At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(4)

Gramma Del was waiting for her by the gate. She had Mondays off from her job as cook for the richest family in Idle Point. "You look real happy this afternoon, missy," she said, tugging on Gracie's stick-straight ponytail. "Did you have a good first day of school?"

"I taught them double Dutch," she said, bouncing in place with excitement. "We have a class parakeet and two gerbils. I had milk and cookies. We took a nap on squishy pillows and I even had my own blanket." She hadn't closed her eyes once, not even for a second. She didn't want to miss a thing.

"Your own blanket!" Gramma Del nodded. "Now that's something." She took Gracie's hand and they started walking. Gramma Del was old and she didn't walk real fast which was fine with Gracie. She wanted the day to last forever. "Did you make any friends?"

"Terri and Laquita and Mary Ellen and Joey and Tim and Don and Noah." She almost wasn't going to tell Gramma Del about Noah. In a way she wanted him to be her very own special secret friend but she couldn't keep anything from her grandma.

Gramma Del stopped walking. "Noah?"

"Yes," said Gracie. "He held a seat for me."

Gramma Del's lips all but disappeared. "Did you know I cook for Noah's daddy?"

"No," said Gracie. "He has blue eyes, Gramma."

"Well, those blue eyes won't be around too long, missy. His daddy has big plans for that little boy."

Boarding school.

Prep school.

Ivy League.

Gramma Del's words swirled over Gracie's head but she wasn't paying much attention. She was thinking about Noah and the class parakeet and the gerbils and taking in all the sights as the other kids met up with their mommies or big brothers and sisters. Laquita was standing at the corner all by herself, looking like she didn't mind being alone one bit. She was a very quiet little girl with a round face and long black hair that spilled down her back. Mary Ellen and Joey, redheaded twins, waved at Gracie from the back seat of a big green station wagon. Tim and Don's big brother was yelling at them to get in the car right this minute but they were talking to Terri near the school bus. Most of the kids lived in town and had been playing together since they were little babies.

Across the street, Noah walked quietly next to a well-dressed woman. The woman looked straight ahead as they walked. Noah looked down at the ground. For some reason Gracie's heart hurt as she watched them. That couldn't be his mommy. A mommy would hold your hand and ask you about your day and look happy to see you again, like Gramma Del did but better.

Gramma Del was daddy's mother. Gracie knew she did the best she could, because that's what Gramma Del was always telling her. "You should have better than an old woman taking care of you," she liked to say when she was giving Gracie her bath. "Things aren't meant to be this way." She lived out back in the small cottage behind the house and mostly minded her own business when it came to her son's comings and goings. She looked the other way when her son rolled home smelling like beer at all hours of the day or night and only spoke up when he didn't come home at all.

"This child deserves better," Gracie had heard her grandma say more than once. "She deserves a real family." Sometimes Gramma Del came into the house very late and carried a sleepy Gracie out to the cottage to spend the night. "I had a bad dream," she liked to say as she made room for Gracie in her narrow feather bed. "Glad you could visit." Gracie always laughed, even though she knew that wasn't the reason at all.

Maybe that was why daddy had brought home that skinny red-haired woman at Christmastime and said, "Graciela, meet Vicky. She's your new mother." Gracie had burst into tears then run from the room as fast as her new sneakers would carry her. Daddy had yelled at her to come back and apologize—"right this second, young lady!"—but Gracie didn't care. She threw herself on her bed and sobbed until her eyes hurt so bad she couldn't see. She didn't want some stranger coming in and pretending to be her mother. She wanted her real mother, the brown-haired woman with the gentle smile who looked down at her from the photograph on her nightstand.

Gracie wasn't sure how she knew this but somehow she understood that she wasn't supposed to talk about the nights when her daddy fell asleep on the floor with an empty bottle beside him or how the redheaded woman walked out one day at the beginning of the summer and took everything that wasn't nailed down along with her. Gracie had been in her room, pretending to be sound asleep, but she'd really been watching through a crack in the door while the woman and her squeaky-voiced sister took money from daddy's pockets and the bottles off the shelves.