At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,87
was a love letter of sorts, angry and bittersweet enough to catch the eye of half the town but when Gracie examined the text, she saw that he wrote more about his little girl and her bad hair day. So why did she see herself in every line? How was it she knew he was telling her that he loved her and hoped he never saw her again?
#
"He did it again," Laquita said at six fifty-one the next morning. She had highlighted the most moving passages in Noah's second column in Day-Glo yellow. "Read this one but make sure you have your Kleenex handy."
"I don't want to read it," Gracie said. "It's bad enough everyone else in town is reading it." She frowned. "Has Ben seen it?"
Laquita shook her head. "But he knows all about it. Ben won't go near the Gazette."
"Then he's the only one in town who won't. I think I've heard from everyone else."
"He can't believe there was ever anything between you and Noah. I have to admit the idea doesn't make him too happy."
"Right now the idea doesn't make me very happy either."
She tasted like moonlight, of summer nights spent in the shadow of the lighthouse.
His words angered her. He had no right resurrecting their past this way. It was over. They were over. Did he have to make her feel as if her heart had been sliced in two? Payback, that was what it was. Payback for leaving him with his heart in his hand and a wedding ring in his pocket. She wanted to stuff those words down his throat, noun by noun. He had no idea what he was doing with these columns, what forces he was unleashing. It was too late for the truth. The truth would only hurt Ben and Ruth and Noah and even Sophie. If he kept up this ridiculous string of columns, something terrible was bound to happen. You couldn't play on emotion this way and not pay a price somewhere down the line. She pulled the telephone number off the masthead and dialed up the Gazette, enduring layer after layer of voice mail nonsense until she finally reached Noah. Except that it wasn't Noah at all but his mailbox. She slammed down the phone without leaving a message.
He had no right to do this. All they had left between them was the secret of the love they had shared. They had been apart for over eight years now. He had taken lovers. He had a daughter to love, while she had a cat name Pyewacket and a few memories. What more could he possibly want?
The storm had yet to turn into a full-fledged nor'easter but it was bad enough to keep her inside most of the day. Laquita had taped her ankle and after thanks to the ice and elevation, Gracie could get around with only the slightest limp. She ran out once to buy some more apples and brown sugar at the market and was forced to endure some very embarrassing comments from Raymond at register one and half the produce department. Despite the possibility of even greater embarrassment, she swung by the animal hospital to see Doctor Jim who greeted her warmly.
"So you're back," he said as they grabbed coffee in his office. "How's the big city treating you?"
"Not too well," she said, suddenly tired of putting a good face on everything. "I screwed up royally and I'm on suspension."
She gave him the details, sparing nobody, and he nodded.
"What would you have done?" she asked him. "Would you have suspended me for saving a healthy animal from being put down?"
"Yes," he said, "and then I would have taken you out to dinner to thank you for doing it."
He didn't ask why she had left Idle Point but she did notice an open copy of the Gazette on his desk.
"Will I see you at the Adamses' Thanksgiving table tomorrow?" he asked.
"Absolutely," she said, hiding her surprise. She had had no idea that the Adamses and Doctor Jim were friends. "Please tell me that Ellen is making her famous candied yams." She remembered them fondly from church suppers when she was a little girl.
His face clouded and she instantly knew she had said something terribly wrong.
"Ellen died last year," he told her, his dark eyes welling with tears. "She put up a brave fight but in the end she lost."
She didn't know what else to do so she hugged him.