At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,45

thinking about those years. His heart felt raw and pummeled inside his chest and he found himself longing for the solace of booze. Sweet fire that filled all the empty places in his soul. He wasn't that far from Bigelow's. One drink wouldn't hurt. He could handle just one. A little emotional anesthesia to dull the sharp fangs of regret. You couldn't be expected to go through your life just letting the world beat up on you without a little something to soften the punches.

You're an alcoholic, friend. A drunk. You don't know the meaning of just one drink. One drink, one bottle—before you know it, you'll wake up and it'll be next week and you'll be pissing away everything you did these last seven months. You came home to put things right. Don't fuck it up now.

Sometimes the little voices in your head were all that stood between you and oblivion.

Still he was making progress. He was determined to stay sober, stay single, stay in Idle Point. If he could manage those three things maybe then he would be able to undo some of the damage he'd done to his mother and Gracie over the years. Especially Gracie. She deserved so much more than he'd been willing to give her. What the hell kind of man hated a child for living? That's what he had done. He had spent the last twenty years hating Gracie because she had lived and Mona had died.

She was a good kid. Smart and bright and generous. He should be proud of her but that would imply he had had something to do with the way she'd turned out. Everybody in Idle Point knew that was about as far from the truth as you could get. His mother got all the credit for that. Gracie worked hard and she didn't ask anything from him, which had always suited him down to the ground. It wasn't fair that a child should bear the burden of anger and regret but that was what had happened.

He thanked God as he turned off Main that there was still time to make amends, that he was still young enough to change or at least to make another attempt. He thought of the past six sober months as a gift to his mother although Del would never acknowledge them. Her disappointment in him ran too deep, almost as deep as his own. Grief had pulled him under for a very long time; it had blinded him to what remained. When had grief turned into anger? He wondered about the moment when sorrow and rage became one, when he began drinking to remember as well as to forget.

It was all a blur. Missing days of his life. Missing weeks. Huge bloody chunks of his heart ripped from his chest and lost forever. But Del remained constant, the rock upon which his family depended. Because of Del, Gracie would make something of herself in this uncertain world. Gracie would survive because Del had taught her how.

#

"Gracie." Noah stood in the doorway to Gramma Del's bedroom. "They need to come in now."

"No." Gracie hugged herself tight and closed her eyes. She was sitting on the floor next to her grandmother's bed. She had been sitting there for the last two hours. "Tell them to go away. I need more time."

"The man from Walker's Funeral Home is here. They want to take care of your grandmother."

Noah's bare feet scratched softly against Gramma's pine floor as he walked toward her. Don't you go tracking sand into my nice clean house, Graciela! Wash those feet before you come in here.

"Brush off your feet," she said. "Gramma is very fussy about her floors."

Noah crouched down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. "Let them do what they need to do, Gracie. I'll be here with you."

"No!" She pushed him away. "She's sleeping. She took too much of her medications. They could wake her up if they just tried harder."

"They did try." He sounded so tired, so sad. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears to block out the sorrowful sound of his voice. "Your grandmother is gone, baby, and they need to take care of her now. You know that. It's time to let her go."

"I can't," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "What am I going to do without her?" Noah held her as she cried. Gently he led her out into the yard so she wouldn't see or hear