At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(13)

He'd been working on a cradle for baby Gracie the day the accident happened. He and Mona had been talking about what kind of stain he should use on the wood just before she kissed him goodbye. If he closed his eyes he could see her as she'd been, lush and womanly with that sweet face and those big dark eyes that turned men into fools. He was no exception. He'd loved her enough to forgive her. He'd loved her enough to stop asking questions. The one thing he hadn't been able to do was love her enough to let her go.

She was taking the baby to the pediatrician for a booster shot of some kind. "Don't forget to buy milk," he had said to her as she went out the door. His last words to her. Don't forget to buy milk.

The chief of police, Joe Winthrop, had broken the news to him. Ben had been cleaning some paintbrushes in a mayonnaise jar filled with turpentine when he heard Joe's squad car crunching across the gravel driveway. He'd laid the brushes down on top of some newspaper, wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, and stepped out of the garage to see what Joe wanted. It was unusually hot that day in Idle Point. He'd never seen a May as hot as this one. They all said it was going to be a wicked summer. The sun was high in the sky and he shielded his eyes with the back of his hand. His skin smelled like turpentine. He still remembered that fact. Even when he couldn't remember his own name, he remembered the dizzying smell of turpentine.

"What brings you out this way, Joe?" he asked, moving toward him. "Is it lunchtime already?" Mona had said she and the baby would be home by noon. He glanced up. The sun was directly overhead but leaning westward. "You're mighty quiet today."

Joe's face seemed to fall in on itself. "Jesus," Joe said and his voice cracked on the word, tore itself right in two. "Jesus, Ben, I—"

Mona's purse, the straw one with the leather cords. Joe was holding Mona's purse in his hand.

"I'm sorry," Joe said. Those were the last words Ben remembered for a very long time.

He viewed the rest of it as if it had happened to someone else. The crushing pain of those first few days came close to killing him. A part of him wished it had. He wouldn't talk about a funeral, wouldn't let them start digging a grave at the old cemetery behind the church, wouldn't even care for his own daughter. The talk swirled all around him, white-hot and ugly. Mona was leaving him... somebody saw her at the outskirts of town... she had a suitcase all packed and in the trunk... poor Ben... poor poor little Gracie...

He curled himself around a bottle of Scotch they kept in the cupboard above the refrigerator and he tried to drink himself into oblivion.

He'd been working on that steadily ever since.

"Don't look now," said his mother Del when the show ended and they were waiting for Gracie, "but here comes trouble."

He turned his head in the direction Del indicated and saw Nora Fahey gliding toward them. Nora was a good-looking woman if you liked them racehorse lean and edgy. She had long dark blond hair parted in the middle, tucked behind ears that sported long dangly silver earrings. She wore a fisherman's sweater, a long gauzy skirt, and a denim jacket that looked like it had belonged to somebody else. He and Nora had been sleeping together since the night back in October when they hooked up at Rusty's over a game of eight ball. She taught art at the high school, owned six cats, and was looking to get married. He'd made two mistakes since Mona's death and he wasn't looking to make a third but sometimes not even booze could ease the ache inside his heart. He'd been sober since Thanksgiving and was trying hard to make it to the New Year. He didn't want to rush into anything, not this time. He was getting close to fifty and the mistakes were harder to undo.

The thing about being sober was that it made you see things you didn't want to see. Booze was a cloud of forgiveness between you and everything ugly. Booze was better than the confessional. It absolved your sins before you even had the chance to commit them.

Sober, he had to face up to the fact that he was flushing his life down the toilet. Taylor Construction was a joke. A name on the door of a truck. If he fielded six calls a year, that was cause for celebration. Add to that the fact that the kid needed a mother and Del needed to quit working for those bastards on the hill and you had a life pretty well f*cked up beyond repair.

Nora kissed him lightly then said hello to Del. His mother, never one for small talk, turned away.

"Gracie was wonderful," Nora said, linking her arm through his.

He nodded. "Came as a surprise to me." So did the fact that she was growing up.