At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(17)
And Gramma answered the way she always answered, "Because he's going to boarding school in New Hampshire, missy."
The answer made no sense to Gracie. Why would your parents want you to live far away at a sleepover school when you already had a gigantic room of your own and every toy in the Sears catalog. For a few weeks, Gracie badgered Gramma Del with the same questions about why Noah had to go away until Gramma Del finally said, "Because he's rich," then turned back to the dish-filled kitchen sink.
She never forgot Noah. The years passed but the memory of those afternoons spent with the blue-eyed golden boy who lived in the big house on the hill never dimmed. Sometimes she would drive past the house on her way to Idle Point High and she could almost see herself and Noah running up the driveway with Mrs. Chase laughing behind them and Gramma Del waiting at the back door.
She loved school and threw herself into her studies wholeheartedly, the same way she did everything. She was rewarded with straight As. She spent hours studying at the makeshift desk in her room with Sam the Cat draped across her shoulders. Sam was her best teacher. Gracie had filled notebook after notebook with her observations of Sam's behaviors and those notebooks were the first small step on the road to achieving her dreams.
Gracie had a lot of friends at school but it was understood that she couldn't invite any of them home with her. The bad thing about living in a town as small as Idle Point was the way that everyone knew everyone else's business. The good thing was the way you never had to explain. Mainers never asked questions, mostly because they already had all the answers right at the tips of their fingers. Everyone knew that the only thing Ben Taylor liked better than liquor was marrying the wrong woman. Gracie didn't have to say a word. Her friends invited her to parties and clambakes and she went to as many as she could but her free time was limited.
When she wasn't studying, she was working with Doctor Jim who owned the animal hospital. Gracie had started cleaning cages for him when she was ten years old. She'd always been more comfortable around animals than people. With the exception of Gramma Del, animals were more dependable. They didn't drink or yell or forget to pay the bills. They didn't run hot and cold with their emotions. If they loved you, they loved you all the time, not just when it suited them.
Gracie was gentle with the animals and serious about her responsibilities, and it didn't take long for Doctor Jim to see that she had a gift for dealing with both the pets and their owners. He teased her about her ever-present notebook but he always gave her dozen new ones for Christmas every year. He said he'd never met a girl so young and so focused and it was true. Gramma Del never had to tell her to pick up her room or hang up her clothes or do her homework. It made her feel good to know that in the middle of chaos, she could create a small oasis of order and dependability for herself.
Nobody was surprised when she announced that she wanted to be a veterinarian. Medical school cost money and Gracie had always known that the only way she'd be able to attend college was if she paid for it herself or won a scholarship. When the other kids were off swimming away their summers on Hidden Island across the harbor, she was at work.
"You're early," Doctor Jim said on Monday morning. "I barely had a chance to start the coffee."
"You're not supposed to start the coffee," Gracie said, slipping into the pale blue smock that served as her uniform "That's what you pay me for."
"I wish I could pay you to take some time off, Gracie. You're only young once. You should be out there on the beach with your friends, not cooped up in here with an old coot like me and some badly spoiled house pets."
"I like badly spoiled house pets," she said.
"You like anything with fin, fur, or feathers," Doctor Jim said, shaking his head. "I don't know how I got so lucky."
Gracie went about her business, opening blinds, checking for messages, making sure to feed the goldfish in the waiting room. She and Doc had been down this road many times before. She needed both the money and the experience working at the animal hospital afforded her, more than she needed beach parties and proms. This was her ticket to the future.
"A woman needs her own," Gramma Del had been telling her since Gracie was a little girl. Her own home. Her own money. Her own future right there in Idle Point, working side by side with Doctor Jim one day as his equal.
Doctor Jim didn't know it, but sometimes she managed to sneak away at lunchtime to her secret spot, a crescent of beach tucked away beyond the lighthouse where nobody but Gracie ever went. Her friends all rowed across the inlet to Hidden Island or drove up the coast to one of the fancy resort towns that dominated the economic landscape. The adults spread their blankets on the smooth sands of the town beach. Nobody bothered with the forbidding curve of coastline she'd claimed for her own. The current was strong there and the rocks were so slippery and forbidding that Gracie always had the place to herself. She'd perch on an outcropping of rock, wrap her arms around her knees, and look out toward the horizon. Sometimes she brought a book with her or a sandwich. Most times she brought nothing but a deep sense of belonging.