At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(12)

She was surprised to find Noah's mommy sitting at the kitchen table with two other women. They were all smoking cigarettes and a cup of coffee sat on the table in front of each of them. The two women looked a lot like Laquita's mommy with the same wide green eyes and curly hair. They even dressed like her in hand-me-downs that made Gracie think of old movies from back in the Sixties. Mrs. Chase's fancy dark blue coat had slipped off the back of her chair and fallen to the floor where one of Laquita's baby brothers had claimed it for a blanket. Gracie would have figured Mrs. Chase would hate all that baby slobber on her coat but she didn't seem to mind one bit. She even reached down to make sure the baby was covered with one of the sleeves. Gramma Del would have done something just like that.

"We'll be leaving in five minutes," Mrs. Chase called to them as they trooped out the back door after Laquita. Then she said something low that made the other two women laugh. Noah looked started by the sound, as if he had never heard his mother laugh before.

They followed Laquita out to the shed where a mama cat named Moses greeted them with a loud meow while her five kittens answered back from their cozy straw-lined bed in the corner. "Moses was supposed to be a boy," Laquita said, cuddling the large grey cat, "but she fooled us when she had babies."

Noah and Gracie looked at each other then laughed when they realized Laquita thought it was funny too.

"You're lucky," Gracie said. "Now you get to have kittens."

"Unh-uh." Laquita shook her head. "Mommy says we have to find someone to adopt them."

"I know what that is," Gracie said. "You go to the place where they keep the lost pets and you take one home with you and take care of it forever."

"You could have a kitten if you want," Laquita said.

Gracie's heart beat so fast that it hurt. "Really?"

"Sure. You can pick which ever you want."

Gracie knew right away which kitten was the right one: the little white-and-grey one sitting alone in the corner of the box, looking like Gracie felt sometimes.

"He's so tiny!" She cradled the kitten against her chest. "His eyes are all wet. Does he have a cold?"

Laquita didn't know and neither did Noah.

But that was okay. Gracie would keep the kitten cozy and dry. She would feed him warm milk from a teaspoon and sneak him scraps from her dinner the way the children in her storybooks cared for stray cats. She would make him all better and love him and take care of him just like her mother would have cared for her if God hadn't called her back to heaven.





Chapter Three





Gracie wasn't the prettiest little girl on stage or the most talented. Ben Taylor didn't want to notice that but he couldn't help it. She had never captured all of his heart, not since those heady first weeks after her birth when he'd still believed in miracles. He sat in the third row of the Idle Point Elementary School auditorium on the Friday before Christmas and watched as Gracie, dressed in shepherd's robes and carrying a staff, looked up toward the sky. "Behold!" she said in a clear, sweet voice. "A star rises in the east!"

It seemed to Ben that she'd been a baby the last time he'd looked at her. He turned away for just a moment and the baby was gone, replaced by the child who stood before him. He'd spent most of her life swimming through a sea of booze, doing everything he could to blunt the sharp bite of pain that followed him through his days. She was so quiet around the house that he sometimes forgot she was there, a little mouse who spent her time with her nose in a book. He'd thought she was looking at the pictures but Del said she'd been reading for almost a year.

He wasn't one for books. He'd rather work with his hands. Back in the early years of his marriage to Mona, he'd always had five or six projects in the works at any one time. Cupboards for her collections, toy boxes for the family they were trying to start. As the years went on and the children didn't arrive, he spent more time on cabinetry, more time away from the house and the pain that seemed to be everywhere.

Then one day in the twentieth year of their marriage, Mona told him she was pregnant. From the ashes of their dreams, they had their miracle. Six months later, Graciela Marie Taylor was pushed kicking and screaming from the world of angels and into his heart. She has your eyes, Mona said, and oh how he'd wanted to believe that. Everyone in town wondered about the truth. He saw it on their faces when he shot the breeze with the folks down at the coffee shop next door to the Gazette. He saw it every time Simon Chase walked by.