At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(57)

She regretted it the second she hung up the phone. She hadn't been back to Idle Point since the day she walked out on Noah and their dreams of happily-ever-after. Going back would only remind her of everything she had lost, all the things that could never be.

"I must be crazy," she told Pyewacket as she pulled Sam the Cat's old bed down from the hall closet and rummaged around for suitable food and water dishes. She had missed having a cat around the house. You could tell a cat things and be fairly sure they would never end up on the front page of the National Enquirer. "I don't want to go back home. I'll meet them one day in Boston and wish them well." The whole thing was too strange to even contemplate. She knew that Laquita attended A.A. meetings with her father and that they had some kind of mutual support team going between them but she had never in a million years imagined anything like this. What do you say to a new stepmother who used to swipe your crayons in kindergarten?

Still, Ben had sounded solid and happy and knowing what she now knew about his life, she couldn't help praying this all worked out for him. He was pushing seventy. There wasn't much time left for the happy home he'd been searching for since Gracie's mother died. Gracie only wished he could have found that home when she was young enough for it to matter.

Funny how the little things hurt so much. The Christmases and New Year's Eves when she worked so her colleagues could be home with their families. The Thanksgiving dinners spent with friends who took pity on her. The birthdays that came and went without anyone knowing that the years were stacking up faster and faster and she wasn't any closer to having a family of her own than she had been the day she left Noah behind.

She fed Pyewacket, made a makeshift litter box, then settled down for the night. Tomorrow morning was time enough to call her father and beg off on the wedding invitation.

She woke up the next morning and the sun was shining and Pye was purring against her chest and she put off the phone call for another day. She kept putting it off and putting it off and that was how Gracie came to be showing her former co-worker Tina around the apartment one week later as she prepared to head back to Idle Point.

"The faucet in the bathroom is fluky," Gracie said as she walked down the hallway toward the living room. "Make sure you tap it twice after you turn it off or you'll end up flooding the apartment downstairs."

Tina, a big-haired blonde with an outsized personality, nodded. "Gotcha. Turn off, tap twice. Roger that."

She glanced over her shoulder at her former assistant. "I told you that before, didn't I?"

"Three times," Tina said, snapping shut her notebook. "Not that I'm counting or anything."

"I mentioned the radio in the bedroom, didn't I? You have to –"

"Set it thirty-two minutes earlier than you want the alarm to go off." Tina hugged the dark green leather notebook to her ample chest and grinned. "I think that's covered on page seventy-six of Taylor's Apartment Sitting Manual." She paused. "First edition."

"Not funny," Gracie said, although she couldn't hold back a smile. "I'm just trying to make sure I've covered everything."

"Trust me," Tina said. "You've covered everything. I know more about your bathroom drain than I know about my blood pressure, cholesterol, and estrogen levels combined."

"It's an old building with an even older landlord who hates sublets, even short-term ones like this. You need to know the ropes or it's off with our heads."

Tina pretended to bang her own fluffy blond head against the wall. "Please," the young woman begged, "I can't take any more. This is the most beautiful apartment I've ever sublet, quirky faucet and all. I'm going to be so happy here you may never get rid of me."

Gracie opened her mouth to say something but Tina wouldn't let her.

"Just go already. Grab your cat, jump into your car, and hit the road before it gets any later. You're going home for Thanksgiving, girl. You should be happy!"

Gracie peered out the window, angling her head so she could see the sky. "Looks like rain." She poked her head back in. "Maybe I should wait until tomorrow."

"That's what you said yesterday."

"I hate driving in the rain."

"The forecast said sunny and clear through the weekend. You'll make it to Maine in record time."

"You sound like you're trying to get rid of me."