At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(29)

She was finally coming to terms with the fact that she would never have the happy family of her dreams. "You're not responsible for your dad's failings," her high school guidance counselor had said to her last year when Ben didn't drive down to see Gracie awarded with the New England Merit Students Award of Excellence. "Don't waste your time trying to straighten up his life; spend your time learning how to live yours to the fullest. Perfection isn't possible, Gracie, but excellence is."

She thought of those words every time she found herself envying someone for the things she didn't have. Sometimes it even helped.

"Marie outdid herself with this casserole," Gramma said, reaching for the salt.

"It tastes just like yours," Gracie pointed out. She pushed the salt just out of reach.

"That's because she finally followed my recipe." Gramma Del knew she was the best cook in Idle Point and she wasn't above reminding people every chance she got. "I don't know what took that woman so long."

They both laughed at Sam the Cat who meowed for her own serving of mac and cheese.

Gracie cherished her time with her grandmother. Maybe she didn't have a normal family, but no girl had ever had a better protector than Gramma Del. For as long as she could remember, Del had been the one person she could count on. Gramma Del was the one who'd taken Gracie with her to an AlAnon meeting in the church basement a few years ago, where Gracie began to learn that she wasn't to blame for her father's unhappiness or his drinking or his string of bad marriages. Del had put aside her pride and sat there with her granddaughter even though that kind of public display went against everything she believed in. Gracie doubted she could ever repay her grandmother for that gift.

If only she could tell Gramma Del about Noah. That would make life almost perfect. There were times when she thought she would die if she couldn't share her happiness with someone. She knew she couldn't tell her father. The memory of the night of the kindergarten Christmas play was still too vivid for her to be able to pretend he would understand. She would never forget the look of surprise, then resignation, on Mrs. Chase's face when Daddy threw the sweater at her.

Whatever bad blood there was between him and the Chases, it still ran deep and hot. She'd asked him once, a few years ago, about that night but he'd looked at her with a blank expression on his face and said, "Graciela, I don't know what you're talking about," and she let it go at that. Her father had huge black holes in his memory. She didn't know if they were the result of booze or convenience and she didn't much suppose that it mattered. Either way the truth was lost

So many secrets. So many forbidden topics. They were hidden upstairs in the attic, buried in the basement, stashed in closets and under mattresses and behind locked doors.

Don't ask questions. Whatever you do, keep family business inside these four walls.

When she was a little girl, she used to pepper Gramma Del with questions about her mother. Was she pretty? Do I look like her? What did she sound like? Did she love me? Did she sing to me? Would she like me if she met me today? Gramma Del's answers grew shorter and less forthcoming until one day she sat Gracie on her lap and said, "Maybe it's time we let your mother rest, child, and talked about other things." She never answered another of Gracie's questions again and, after a time, Gracie stopped asking. But she never stopped wondering.

Oh, she knew bits and pieces of the story. Idle Point was a small town and people talked. Maybe not as much as Gracie would have liked, but enough for her to piece together part of the picture. They always said, "Poor Ben," when they talked about her mother. Said it with troubled eyes and tight lips then turned away from Ben and Mona's child as if they regretted saying even that much.

"He loved your mother more than a man should love a woman," Gramma Del had said once in a rare moment of indiscretion. Gracie clung to that scrap of insight, examined it from every angle, in every light. The notion of loving too much seemed wildly romantic, like a real-life Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff crying out his anguish to the windswept moors.

Am I like my mother, Gramma? Will I love one man deeply and forever? Or am I like your son? Tell me, Gramma. Tell me what she was like. Did she love Daddy as much as he loved her? Did she whisper his name when she died? Did she love me the way Mrs. Chase loves Noah? After all those years of waiting, did I make her happy?

If only she could tell Gramma Del about Noah and how amazing it was to be loved in return. Of all the dreams she'd ever dreamed since childhood, this was the one she'd never believed would come true.