At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(7)

"Maybe someday," his mother said, the corners of her mouth angling down toward her chin. "Right now Gracie is as much as your father can handle."





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Sometimes Daddy slept in his La-Z-Boy with his feet pointed right at the TV screen and a shiny mountain of beer cans on the floor near the lamp with the shredded shade. Grandma Del said he worked too hard and that the sandman's job was over before Daddy could even make it to his bedroom. He sprawled across the chair with his arms flung out over the sides and his feet hanging off that funny little leg rest that hung off the end of the chair and snored like a summer thunderstorm. She didn't mind the fact that he fell asleep in his chair. Other daddies on TV did that too so she knew it was okay. That was how Gracie knew the way things were supposed to be.

Gracie hated the way the beer smell clung to his skin. It made him smell like a stranger, like somebody she didn't want to know. She'd asked Gramma Del if maybe they could hide his six-packs but Gramma Del just shook her head and said the world wasn't big enough to hide temptation from a man bound and determined to fall.

Five times in the last two weeks he'd forgotten to pick up Gracie from school and Mrs. Cavanaugh had to call Gramma Del at work. Gracie had sat quietly on the front step while Mrs.. Cavanaugh paced the sidewalk, glancing at her watch as she peered up and down the street. The worst part of all was the way the other parents looked at Gracie. Their eyes would get all big and sad-looking, and they'd quickly turn their heads away and walk a little faster.

"We're going to make a few changes around here," Gramma Del said as she walked Gracie to school the morning after Daddy drove his truck onto the McMahon family's lawn and hit a sugar maple. Gramma said that Daddy wouldn't be picking her up after school any more. From now on Gracie would be walking home with Noah and Mrs. Chase.

Gracie stared up at her grandmother. "I'll go home with Noah?"

"Yes," Gramma said. Her mouth was so tight the word barely squeezed itself out. "Mr. Chase said you can sit quietly in the kitchen with me while I fix their supper."

"I can't play with Noah? He has electric trains."

Gramma's grip on her hand tightened.

"Ouch!"

Gramma's fingers loosened a teeny bit. "You are to stay in the kitchen with me, missy, and that's an order. Mr. Chase doesn't much like strangers in his house." She laughed one of those grownup laughs that Gracie didn't understand. "Except the ones on his payroll."





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It was said about Simon Harriman Chase that what he didn't own wasn't worth owning. His family had founded Idle Point before the Revolutionary War and it was his family who had kept it going through good times and bad. They had started out as shipbuilders and were modestly successful until Josiah Chase discovered a vein of tourmaline on his property and the family fortune was made. The Chase influence was still felt in shipbuilding, in tourmaline mining, in real estate, but for the last sixty years the Chase family had been synonymous with journalism. The Idle Point Gazette had achieved a national reputation for fair, incisive reporting and had the awards to prove it. Simon's father handed over the reins of leadership to his eldest son eight years ago and so far Simon had managed to maintain the same standards of critical excellence his readers had come to expect from the Gazette.

He ran the paper, chaired the local Chamber of Commerce, volunteered his time and money to the school board, hospital, and church. He was a model citizen, an accomplished man who hated a child with an intensity that sometimes scared him.

The sight of poor plain little Graciela Taylor with her brown hair and brown eyes and skinny little body filled him with helpless rage. He didn't wish her dead. He simply wished she had never been born.





Chapter Two





She was such a little thing, Ruth Marlow Chase thought as she took Gracie's hand in hers. The child's hand was tiny, much smaller than Noah's and he was only six months older. The bones felt so fragile to Ruth that for a moment she longed to gather the girl close to her and tell her everything would be all right. God knew, she hadn't wanted to feel anything for Mona Taylor's only child but Ruth was a kind woman and it was impossible for her to steel her mother's heart against a child, especially one as small and easily forgettable as Gracie.

Gracie had brown eyes, brown hair, and skin as pale as milk. Tiny face no bigger than a minute with features so regular they barely registered on you. Her clothes looked to be plucked from the box in the rear of the Church marked "For the poor." The child was plainer than plain, not at all like her mother, and that struck Ruth as terribly unfair. Mona had been blessed with the heart-shaped face of an angel. Wide brow, delicate chin, full lips and huge brown eyes that drew you into their depths against your will. Sweet-faced and sensual and—