chapter Thirteen
Noah let her off at the top of the driveway, as close to Gramma Del's front door as possible. He offered to see her inside but she refused. He lingered in the driveway and he didn't begin rolling back down toward the street until she turned and motioned that it was okay for him to leave. A gentleman to the end.
At least she hadn't bumped into Ben or Laquita. She felt too exposed right now, too vulnerable, to make small talk. All she wanted to do was slip into Gramma Del's cottage unnoticed and try to make sense of the fact that the boy she loved was now a man with a child.
Unfortunately she wasn't fast enough because the side door of her father's house opened and Laquita stepped outside.
"Knee or ankle?" Laquita asked, falling into step with her.
"Ankle." Gracie made a face. "A sprain. I'm a chronic klutz."
"Lean on me," Laquita said. "A little ice, a little elevation, and you'll be good as new."
"That's what I was thinking."
"That's right." Laquita looked up at her. "You're a vet. So, tell me, what do you do when an Irish setter sprains her ankle?"
"I'll let you know when it happens," Gracie said
Laquita pushed open the door to Gramma Del's cabin and they stepped inside. Pyewacket strolled toward them with the world-weary air of one to the manner born. "That can't be Sam!"
"This is Pyewacket. Sam died five years ago." Now there was a conversation stopper for you. Nothing like talking about dead pets with your new stepmother.
Laquita motioned toward the chair. "Take off that wet jacket, then sit down and put your foot up on the coffee table while I get some ice."
"Funny," said Gracie as she shrugged out of her jacket, "but I don't remember you being this bossy when we were in school."
"Really?" Laquita walked back into the room carrying a large bag of mixed vegetables. "I don't remember you being so klutzy."
Gracie laughed even though she sensed maybe the slightest edge to Laquita's innocent words. Then again, she might have been guilty of that herself.
"No ice," Laquita said, kneeling down in front of Gracie. "This'll have to do."
Gracie jumped as the bag of vegetables touched her skin. "It would be easier to go out and play in the snow."
"Assuming we had snow The weather's been unnaturally warm. I can't remember ever reaching Thanksgiving week without snow." Laquita claimed the corner of the sofa next to Gracie then Pye claimed Laquita.
Traitor, thought Gracie. Fair-weather friend.
"So was that Noah's car I saw backing out of the driveway?" Laquita absently stroked behind Pye's ear with the finesse of a woman who was accustomed to cats. Pye looked like he was in heaven.
Gracie nodded. "He found me sitting on the curb and gave me a lift home."
"You should've asked him in. I have some cookies for Sophie."
"You know Sophie?"
Laquita lifted her left pant leg and pointed toward a fading bruise on her shin. "I know Sophie."
"What's with that kid?" Gracie leaned forward to readjust the makeshift ice pack. "I hear she bites too. Why don't Noah and her mother do something about it?"
"Noah's trying," Laquita said, "but it's tough being a single parent."
"Wait a second," Gracie said. "Back up. I thought Sophie's mother was in the picture."
Laquita looked at her strangely. "Noah didn't tell you?"
Gracie hesitated. "He told me that he isn't with Sophie's mother. That's about all."
"I thought you two were old friends."
"That was a long time ago." She shifted position, although her discomfort wasn't just physical. "So what's the story?"
"Apparently Noah just found out about Sophie a few months ago." She went on to tell Gracie about a holiday romance that ended amicably when Noah returned to Rome where he had been living and the woman in question, a journalist, went back to London. No angst. No strings. Except for the fact that the woman was pregnant and she chose to have the baby, even though she had no desire to raise a child on her own. Fiercely independent, the mother of his child never contacted Noah. When the little girl was born she gave the baby to childless relatives to raise and went on with her life.
"They adopted her?"
"Nothing that formal," Laquita said. "Remember this is all third hand information but I hear the baby was passed from relatives to friends then back again. Not much of a life for a little girl."
Damn it. The last thing Gracie had wanted was to feel something for Noah's child. "The mother didn't care?"
"Who knows?" Laquita said. "I assume she believed the girl was being well cared for."
"So how did Noah end up with Sophie?"
"The authorities contacted Sophie's mother after Sophie ran away from home and they found her asleep on the steps of a church. To make a long story short, they were going to put Sophie into the system and the mother decided maybe it was time to let Noah in on the fact that he had a five year old daughter." Noah flew over to England, met the child, and immediately took on responsibility for her future.
"And that's why he came home to Idle Point, for Sophie?" There was a lump in Gracie's throat the size of a dinner plate. The thought of Noah meeting his little girl for the first time brought back all the years she'd prayed that her own father would open his eyes and really see her for who she was.
