Chapter 9
The platform was all dust and wood, and Maria's legs felt unsteady beneath her as the train finally hissed to a stop. She gathered her skirts and stepped down before her nerve could fail her entirely.
She saw them before they saw her. A tall man in a suit that looked new and slightly uncomfortable on him, a boy at his side craning to see over the crowd, and a girl standing very straight and still and watchful. Maria immediately liked the girl, but at the same time feared her scrutiny.
"Miss Burns," the man said, coming forward, and his voice was steadier than his hands looked, which he seemed to be trying to decide what to do with. "Samson Tolliver."
"Mr. Tolliver." She found she was smiling before she'd decided to. He was taller than she'd pictured, and there was something in his face, weathered but not hard, that matched the letters so closely it startled her. "It's very good to finally meet you."
"This is Meg," he said, "and this is Billy.”
Maria knew both their names, of course, but removing them from the page and placing them upon a real person felt somehow presumptuous. She faltered.
"Ma'am," Meg said, with a small, careful nod.
"Hello," Billy said, considerably less careful, looking her over with open curiosity. "You don't look like your letters."
"Billy," Meg admonished, mortified.
"It's all right," Maria said, laughing despite herself. "What do I look like instead?"
Billy considered this seriously. "Prettier, I guess. Letters don't have faces."
"Billy," Meg said again, though she looked like she was fighting a smile now too.
Samson had gone faintly red, though whether from his son's bluntness or something else, Maria couldn't tell. "I'll get your trunk," he said, and went to see to it, leaving Maria alone with the two children for a moment that felt longer than it was.
"Was it a long trip?" Meg asked, filling the silence with the awkward conversation of someone who'd been instructed to be polite.
"Very long. But better company than I expected made it easier. And the coffee was bad. Complaining about that, as it turns out, really passes the miles.”
Meg didn’t laugh, but Maria wasn’t sure if she’d made the joke for the girl or for herself.
"Papa's got the buggy," Billy said. "We're gonna show you the town."
They loaded her trunk and climbed up, Samson driving with Billy wedged between him and Maria, and Meg on Maria's other side.
The buggy rolled out from the station into a town that unfolded itself slowly.
A wide dusty street lined with false-fronted buildings.
A church with a modest steeple. Beyond it all, the hills were green in a way Maria hadn't expected from Arizona at all.
"I thought it would be all desert," she admitted. Unable to keep the relief from her voice.
"Most of the territory is," Samson said. "But up here we get enough rain to keep things growing. Folks don't believe it till they see it. There's creeks, and good grazing, and come spring the hills go thick with wildflowers you wouldn't credit."
"It's beautiful," Maria said, and meant it, looking out at the green hills rolling away from the western edges of the small town.
"There's the school," Meg said, pointing. "And that's the church, and Mrs. Elizabeth's place is just past it, that's where you'll be staying."
"And that's where I found the biggest rock I ever found," Billy put in, pointing to a rise past the creek. "Bigger than my head. Papa let me keep it on the porch."
"Does he still let you?"
"Yes'm. It's still there. A customer tripped over it last week. I got a whole collection now, some of 'em real rare, I bet."
"I'd like to see it,” Maria said, and Billy looked pleased, but tried not to show it too plainly.
They rode on, Samson pointing out the mercantile, his friendly competitor in town, the smithy, the little schoolhouse where the children took their lessons three mornings a week.
Maria found herself, without meaning to, imagining her own days immersed in the heart of this place.
Mornings at the store. Afternoons at the creek, maybe, if the children would have her along.
Evenings in a kitchen that wasn't yet hers but might be.
"What was Boston like?" Meg asked. "I never been anywhere bigger than here."
"Loud," Maria said. "Crowded. There's more people on one street there than in this whole town, I'd wager. I liked it well enough, but I don't think I'll miss the noise of it."
"What do you like to do?" Billy asked. "Besides letters."
"I like to read, when I can find the time. And I used to help my father in his store, much the way you two help your father, so I suppose I know something of what's ahead of me."
"You'll have to learn where everything is," Billy said. "It took me forever."
"Then you'll have to teach me," Maria said, and Billy sat up a little straighter at that, as though being handed a job he hadn't expected but liked the idea of.
Samson had said little through most of this, but Maria noticed the way he angled the buggy so she could see the best of the view, the way he slowed past the creek without being asked, giving her time to look.
It was a small thing, but it told her something larger, that he was paying attention to her in a way that went beyond politeness, and she found herself glancing at him more than the scenery warranted.
He caught her look once and held it a moment before returning his eyes to the road, and something passed between them that neither of them named, though Maria felt it settle warm in her chest all the same.
By the time they'd circled back toward the guest house, the hills gold now with the lowering sun, Maria thought that whatever else came of this, whatever proved true or difficult in the weeks ahead, she was glad, plainly and simply glad, that she had come.