At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,39

then he would take his father's place at the Gazette. The summer he was seventeen would be nothing more than memory.

She checked the road and was about to execute a U-turn when Wiley nudged her again then barked three times. Each bark was more insistent than the one before it. Ruth turned toward the lighthouse and saw a tiny sports car parked in the shadows near the fence. What was Noah doing out here by the lighthouse? She hushed Wiley and peered into the darkness as two figures stepped back into the shadows. She looked more closely and noticed the beat-up old Mustang tucked in between Noah's flashy car and the fence. She knew that car. She had seen it many times in the parking lot of the animal hospital.

Her son and Mona's daughter. The thought made her dizzy and she rested her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. This couldn't be happening. Out of all the combinations possible, that those two young people should find each other was the most terrible joke of all.

There was no future for them. Surely they must know that. Simon wouldn't allow it and, she was certain, neither would Ben Taylor. There was too much history between the families. Those two children were doomed before they even started. She should get out of her car right this minute, march over to them, and tell them it had to stop before someone got hurt. Love had fangs and sharp claws. She was sure they didn't know that yet but they would in time.

Ruth's eyes filled as she remembered Gracie as a little girl, the tiny hand placed so trustingly in hers, the look of joy on Gracie's face when she saw her Christmas sweater. Ruth would never forget that moment. The sweater was such a small gift in the greater scheme of things; that it could give a child so much pleasure caused Ruth physical pain. She had loved having Gracie at their house every afternoon and she had been very angry with Simon for a very long time after he put a stop to it. The child had never been any trouble at all. So much had been denied Gracie—and so much of it had been Ruth's own fault.

Gracie was a hard-working young woman. Ruth kept up with her academic awards through beauty shop gossip. Noah could benefit from being around someone as disciplined and motivated as Gracie. Summer was almost over. In a few weeks Noah would be back in Portsmouth at St. Luke's and Gracie would be engrossed in her studies. Their romance would be nothing but a sweet memory.

Once long ago Ruth had bent fate to suit her own purposes and the results had been tragic. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

Chapter Seven

The gods were kind for the next few years and they watched out for Noah and Gracie. What started out as a summer romance grew into something much deeper and infinitely more important than either had expected or maybe even wanted but it happened just the same.

There was nothing Gracie couldn't say to Noah, no thought too dark or too silly to share with him. She even shared her worries and they were considerable. Noah took life as it came but Gracie was a worrier by nature. She worried about Gramma Del, about her father, about every animal—big or small—that came under her care. She worried that she would be a failure as a vet. She worried that her emotions would keep elbowing their way into situations where they didn't belong and cloud her judgment. She had been penalized harshly by one of her professors for weeping during a particularly difficult consultation. Gracie had apologized and promised to keep her emotions under tighter control but sometimes she worried that she was sacrificing humanity for efficiency. Noah teased her sometimes and said that worrying was her hobby. She never laughed when he said that because she suspected he might be right.

Gracie was Noah's anchor, his home in all the ways that mattered. He never told her that, though. At least, not with words. His feelings for Gracie ran so deep that he couldn't begin to gather them together in any one portion of his heart. Nothing that happened to him had any meaning until he shared it with her. He fell asleep at night thinking about her. She was his first morning thought. Gracie was strong where he was uncertain. She knew the where and when and