At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,43

had the feeling she was slipping away.

"We could run away," he said as they neared the docks and the house where she'd grown up. "Keep driving and see where we end up."

She glanced across at him. "You don't mean that."

"Yeah," he said. "I think I do." He swiveled in his seat until he faced her. "Just keep driving, Gracie."

She laughed uneasily. "I'll run out of gas before we reach Portland."

"I have money." He dug into his pockets and withdrew a fistful of credit cards. "I have enough plastic to float us for a year." He motioned for her to pull over to the side of the road and she did. "We'll go to New York," he said, "or Paris or San Francisco. You name the place and it's yours."

The look in her eyes was shadowy, intense. He took that as encouragement.

"Noah, that's crazy. We have school to think of. Jobs. Our futures. We can't go running off."

"Give me one reason why not."

"My scholarship." She drummed the steering wheel with her right thumb. "Maybe you can afford to take off whenever you feel like it, but I can't. If I lose that scholarship, Noah, I lose everything."

"Take a hiatus."

"I'll lose momentum."

"We'll get married," he said. "I'll support you."

She started to laugh. "Doing what? You're a student too, Noah."

He waved the credit cards at her and she made a face. "I have savings," he said. "Trust funds. Books I can hock. We can make it work, Gracie. Hell, we really could go to Paris."

"We could stay here in Idle Point."

"Paris has the Eiffel Tower."

"Idle Point has the lighthouse."

"Marry me, Gracie," he said again, taking her hands between his. A sense of urgency was building up inside of him, almost a sense of desperation. "We could do it this weekend, just drive down to Portland and get a license, pick a judge somewhere and do it."

"Noah!" She sounded breathless and pleased but not quite as enthusiastic as he would have hoped. "Where is this coming from? We can't just run off and get married like that."

"We'll elope. We've loved each other for a long time, Gracie. This will make it official."

She hesitated and in that moment of slight hesitation Noah felt his world begin to shift and change forever.

"Noah, I—"

"Forget it," he said, leaning back in the passenger seat. "You're right. It wouldn't work."

"I never said it wouldn't work."

"Listen, if you have to think about it, it isn't right."

"But you're asking me to change all my plans on a moment's notice. I'm not a rich man's daughter. I can't turn away from a scholarship. I might not get a second chance."

Her words hurt. She didn't mean them to. He knew she was trying to make him understand how much school meant to her. He shouldn't have said anything about marriage. There was something elusive at the core of Gracie's personality. The more he pushed, the more she withdrew. He must've been nuts to think she'd toss everything aside to run away with him. School meant everything to her. Hell, she wouldn't even cut class to see a movie.

No matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to understand how it felt to worry about money. If he never worked a day in his life, he would still be okay. It wasn't something he thought about down at school but with Gracie it was a major issue. "We'd better get moving if you want to talk to Del before she goes to bed."

She brushed his words aside. "You know I love you, Noah. I've loved you since we were five years old. It's just that I—"

The sound hit them first. A piercing wail that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. Gracie looked at him, her eyes wide, and before he could say a word they were hit with the lights. An ambulance and a squad car were bearing down on them full speed. Gracie fumbled for the stick shift but he stopped her.

"Wait," he cautioned. "They're not coming for us. Let them pass."

"They're heading toward the docks, " she said. He could see that her hands were trembling.

"Probably some drunk fell into the water," Noah said then cursed himself. "You know what I mean, Gracie." He didn't mean it as a cheap shot against her father.

She shook her head. "It's Gramma Del. I can feel it."

"Maybe it's a car crash," he said. "They haven't repaired the streetlights yet past Bigelow's. Somebody probably rammed into the fence