's arms as if that was the only safe place on earth to be. And maybe it was. Their kisses were open-mouthed and hungry, hot and wet and impossible to deny. She wanted to taste every inch of his body. She wanted to bite the flesh of his inner thigh and mark him as her own. Years of longing erupted and she was on fire for him. She knew it was wrong. She knew there could be no future for them. She knew it all but she didn't care. She wanted this one night, this one gift to hold onto for the rest of her life.

  He pressed her against the wall, trapped her there with his body, his hands, his heart. She clung to him, desperate for more, more of his kisses, his touch, everything he had and was or would ever be.

  He was a half-step away from madness. Her slender curves hidden inside that foolish coat awoke a thousand memories. She had been so excited, so eager, so unbearably lovely that first time. He carried those images with him every day of his life. He'd dreamed of holding her again, tasting her skin, hearing her soft cries. And now there she was, in his arms, and he wasn't dreaming. She moved against him, on fire and unashamed, matching him in passion and love and need, all she had been before and more, so much more, because now he knew how it felt to be without her. At once he saw her as she was and as she had been, past and present coming together in a blaze of anger and love and desire that almost brought him to his knees.

  "I love you," she murmured, her lips hot against the base of his throat. "I've never stopped loving you."

  He pushed the coat off her shoulders, unbuttoned her sweater. "I've never loved anyone but you, Gracie. Never..."

  "Those stories... the things you wrote... so beautiful..."

  "I remember everything about you... everything—" Every breath she took, every word she had uttered. He remembered it all.

  Rachel's voice drifted up the staircase. They needed to be alone, away from the world. He swept Gracie up into his arms and carried her down the hallway to his room, three doors down. The bedroom was dark. He reached for the lamp but Gracie stopped him.

  "They'll see the light," she whispered as he stripped off her clothes then shed his own.

  They were greedy for each other, avid, intoxicated by the feel of bare skin against bare skin, the wonder of touch. Words of love spiraled between them, striking sparks in the darkness. Their bodies were strange and yet familiar; the rhythm of love was part sense memory, part miracle. He needed all that she had to give, to find the other half of his heart. She needed to make him part of her body the same way he had been part of her heart and soul for as long as she could remember.

  Remember... remember this moment...

  Remember the way he looked in the moonlit bedroom. Remember the words he murmured against her skin. Remember how it felt to be happy again.

  Remember the moment when he pulsed deep inside her body, holding her as if he would never let her go, the way her body answered his with a fierce shattering of her defenses that was triumphant and heartbreaking all at the same time because she knew it could never happen again.

  #

  He unfurled the future for her like a flag of silk. The fact that they would have a future seemed like a miracle to him, like the first snowfall or a baby's smile. They had been handed a second chance and he wasn't about to waste a moment of it.

  Words poured from his mouth the way they had poured from his fingers onto the keyboard. She was the key to everything. Without Gracie by his side, life was nothing more than a counting down of the days. He created castles in the air for her, castles with a foundation of unshakable love, and after a bit he realized that she lay curled on the bed next to him but she hadn't said anything at all.

  "Gracie?" He rolled on his side and looked at her through the darkness. "Is something wrong?" He reached out and touched her cheek. It was damp with tears. "Did I hurt you?"

  She took his face between her hands and ran her thumbs across his cheekbones, down to the corners of his mouth. "I love you so much," she said. "Nothing will ever change that."

  He felt the icy breath of fear against the back of his neck. "What is it?" Eight years was a long time to be apart from the one you love. He knew nothing about that time. "You can tell me anything."

  "I tried to find the nerve to tell you all day but there was one interruption after the other." She sat up straight with her back against the headboard. "I don't know. Maybe I was looking for a reason not to tell you at all."

  "This is about that day, isn't it?"

  "Yes." The look in her eyes scared him. Sadness was in her eyes and regret. She drew in a deep breath and the sound struck him like a physical blow. "Your father knew about us. A friend at the courthouse in Portland sent him a copy of our marriage license."

  The icy breath grew colder still. "How did you find out?"

