At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,54

Gracie would be getting married.

They had it planned down to the minute. Some of Gracie's old high school friends were throwing a beach party to celebrate the start of her first year in veterinary school. Gracie managed somehow to be a popular loner, a trick Noah had never quite understood. While their friends built the barbecue pit and carted the cases of beer down to the beach, he and Gracie would be on their way to get married.

Gracie would meet him out at the edge of town at five o'clock in the motel parking lot out past the lighthouse. Together they would drive north to a little Unitarian Church where a minister named Bo, brother of Noah's B.U. roommate, would perform the ceremony as a favor.

She was giving up so much to be with him that it scared the hell out of Noah. She had made his dreams come true. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to return that favor every day for the rest of her life.

#

Gracie finished packing her bags around three o'clock. She had stuffed her favorite books into the corners of her backpack and along the bottom of her suitcase, layered with photos of Gramma Del and her mother Mona. She wanted to take nothing of Ben with her to her new life. The memories were more than enough.

He was gone again, most likely off on another drunk. She hadn't seen him since that moment when he'd slapped her at the cemetery and the last shred of compassion she felt for him disappeared. There was something to be said for closure. She believed now that there was no hope for them to ever be more than strangers to each other. He would never, could never, be the father she'd longed for all her life.

She had thought she would feel enormous sadness saying goodbye to the only home she had ever known but she didn't. She felt nothing at all. Not happiness. Not relief. Not even a bittersweet sense of regret. Without Gramma Del, it was nothing but a house and she couldn't wait to be gone. She tried not to think about school and her scholarship and all of the plans she had made to come back to Idle Point and work with Doctor Jim as his partner. She told herself it would all work out the way it was meant to. All that mattered was being with Noah.

Sam the Cat meowed and twined herself between Gracie's ankles. Sam was going on fifteen years old. Her eyesight was dimming with age. Her old bones ached on cold mornings. Sam the Cat had been Gramma Del's companion the last few years while Gracie was at school, spending long sunny afternoons curled up next to Del on the feather bed by the window. Gracie was horrified to realize she had forgotten all about her old friend.

"Oh, Sammy!" She bent down to pick up the cat and cradled her close. "I've been so caught up in my own life I forgot all about you."

She couldn't leave the poor cat alone in the house with only Ben to depend on for food and water. She couldn't board Sam at the animal hospital without a lot of explanation and a fair amount of guilt. She just plain couldn't leave Sam.

"So how do you feel about Paris?" she asked. "I'm not sure they have Whiskas over there but I guess we can figure it out as we go along." She had never been good at being impulsive or spontaneous. It unnerved her that Sam had slipped somehow through the cracks. That kind of thing never happened to Gracie. She loved detailed master plans that included back-up plans, contingency plans to the back-up plans, and additional plans for any and all emergencies that might crop up along the way.

She checked Gramma Del's pantry and found an even dozen cans of cat food plus two boxes of dry. They used to keep the cat carrier in the tool shed but that was before Ben took the shed over for his tools and other equipment. She rummaged through Gramma's two closets then ran back across to the main house to check the basement. She had barely let herself in the front door when she heard the sound of a car approaching. She knew it wouldn't be Noah. Oh God, please don't let it be her father. She wasn't looking for a confrontation with him. All she wanted was to walk