At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(49)

The funny thing was that she believed in him. No matter how many times he screwed up, she went on believing. Even he couldn't manage that. Gracie would have to believe hard enough for both of them.

They ordered lunch at a lobster shack near the docks. "Almost as good as they make back home," Gracie said which made Noah laugh. She thought everything was better at Idle Point. Their haddock and chips were served on paper plates which they carried over to a wooden picnic table. Businessmen in suits wolfed down lobster rolls, leaning forward so they wouldn't spill mayonnaise on their fancy clothing. A trio of young women in shorts and halter tops eyed the men as they waited for their sandwiches. They were probably the same age as Noah and Gracie but they looked so much younger. Neither one of them had ever been young quite like that.

They ate quietly, both overcome by the significance of the piece of paper tucked away in Gracie's huge leather tote bag.

Gracie had walked through the last few days suspended somewhere between terror and elation. In the blink of an eye, her dreams of a happy family had vanished and she was forced to see her life for what it really was. Gramma was gone. Ben didn't give a damn if his daughter lived or died. He loved a bottle of booze more than he loved his own flesh and blood. Idle Point no longer seemed like home. School couldn't fill the empty jagged hole inside her heart.

Only Noah could do that.

She had loved him for so long. She couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been part of her life. He knew all of her secrets. He understood her dreams. He believed in her the way nobody but Gramma Del ever had. They wouldn't end up being one of those couples whose dreams withered and died in the face of day-to-day reality. They wouldn't let that happen. There was room enough in this world for both of their dreams. They were young and they had time to make them all come true. How could you go wrong if you followed your heart?





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"You're not paying attention, Chase." Joe from Production said with a note of exasperation in his voice. "You type in the slug lines the way I showed you; the codes fill in automatically."

It was only the tenth time Joe had told Noah how to key in his story.

"Sorry," Noah said. "I've got it now."

"What the hell's with you anyway? Your body's here but your brain is sure as hell someplace else."

"One of those days," Noah mumbled, pretending great interest in the words on his screen. He was finding it tough to care about the 32 Annual Labor Day Weekend Festival hosted by the Kiwanis Club when in less than six hours he and Gracie would be getting married.

They had it planned down to the minute. Some of Gracie's old high school friends were throwing a beach party to celebrate the start of her first year in veterinary school. Gracie managed somehow to be a popular loner, a trick Noah had never quite understood. While their friends built the barbecue pit and carted the cases of beer down to the beach, he and Gracie would be on their way to get married.

Gracie would meet him out at the edge of town at five o'clock in the motel parking lot out past the lighthouse. Together they would drive north to a little Unitarian Church where a minister named Bo, brother of Noah's B.U. roommate, would perform the ceremony as a favor.

She was giving up so much to be with him that it scared the hell out of Noah. She had made his dreams come true. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to return that favor every day for the rest of her life.





#





Gracie finished packing her bags around three o'clock. She had stuffed her favorite books into the corners of her backpack and along the bottom of her suitcase, layered with photos of Gramma Del and her mother Mona. She wanted to take nothing of Ben with her to her new life. The memories were more than enough.

He was gone again, most likely off on another drunk. She hadn't seen him since that moment when he'd slapped her at the cemetery and the last shred of compassion she felt for him disappeared. There was something to be said for closure. She believed now that there was no hope for them to ever be more than strangers to each other. He would never, could never, be the father she'd longed for all her life.

She had thought she would feel enormous sadness saying goodbye to the only home she had ever known but she didn't. She felt nothing at all. Not happiness. Not relief. Not even a bittersweet sense of regret. Without Gramma Del, it was nothing but a house and she couldn't wait to be gone. She tried not to think about school and her scholarship and all of the plans she had made to come back to Idle Point and work with Doctor Jim as his partner. She told herself it would all work out the way it was meant to. All that mattered was being with Noah.