At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,13
all wet. Does he have a cold?"
Laquita didn't know and neither did Noah.
But that was okay. Gracie would keep the kitten cozy and dry. She would feed him warm milk from a teaspoon and sneak him scraps from her dinner the way the children in her storybooks cared for stray cats. She would make him all better and love him and take care of him just like her mother would have cared for her if God hadn't called her back to heaven.
Chapter Three
Gracie wasn't the prettiest little girl on stage or the most talented. Ben Taylor didn't want to notice that but he couldn't help it. She had never captured all of his heart, not since those heady first weeks after her birth when he'd still believed in miracles. He sat in the third row of the Idle Point Elementary School auditorium on the Friday before Christmas and watched as Gracie, dressed in shepherd's robes and carrying a staff, looked up toward the sky. "Behold!" she said in a clear, sweet voice. "A star rises in the east!"
It seemed to Ben that she'd been a baby the last time he'd looked at her. He turned away for just a moment and the baby was gone, replaced by the child who stood before him. He'd spent most of her life swimming through a sea of booze, doing everything he could to blunt the sharp bite of pain that followed him through his days. She was so quiet around the house that he sometimes forgot she was there, a little mouse who spent her time with her nose in a book. He'd thought she was looking at the pictures but Del said she'd been reading for almost a year.
He wasn't one for books. He'd rather work with his hands. Back in the early years of his marriage to Mona, he'd always had five or six projects in the works at any one time. Cupboards for her collections, toy boxes for the family they were trying to start. As the years went on and the children didn't arrive, he spent more time on cabinetry, more time away from the house and the pain that seemed to be everywhere.
Then one day in the twentieth year of their marriage, Mona told him she was pregnant. From the ashes of their dreams, they had their miracle. Six months later, Graciela Marie Taylor was pushed kicking and screaming from the world of angels and into his heart. She has your eyes, Mona said, and oh how he'd wanted to believe that. Everyone in town wondered about the truth. He saw it on their faces when he shot the breeze with the folks down at the coffee shop next door to the Gazette. He saw it every time Simon Chase walked by.
He'd been working on a cradle for baby Gracie the day the accident happened. He and Mona had been talking about what kind of stain he should use on the wood just before she kissed him goodbye. If he closed his eyes he could see her as she'd been, lush and womanly with that sweet face and those big dark eyes that turned men into fools. He was no exception. He'd loved her enough to forgive her. He'd loved her enough to stop asking questions. The one thing he hadn't been able to do was love her enough to let her go.
She was taking the baby to the pediatrician for a booster shot of some kind. "Don't forget to buy milk," he had said to her as she went out the door. His last words to her. Don't forget to buy milk.
The chief of police, Joe Winthrop, had broken the news to him. Ben had been cleaning some paintbrushes in a mayonnaise jar filled with turpentine when he heard Joe's squad car crunching across the gravel driveway. He'd laid the brushes down on top of some newspaper, wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, and stepped out of the garage to see what Joe wanted. It was unusually hot that day in Idle Point. He'd never seen a May as hot as this one. They all said it was going to be a wicked summer. The sun was high in the sky and he shielded his eyes with the back of his hand. His skin smelled like turpentine. He still remembered that fact. Even when he couldn't remember his own name, he remembered the dizzying smell of turpentine.