Laquita nodded. "That and the Gazette. He has a lot on his plate right now."
"Seems so." Noah had wanted to write the great American novel, not be pinned down behind a desk at a newspaper office. She had a million questions, but she didn't trust herself to say anything more, not with her emotions so close to the surface. The thought of Noah with a daughter of his own awoke so many memories inside her heart, so many of the dreams she had put aside. The thought that his daughter shared her blood made her want to weep. A cruel twist of fate had joined them together forever in that angry little child. Nothing about her return home was the way she thought it would be, not even close.
"Ben would love to make you his special scrambled eggs," Laquita said after an uncomfortable silence, "but if you're not up to—"
"I'm fine," Gracie jumped in. "I'd love to try Dad's scrambled eggs." She was almost thirty years old and this was the first time she could remember her father doing anything special for her.
Laquita's serene expression turned downright joyful. "He'll be so pleased." She leaned forward and touched Gracie's forearm. "You don't know how much this means to him. He's so excited that you came up for our wedding."
Gracie's smile was noncommittal. She certainly couldn't tell Laquita that the only reason she had agreed was because Ben caught her at a weak—and unemployed—moment. "It'll be fun, I'm sure."
"I probably shouldn't tell you this—Ben will kill me if he finds out—but he's going to ask you something, Gracie, and if the answer's going to be no, I'd really like the chance to prepare him." She took a deep bracing breath which inflated her already considerable chest to alarming proportions. "He wants you to stand up for him."
"Be his best man?" Gracie couldn't keep the surprise from her voice.
"Be his witness," Laquita corrected gently. "You have no idea how much it would mean to him. I know your life hasn't been perfect and that most of that is Ben's fault, but he's made such progress and he loves you so much. If you would consider it, I'd be in your debt forever."
"You don't have to be in my debt," she said. "Of course I'll be his witness."
Laquita leaped up and hugged Gracie around the neck. "This is wonderful! I'm so pleased."
"One question though," Gracie said. "Do you love him?"
Laquita stepped back and met her gaze head on. "Yes," she said. "I love him enough to be faithful."
"I didn't ask that."
"But you wanted to."
"Yes," Gracie admitted. "I wanted to."
"I know we look like the odd couple but it's real, what we have. We're going to last forever."
Gracie didn't bother to tell her that sometimes forever wasn't very long at all.
#
"This is great!" The managing editor, a seen-it-all-type named Doheny, turned away from the computer screen and looked up at Noah. "How'd you come up with this stuff anyway? I wouldn't have figured you for the type."
"Beats me," said Noah and it was the truth. The words seemed to pour from his fingertips like magic. All of the frustrations he had felt with Sophie, his anger toward Gracie, the bittersweet memories hiding around every street corner—they were all there, willing to be transformed into words and phrases meant to move the reader. It wasn't anything like his usual style, which tended toward the brittle and manipulative—pure gold in advertising—but more real, more emotional than anything he had ever written.
"Can you do us up another one for tomorrow?"
He raised his hands and took a step back. "Hey, I'm not looking to take over Mary's job, Doheny. I'm on the other team, remember."
"I was talking with Mary's husband and it doesn't sound like she'll be back any time soon."
"Fine," Noah said. "We'll pull over Eileen or Gregory from the Lifestyle section. I've seen their work. Maybe we could rotate their columns."
"They're both maxed out. Besides, Eileen's going out on maternity leave next week."
"Let me level with you," Noah said as the two men stepped into Doheny's cubicle. "I'm not looking to be a columnist at the Gazette. I have my own job back in London and as soon as we can get this thing sold, I'll be going back to it."
"Great," said Doheny, looking under-enthused, "but that doesn't change things. You want top dollar, you need a strong circulation. It's that simple."
Just hold the fort, Doheny said. Give them a few column inches until they could plug in a replacement for Ann Levine. Noah reluctantly agreed. He'd poured a lot of drivel out onto his keyboard and called it a column. When it came out tomorrow and the cries of outrage from subscribers reached Doheny's ears, he'd see who was right.
He spent the rest of the day in conference with the money men. For a moment, when they talked about the Gazette's illustrious past, he had experienced grave misgivings about the entire process. The Gazette might not look like much at the moment, but there had been a time when it had commanded worldwide respect and, strangely enough, that respect had been largely the result of his father's folksy but powerful editorials. Simon's anti-Vietnam War views had been shocking in those days, the years before even Walter Cronkite was voicing an opinion against the slaughter. Simon had stood alone for peace and he had been noticed. The Gazette office had been fire-bombed twice. Simon had received numerous threats against his life. At one point he had apparently sent Ruth away for her own safety. But still he clung to his beliefs and in time the rest of the country came to see it his way.
