At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(70)

Noah glanced over at Sophie who was twirling her scrunchie around a bright blue crayon and humming softly to herself. The moment of absolute powerlessness he'd felt this morning when she refused to come out of the bathroom came back to him in vivid detail. Andy was right. They had nothing to lose.

He sat down at the word processor and started to write.





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All they did at the newspaper office was yell. Sophie had been playing Go Fish at one of the computers, trying to pretend it wasn't so noisy and scary in there. She hated yelling. Every time grownups yelled, bad things happened.

Sophie had lived with a lot of different people since she was a baby and she knew all about how these things worked. First the grownups yelled at each other, then they yelled at her, and then the next thing she knew her bags were packed and she was on her way to another new house where the people didn't really want her.

Even her new father was yelling. He and the fat man were yelling right into each other's faces and it scared Sophie. They spoke really fast in those strange American accents. She could only understand some of what they were saying but she was sure they were yelling about her.

"I don't know much about bringing up kids," her new father had told her the day they went to court in London to sign the papers, "so I hope you'll help me." He had given her a big hug but she had held herself all stiff in his arms. "We're in this together, Sophie, you and me. We're a family now."

He said that her new name was Sophie Chase and that she would be his daughter forever.

Sophie didn't believe him. If he loved her so much and was so happy that she was his daughter, then why was he so busy yelling at people and hammering the computer keys with his big fingers? If she ran away, it would probably take him a fortnight to realize she was missing.





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Try as she might, Gracie couldn't find any traces of Gramma Del left in the old cottage. Except for the boxes tucked away in the attic, the place was stripped clean of old memories. It left her feeling disoriented, as if she had made a wrong turn somewhere and this wasn't Gramma Del's at all. She flipped through the Gazette but didn't find much of anything to hold her interest there. She didn't recognize most of the names and faces, something she thought would never happen in Idle Point. Finally she dressed then let herself out the front door to take a walk. She used to walk all the way into town in the days before she was old enough to drive. This seemed as good a time as any to see if she could still do it.

She wondered if Gerson's Bakery was still at the corner opposite the barber shop. She craved bagels and cream cheese and maybe some of those delicious sticky buns with the nuts studded all over the top. Maybe she would buy some freshly-ground coffee beans too—she was sure coffee mania had reached Idle Point by now—and bring them back to share with Ben and Laquita. The more she thought about the idea, the more she liked it. She wasn't a guest; she was family, and family contributed to the pantry.

Truth was, she was a little apprehensive about actually meeting Laquita again after all these years and seeing how her dad and old schoolmate fit together. Going for a long walk was one way to burn off nervous energy and center herself. Gracie always had a lot of physical energy to burn, and she had quickly discovered that the best thing about living in Manhattan was the walking. Nobody thought you were strange if you walked forty or fifty blocks at a time, Battery Park to the Upper West Side, East River to the Hudson. Still, Manhattan wasn't Idle Point. Manhattan didn't smell like ocean kissed by pine trees. When you could find the sky, it was never storybook blue.

Not that the sky was blue that morning. It was a deep, brooding pewter grey with rain that was more than a mist but less than a storm. She wore jeans, a heavy black sweater, and her favorite jacket. Tina had told her it made her look like a runaway Trappist monk but Gracie loved it. It was too big and too old to be fashionable, but Gracie had never been one to worry about that. She loved disappearing inside the jacket when she walked the city, letting the hood fall over her face, obscuring her identity. It made her feel mysterious.

Gerson's was gone and a sandwich shop had opened in its place. The bank boasted a facelift and a brand new name while the grocery store, candy shop, and dry cleaners all looked exactly the way they had when she left. Herb's Camera Shop was still next to Leonard Insurance which was next to Samantha's Bridal which was next to Video Haven which was next to Patsy's. And everybody knew Patsy's was next to the Gazette.