  She clasped her hands together but her fingers still shook. "He came to my house that afternoon. He told me we were all wrong for each other, that I would only hold you back—"

  "But you were the one with the ambitions. I—"

  She wouldn't let him continue. If she stopped, she would never manage to say the words and she needed to say them more than anything in the world. "He knew me, Noah. He knew what made me tick. But I wouldn't give in. I told him I loved you, that I would make you happy, that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. He even tried to buy me off, as if money was the one thing I couldn't refuse but I wouldn't give an inch."

  Noah leaned back against the pillow as the story took shape in front of him. He'd found his father parked along the side of the road not far from the docks where Gracie lived. Simon's dying words had been about Gracie. Why hadn't he realized that before?

  "Did he threaten you? What did he say that made you run?"

  "He told me about my mother, that they loved each other." Her voice broke and the sound tore at Noah's heart. "He said they were going to leave their spouses, take me and run away. They were only forty, he said, still young enough to build a new life. I didn't want to believe him but all the bits and pieces suddenly started to fit together, all those things about my life that had never made sense before—"

  "Spit it out," he demanded, as fear downshifted into anger. "What does any of that have to do with us? I don't give a damn what happened between them. All I want to know is what made you throw away our dreams."

  "Oh God, Noah, don't you see?" She knelt in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Simon was my father too."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Her words tumbled around inside his head like Scrabble tiles.

  "Say that again." Maybe if he heard the words a second time, he'd be able to make sense out of them.

  She was crying. He saw that. He understood that. She knelt in front of him, knees sinking into the mattress, her slender body illuminated by a thin ribbon of moonlight spilling through the window.

  Then she said it again. "Simon Chase was my father, too."

  His father. Her mother. Years of secrets and lies and plans that ended on a sunny afternoon in May when Mona Taylor died.

  "It doesn't make sense," he said, struggling to find one shred of sanity in the sordid mess. "If you were his child, why did he hate you so much?" He remembered his father's withering sarcasm whenever Gracie's name was mentioned. His seething resentment of his cook's grandchild had always seemed out of whack to Noah. "You were all he had left of the woman he loved. You should have been—"

  "He blamed me. I was the reason she stayed in her marriage. My birth brought her and Ben back together. Don't you see? In Simon's eyes, it was my fault and he hat
ed me for it."

  "Why didn't you come and tell me?"

  "Your father was a very powerful man, Noah. He told me he would ruin what was left of Ben's life, break your mother's heart, and—" she hesitated a moment "—he said he would cut you off without a penny."

  "Do you really think I gave a damn about his money?"

  "No, but we were so young, Noah! He was going to take school away from you, everything that was part of your life. I knew what it was like to be poor but you hadn't a clue. How could I do that to you?"

  "Are you sure you weren't looking out for yourself?"

  His words stung like a slap. "I think you know the answer to that."

  "There was money involved. I heard the stories."

  "Ten thousand dollars cash," she said without hesitation. "He left it in an envelope on the kitchen table. I found it when I was leaving the notes for you and for Ben." She told him about Old Eb and his surprise. "I like to think he had himself a good time on it."

  In a twisted way, everything she had said made sense. Each piece fit perfectly with the piece next to it and the pieces above and below.

  He swung his legs from the bed. "Get dressed."

  She stared up at him as if she'd never seen him before. "What did you say?"

  "Get dressed. We're going to talk to my mother about this."

  "No!" She leaped from the bed and faced him. "Leave Ruth out of it. I don't want her to be hurt by this."

  "I need some answers and she's the only one who might be able to give them."

  "You can't do this, Noah. She's old. She hasn't been well. You can't throw the past at her this way. What if she doesn't know?"

  He pulled on his pants and sweater, jammed his feet into his shoes. "Then I'm afraid she's about to find out. This is the rest of our life we're talking about, Gracie. Don't you need to finally hear the whole story?"

  The last thing Gracie wanted was to hear the whole story in all of its sordid detail but Noah was out of his mind with anger and pain. She'd never seen him this way before. This Noah hadn't existed when they were young and their future stretched out before them, bathed in the golden light of innocence. She quickly slipped back into her clothes and ran down the hall after him.