At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(97)
Ruth sat staring into the fire for a long time after Jim said goodnight, wishing she had the courage to try and make things right but the thought of disturbing the graves of so many long-buried secrets was more than she could contemplate.
If Noah and Gracie were meant to be, they would find their way to each other without any help.
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For the first time in the three months he'd known Sophie, Noah felt some of the tension leave his body. It was the sound of her laughter that did it. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard it before, certainly not so much of it or so freely given.
Noah went to place Sophie in the warm tub but she wanted Gracie to do it.
"Are you a poodle?" Gracie teased his daughter.
"No!"
"Are you a cocker spaniel?"
"No!"
"Then I'm not sure I know how to give you a bath."
A moment later Sophie was immersed in bubbles with nothing but her heart-shaped face and halo of blond curls visible.
"You'd better take your coat off," Noah suggested to Gracie. "She splashes."
Gracie looked surprised. "My coat! I completely forgot I was wearing it."
She shrugged it off and hung it from the hook behind the door. "Now where were we?" She pushed her sleeves up over her elbows. "That's right. I was going to bathe a cat."
Sophie loved every second of it. Gracie claimed no prior knowledge of bathing young children but she handled it like a pro. Certainly a hell of a lot better than he had his first time around. She made sure no soap got in Sophie's eyes. She protected her ears with tiny wads of cotton. And when the bath was over she rinsed Sophie squeaky clean then wrapped her in the biggest, warmest towel she could find.
"Do you have a blow dryer?" she asked Noah.
He removed one from the vanity beneath the sink.
"Oh good," said Gracie. "It has a diffuser."
"A diffuser?"
"See this?" She pointed toward the wide attachment over the mouth of the dryer. "That's for curly hair."
"Yes, papa," said Sophie. "Everyone knows that."
"First I've heard of it," he muttered then stepped back into the shadows where he belonged.
Gracie put the dryer on the lowest setting and in no time at all Sophie's hair was a mass of shiny sweet-smelling curls. There had always been a sadness about Gracie even during her happiest moments but the air of sadness about her that night was almost palpable. The look in her eyes when Sophie took her hand for the walk from the bathroom to the bedroom would stay with Noah for a long time.
"You look beautiful, mademoiselle," Gracie said as Sophie did a pirouette in her pink terrycloth bathrobe.
"Okay, Soph," he said, as he slipped her prettiest nightgown over her head, "time for bed."
"No!" She stomped one tiny bare foot on the thick pale pink carpet. "Not yet!"
"It's late," he said, "and you've had a long day."
"No, I haven't."
"Sophie, I'm telling you—
"No!"
Gracie quietly went into the bathroom and when she came out she was wearing her big floppy coat.
"Don't go!" Sophie cried out. "I don't want you to leave."
"And I don't want to leave," Gracie said calmly, "but if you and your daddy are going to fight, I think I'll go home."
"I don't want to fight with Papa."
"Remember when we talked about how sometimes grown-ups talk real loud because they think that's the only way they can be heard?"
Sophie nodded.
"That's what you were doing."
Sophie looked up at him with big teary blue eyes and he was tempted to run out to Toys R Us and buy her a dozen Barbie's Dream Houses to make her smile again.
"Gracie's right, Soph," he said instead. "But we're both learning, aren't we?"
Sophie was quick to anger but equally quick to forget what she had been so angry about. A moment later he had her laughing again and she was still laughing when he tucked her into bed. He read her another scene from a Harry Potter book while Gracie gently stroked her hair. Then it was Gracie's turn and she told Sophie a story about her brand new cat Pyewacket and his adventures on the road from New York City to Idle Point that actually had Noah sitting on the edge of his seat.