At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,100

life, Noah had trailed a beach rose over the curve of her hip, the line of her thigh. The gesture was both sensually charged and painfully sweet, the kind of gesture a woman never forgot. She remembered the look in his eyes, the faint smell of salt on his skin, the callused tip of his index finger, the velvety softness of the petals of the rose against her bare skin. If the world had ended at that very moment, she would have died knowing her life had been blessed beyond measure.

She didn't have him—she couldn't—but she had those memories and sometimes she even managed to convince herself that those memories were enough.

#

Sophie was fearless. She flew across the rocky beach in her fancy velvet dress and heavy parka as if she had been born there in Idle Point instead of on the other side of the ocean.

"Sophie, be careful!" he shouted into the wind. "The rocks are slippery!"

She didn't hear him. He probably wouldn't have been able to hear a warning at her age either. She was so small, a tiny scrap of humanity against the enormity of the wind and tides. If he had his way, he would lock her in the house until she was forty.

She leaped from rock to rock, arms outstretched, mimicking the gulls that swooped and soared overhead. She reminded him of Gracie as a little girl, so filled with physical energy and enthusiasm that the span of her arms reached the edges of the world.

"She looks like she was born here."

He was surprised he hadn't felt her presence before he heard her voice. "I was thinking the same thing."

Gracie cupped her hands around her mouth. "Soooophie!"

His daughter stopped, perched on a huge rock near the water's edge, and waved.

Gracie waved back, her oversized coat billowing in the wind like a woolen parachute. "Has she seen a gull open a clam yet?"

"I don't think so."

She scanned the area. "I remember the first time you saw that gull drop the clam onto the rocks and break it open."

"You opened my eyes," he said. The natural world had been invisible to him until Gracie came into his life.

"You should go catch up with her," she said, wrapping her arms around her slender body as winds kicked up. "Low tide's a perfect time to start teaching her about the shore."

"Like Gramma Del did for you."

She peered out from beneath her hood. "You remember that."

"I remember a lot of things, Gracie."

She was halfway across the rocks before he realized she was in motion. She ran the way she did everything, with speed and grace. She never slipped, never faltered. This beach, this place, was her heart's home and always had been.

The rocks fought him as he made his way toward his daughter and Gracie. They shifted and moved beneath his feet. Moss, slippery as ice, threatened his balance. He had been denied whatever gene it was that enabled Gracie and Sophie to navigate these rocks like they were on flat dry land. At least it was still daylight. He wouldn't want to be out there in the dark with the tide rolling in.

Gracie used to laugh at him during those hot summer nights when he refused to venture too far from the shadow of the lighthouse. She didn't understand because she was born to be part of this place while he had somehow always felt like he was passing through.

He looked up and saw that Gracie and his daughter were way up the beach already, walking along the shoreline with their heads down. He could see Gracie pointing at various bits of aquatic flora and fauna and if Sophie's body language was any indication, the child was spellbound.

He knew just how she felt.

#

They looked right together, the three of them. Gracie could easily imagine the picture they made as they walked the beach at sunset. Handsome man, hard-working woman, happy child.

They looked like a family.

Tell him, Gracie. It's time. Do it for Sophie if you can't do it for Noah or yourself.

"Ben and Laquita look happy," he observed as they followed the bouncing Sophie up the gilded beach. "What odds do you give them?"

"I think they're going to make it," Gracie said, bending down to pick up a beautiful striated rock. "They're an odd couple but somehow they work."

"We would have made it," he said, his gaze fastened on his quick little daughter.

"Yes," Gracie said, "we probably would have." Tell him, Gracie. Now is as good a time as