Chapter 8
The suit still smelled of the shop it came from, a stiff, unfamiliar smell that didn't sit right against Samson's skin. He stood in front of the small mirror in his room fighting with the top button longer than any man should struggle to dress himself.
"You're gonna strangle yourself," Billy said from the doorway.
"I might," Samson agreed, and gave up on the button, leaving it loose. "How do I look?"
"Like Papa in a suit that's not really yours yet."
"That'll have to do, I suppose." He turned from the mirror to find both children watching him from the doorway, Meg a step ahead of Billy the way she usually stood, like she'd appointed herself the one who went first into hard conversations. "Come in, both of you. Sit if you like."
They came in but didn't sit. Meg folded her arms loosely, not unfriendly, just settling in for something.
"Once she's here," Samson said, "and once she's decided to stay, things are going to look different around the store.”
They both looked alarmed.
“Different how?” Asked Meg.
“It ain’t like that. I mean to lean on less of your time and more of hers, so you two can go back to being children instead of shopkeepers half the day."
"We don't mind watching the store," Meg said.
"I know you don't. You're good at it, both of you, better than I've any right to expect. But I'd like you to have time for other things too. Fishing, the way we used to. Riding out past the creek." He glanced at Billy. "Rock collecting, if that's still the fashion."
Billy's face did something hopeful before he caught it and put it away again, like he didn't want to be seen wanting something too plainly.
"That'd be nice," Meg said carefully. "If it works out that way."
"You don't sound convinced it will."
Meg was quiet a moment, choosing her words the way she did when she'd been turning something over for longer than she was letting on. "It's not that we don't want it to work, Papa. We do. Billy wants to go fishing again more than near anything, don't you, Billy."
Billy nodded, solemn. “And collecting rocks. When was it not the fashion?”
"It's just," Meg went on, "you want it to work so much, I worry you might not see it clear if it doesn't. Do you remember the time Auntie Ella wrote and said she needed to borrow money? You wanted to believe her. You said so, later. So you sent her the money, and it was years before we had another letter.”
Samson felt that land somewhere it shouldn't have, mostly because it was true, and true in a way he hadn't expected from a ten-year-old.
"That's fair," he admitted. "I did misjudge that."
“You told me about it that way. And this doesn’t have to be the same.
We’re not saying Maria's like Auntie Ella," Meg added quickly.
"We don't know what she's like. That's the whole trouble.
We don't know, and you're already halfway to loving her after some letters, and if she turns out unkind, or if she's nice to your face and not so nice when you're not looking, we're worried you won't want to see it, because you want this so bad. "
"What makes you think I want it bad?"
Meg looked at him like the question answered itself. "You've been looking out the store window every afternoon for a month. You hum when you read her letters. You never used to hum."
Billy, who had been quiet through most of this, spoke up. “You do hum.”
“And that worries you?”
"You need her more than we do."
It wasn't unkind, the way he said it. It was just that plain seven-year-old speak again, and it sat in the room a moment before anybody moved to pick it up.
"Maybe I do," Samson said finally. "I won't lie to you and say I don't. But as much as I want this to turn out right, there are things that are more important to me. You know what they are?”
Billy shook his head.
“You two, of course. You’re more important to me, and I won’t do a thing to threaten that, I promise. If you come talk to me, I’ll listen.”
"That's all we're asking," Meg said. "That, and that you let us tell you the truth about her, once she's here, even if it's not what you want to hear.
Billy and me, we'll give her a real chance.
We already said we would. But we're not going to pretend things are fine just to keep the peace, if they're not fine. "
"I wouldn't want you to," Samson said, and meant it, even as some part of him quietly hoped it would never come to that kind of truth-telling at all.
Meg came forward then and straightened his collar, tugging the loose button back into some approximation of order, businesslike about it in a way that reminded him sharply of Livvy.
"There," she said. "You look like a man who's about to meet somebody important, instead of a man who's about to strangle on his own collar."
"Thank you," Samson said, and found himself, despite the nerves sitting heavy in his chest, almost smiling. "Come on, then. Both of you. Let's go meet the train."