The thought of allowing the Gazette to pass out of family hands didn't sit well with Noah and he wasn't quite sure why. He had loved and respected his father but he hadn't liked him very much at the end. There had been a terrible bitterness at the core of Simon's soul, and by the time of his death, that bitterness had spread to his family. Simon had lived a life of privilege and accomplishment. It was difficult to see what he had to be bitter about. There was only one battle he had lost in his sixty-two years of life and that was the battle for the heart of Mona Taylor. You wouldn't think Simon Chase had been the kind of man to carry a forty-two year old torch.
Then again maybe father and son were more alike than Noah cared to admit. Any illusions he might have had about being over Gracie had gone up in flames this morning when he kissed her. Hell, his illusions had vanished even before that, when he'd seen her standing there in the lobby of the Gazette in that enormous coat of hers.
She had never had any clothes sense at all. Her clothes had always been an afterthought, an idiosyncratic assemblage of whatever she happened to grab from her closet. He had always loved that about her. She was utterly without vanity when it came to the way she looked. She had no idea how beautiful she was. Not pretty, but beautiful. Noah was very clear about the difference. The sleek line of her hair in the rain, the curve of her hip, her endless legs. Her wit, her intelligence, her drive. She had grown from an attractive girl into the kind of woman who caught your eye and kept it. There were so many layers to her appeal that a man could spend the rest of his life discovering them.
He loved her. He hated her. He wanted her. He hated himself for wanting her. There was no future for them. Even this morning when he was crazed for the touch and smell of her, he knew that but somehow it didn't matter. He could have lived the rest of his life without seeing her again but now that he had, he didn't know how he could bear to lose her a second time.
The thing to do was lie low until after Ben and Laquita's wedding If he confined himself to the Gazette and caring for Sophie he would be okay. When they swept up the last of the orange blossoms and rice, Gracie would go back to New York where she belonged and once the Gazette was sold, he and Sophie would return to London and it would be like none of this had ever happened. His future wasn't here. It never had been. Not without Gracie..
If he never saw Gracie's face again, he just might be able to find a way to live without her.
#
The Gazette hit the front door at six forty-five the next morning.
Laquita hit the front door at six fifty-five.
Gracie, who was fortunately an early bird, invited her in. "I made coffee," she said, "but the toast isn't ready yet."
Laquita waved away Gracie's words. "Did you see it?" she demanded, holding the Gazette under Gracie's nose. "Did you read it?"
"I've only been up twenty minutes," Gracie said. "I thought I'd skim it over breakfast."
"Read it," Laquita ordered, very obviously an oldest child. "I marked the column right there on page eighteen."
She noticed Noah's byline and pushed the paper away. "I'll read it after breakfast."
"I think you should read it now."
"I can't read on an empty stomach. I need caffeine and calories."
"Make an exception."
"I don't have my contacts in."
"You don't wear contacts."
"You don't know that."
"Lucky guess. I have to get ready for work. Please read it, Gracie. You won't be sorry."
Gracie delayed as long as she could after Laquita left but her curiosity finally got the better of her and she glanced down at the first sentence.
She walked in out of the rain with my daughter in her arms
.She put down the paper and pushed it away. She poured herself a second cup of coffee even though her heart was beating like she'd mainlined caffeine. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop while she tried to convince herself she didn't want to read the rest of the column. She almost believed it too until the phone rang and Don Hasty said, "So when's the wedding?" which was followed by a call from Annie Lafferty who said, "I knew it when I saw you yesterday morning... I just knew it!"
She quit answering the phone after Joann, Tim, and Patsy from the coffee shop all called to weigh in on the subject. She picked up the newspaper and forced herself through the rest of the column. She felt like a voyeur; his view of the workings of a man's heart was undeniably moving. There was no doubt that Noah was a gifted writer. He had managed to say so much about the two of them and their past and still never say anything at all. He never called her by name. He never identified her by either family or career or the color of her hair, and yet short of publishing her fingerprints, he had turned the spotlight on her just the same.
It 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.
"Come back home to stay, Gracie," he said as she said goodbye. "You know this is where you're meant to be. Don't wait until it's too late."
#
Doctor Jim's words lingered with her as she pared apples and rolled pie crust. Don't wait until it's too late. She was barely thirty years old. Not even at the halfway point in her life.
