At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,25

been so many disappointments along the way to that golden time. So many mistakes, so many secrets tucked away in dark corners of the heart. He could still remember the crushing weight of regret, of a grief so black and desperate he thought it would swallow him whole.

Through it all there was Ruth. Steadfast, resolute, more constant than the tides. He had pushed her far away once and she had chosen a path neither one had ever imagined. Who was he to say what was right and wrong? He had never been sure if she forgave him his transgressions or merely found a way to live with them. In truth, he had never asked. She loved him. She always had. And because she loved him, she had come back.

Once, not that long ago, he had been willing to give up everything for love too. His self-respect. His sense of honor. His work. His family. Everything he held dear. He would have walked away and never looked back, not even for the sake of the son he had waited so long to welcome into his life.

But that was a long time ago.

Ruth appeared in the doorway. Her gentle face looked drawn with worry.

"Is everything alright?" she asked. There was nothing jarring about Ruth, nothing loud or vulgar. She was a lady to her marrow. "I heard Noah roar down the driveway."

He told her what had transpired between them. He and Ruth had been together almost forty years. She knew how to read between the lines. He used to love me, Ruthie. He used to look up to me. What happened? Where did it all go so wrong? Why do I keep pushing him away?

"The trip to Colorado would do him good," she said, patting him on the left forearm. "Work off some of those high spirits."

"I'm not going to reward him for being expelled from St. Luke's."

"Hard work is scarcely a reward," she pointed out.

"No," he said. "Is a summer at home such an inhuman punishment?"

"He was looking forward to working on that ranch."

"He can work here."

"You know that isn't the same, Simon. His friends will be on the ranch."

"His future is here in Idle Point."

Ruth sighed. "There's time enough for that," she said gently.

"It's time now, Ruth," he said. "It's time our son came home."

#

Ruth couldn't shake the sense of foreboding that settled across her shoulders. Simon went upstairs to rest while she wandered through the house, unable to settle down to her correspondence or her reading or anything else. Twice their new cook Greta asked if she could fix Ruth a pot of tea but both times she had brushed off the poor woman with the merest shake of her head. Her mind was elsewhere.

For over ten years she had dreamed of having her son home to stay, only to discover that the reality of it filled her with unease.

Gracie.

Mona Taylor's sad-eyed daughter. Who would ever have imagined that plain brown-haired girl would catch the eye of Ruth's golden son? He had been filled with talk of Gracie last night as mother and son sat together on the front porch. How hard she worked, how capable she was, how smart, how funny. There was a quality of innocence about Noah as he spoke of Mona's girl that struck terror in Ruth's heart.

Life wouldn't be that cruel.

She had always harbored a deep affection for Gracie. She could still remember the feel of that tiny fragile hand in hers on those afternoon walks home from kindergarten. Del had been working for the Chases back then and with Ben Taylor being the way he was, Gracie had needed a place to stay until her grandmother was ready to leave for home. How Ruth had loved seeing Gracie bent over a coloring book at the kitchen table while Noah built a skyscraper at her feet. Sometimes Ruth pretended they were both her children and the feeling of joy in her heart was so intense that it stole her breath away.

More and more, the young people were striking out from Idle Point to make their living in Boston or Hartford or maybe even New York. The Gazette was losing subscribers and Simon seemed distracted and worried which meant Ruth saw very little of her husband. When she wasn't volunteering at the hospital, she was often at the school, overseeing one of the Chase family's many bequests. She used to find Gracie curled in a wing chair near the window, engrossed in Dr. Seuss or