"Doctor Jim said the strangest thing to me today," she said to Ben, who was putting together a window seat for Pyewacket. Pye watched the endeavor from atop the television set across the room. "He said I should come back to Idle Point before it's too late. Do you have any idea what he meant by that?"
Ben put down his hammer and considered her question. "He's still pretty raw from losing Ellen. That can make a man sit up and take notice of how quickly it all spins by."
"I'm not exactly AARP material yet," she said dryly as she reached for the cinnamon. "There's plenty of time."
"I thought that too, Graciela. I was only forty-one when your mother was killed in that car crash."
She stopped what she was doing. She all but stopped breathing. This was the first time in her entire life that he had directly referenced her mother's death.
He leaned back on his heels, hammer dangling from his right hand, and met her eyes. "You've probably heard some talk along the way about your mother and me."
She leaned against the counter for support. "Yes," she said. "I have."
"Most of it was true," he said. "We had what you'd call a difficult marriage but I loved that woman with all my heart and in the end I know she loved me too."
"I-I'm sure she did, Dad." You don't know what Simon told me, Dad. She was leaving you, taking me with her. She was going to run off with another man.
"We had our troubles, don't get me wrong. At one point we were going to throw in the towel and call it quits once and for all, but then out of the blue you came along and it was like God opened up the gates of Heaven and let us in."
She looked down at her hands, willing herself not to cry. For almost thirty years she had dreamed of the day her father would open up to her and now that he was, she wanted to turn and run. You're pretty good at that, aren't you, Gracie. You proved that Monday with Noah.
"I wasn't her first choice," he said. "She loved somebody else all through high school but I was always there. I knew what I wanted and I was willing to wait." The best-looking, most popular couple at Idle Point High. King and Queen of the Senior Prom. The ones most likely to elope on graduation night and live happily ever after. "Except it didn't happen that way," Ben said with a small laugh. "You see, the King of the Prom wanted more out of life than your mother could give him. He loved her but he didn't love her enough to look past her family and the fact that she lived in one of those shacks near Milltown. He tried, I'll give him that, but in the end he couldn't separate the girl he loved from the family she came from and he married somebody else."
"Ruth Marlow," she said in a whisper.
"You knew?"
"I saw the yearbook a long time ago," she said.
"Your mother was a beautiful woman," he said, memory softening his weathered features. "Prettiest girl ever to come out of Idle Point."
"I've heard... things," she said, forcing each word out with increasing effort. "That my mother was—" How do you ask your father if your mother, his wife, had been unfaithful to him?
"She was a good mother," he said fiercely. "The best. She loved you with her heart and soul and she would never have done anything to hurt you."
"I know but—"
"When we found out she was expecting you, everything changed. After all those years of praying for a miracle, we had one right there growing in her belly—" He stopped for a moment as the memories threatened to overcome him. "I didn't ask," he said fiercely. "She came to me with a miracle. I wasn't about to ask why."
Or how. He didn't say the words but Gracie heard them just the same. Simon had been telling the truth. She had often wondered how he could hate his own child, the child of the woman he loved, and maybe this was the answer. Her birth had brought Ben back into the picture for good.
"The day of the accident," she began, her voice quavering. 'Where was she going?"
Ben looked at her curiously. "You had an appointment with the pediatrician. One of those six-month checkups. The doctor said he had never seen your mother look happier or more beautiful."
"You're sure we were on our way home?" she persisted. "You're positive?" Simon had said that she was on her way to be with him, that the three of them were going to run away together and leave Idle Point and everyone in it far behind.
"Yes," he said. "She stopped at the convenience store for a quart of milk and the chocolate donuts I like. Eb found them in the back seat."
Gracie's knees gave way and she grabbed for a kitchen chair. Truth mixed with lies. Lies mixed with truth. She saw clearly now how much Simon must have hated her. Her birth had put an end to his dreams of a future with Mona. Whatever else her mother had done wrong in her life, in the end she had chosen to stay with the man who had loved her unconditionally right from the start.
Ben helped steady her. "I shouldn't have told you all of this," he said, looking so much older and sadder than he had a few minutes ago. "We weren't saints, your mother and I, not by a long shot, but in the end we found our way back to happiness because of you. You were the one who turned us into a family."
He placed his hand on her shoulder. She reached up and placed her hand on top of his.
"I love you, Graciela," he said, his voice breaking on her name.
"I know," she said, leaning her head against his arm and closing her eyes. "I know you do." She tried to tell him how she felt but the words weren't there. Not yet. But for the first time in her life, she knew it was only a matter of time.