Chapter 10
The following morning, after a restless night, Samson unlocked the front door, and Maria stood just behind him, twisting her hands the way she'd done at the station the day before.
"You don't need to look so worried," he said over his shoulder. "It's only shelves and customers. Nothing in here bites."
"I'm not worried about the shelves." She managed a small smile. "I'm worried about the customers deciding I don't belong among them."
"They'll come around. Folks out here take a while to warm, but once they do, they don't let go easy.
" He led her behind the counter and began pointing things out, the way he'd once shown Billy, back when Billy was barely tall enough to see over the counter himself.
"Flour and dry goods on this side. Tools and hardware on that wall.
Anything folks ask for that you can't find, chances are it's in the back room, and if it's not there either, we don't carry it. "
"And if I don't know the price of something?"
"Ask. Nobody expects you to have it memorized. It’s your second day in town.
I didn't have it memorized before my second year.
" He watched her take that in, nodding, filing it away the careful way she seemed to file most things.
"I want you to know, before the day gets going, that this is a lot of work I'm asking you into.
Long hours, sometimes, and customers who'll try your patience. "
"I understand that."
"I know you do, in the way anybody understands a thing they've been told.
I want you to understand it the other way too, the way you only get from living it.
" He leaned against the counter, choosing his words with the same care he'd used the night he'd told the children about her coming.
"But I don't want it to be only that. I'm hoping, if you're willing to share the load here, we'll find more time for the rest of it.
Fishing. Riding out past the creek of an evening.
Swimming, come summer proper, when the water warms enough for it.
I don't want my children to grow up only knowing the inside of this store. "
"That sounds like a good hope to have."
"It's the whole reason I replied to you in the first place, if I'm honest with you. Not just for help behind the counter, though I need that too. For the chance to be something more than a shopkeeper to my own children."
Maria was quiet a moment, and when she spoke, there was something steadier in her voice than he'd heard from her yet.
"My father's store taught me most of what I know about people.
How to make a stranger feel welcome, how to talk someone through an order they're not quite sure of themselves.
I think I can be of real use to you here, Mr. Tolliver, not just as somebody who means well. "
"I believe that," Samson said, and found, watching her look around the store with something like determination settling into her face, that he believed it more than he'd expected to this soon.
The bell over the door rang before either of them could say more, and Mrs. Dutton came in, already talking before she'd properly crossed the threshold. Samson and Maria had discussed her briefly the day before.
"Samson, I need to know if that thread's come in yet, the blue I ordered three weeks back, and don't tell me it's lost again because I've a dress half finished and no way to—" She stopped, seeing Maria. "Oh. You must be the young lady everybody's talking about."
"Maria Burns." Maria came forward and offered her hand, steady despite whatever nerves Samson guessed were still sitting underneath. "I'm very glad to meet you, Mrs. Dutton."
"You've heard my name already?"
"Mr. Tolliver mentioned you might be in for the blue thread." Maria was already moving toward the shelf where the thread was kept, scanning it with quick eyes. "I don't see it here, but let me check the back room, in case it came in and hasn't been shelved yet."
She disappeared into the back, and Mrs. Dutton raised an eyebrow at Samson. "She's quick."
"She is," Samson agreed, and found himself watching the back room doorway with something close to pride.
Maria emerged a moment later with a small parcel. "Is this it?"
"That's it exactly." Mrs. Dutton took it, clearly pleased. "Well. Aren't you a find?”
“That’s kind of you to say, Mrs. Dutton, but I think I got lucky, because I arrived the same day as your thread.”
Mrs. Dutton grinned at Maria’s witty comeback. “Well then, I’ll hold my judgement for now,” she said.
By the afternoon, Maria had handled a dozen customers or more, some of them easy, a few of them prickly in the way certain longtime customers liked to be.
She didn't always know an order on sight, and twice she came to Samson with a question rather than guess, which he preferred to false confidence.
But she made every person who came through the door feel like she'd been glad to see them specifically, and that, he thought, was a harder thing to teach than prices.
When Billy and Meg came in from their lessons, Billy went straight to Maria to show her a rock he'd found on the walk over, and Maria examined it with the same seriousness she might've given a customer's order, asking him where he'd found it and whether he thought it was rare.
Meg hung back a little longer, but even she drifted closer as the afternoon went on, answering Maria's questions about the town with less caution than she'd shown the day before.
Samson watched the three of them from behind the counter and felt something in his chest that he hadn't let himself feel too plainly yet.
It would take time, he knew that. Trust wasn't built in a day, not for children who'd already lost one mother and weren't eager to risk loving a woman who might not stay.
But he could see the beginning of something there, small and uncertain, the way a foundation looks uncertain before anyone's built a house on top of it.
By evening, Maria was pale with tiredness, and Samson noticed the moment it got the better of her, her shoulders dropping the way his own did at the end of a long day.
"You've done more than enough for a first day," he said. "Let me walk you back."
They went out into the cooling evening, the street quieter now, the sky going orange over the hills. Maria was quiet beside him for a while before she spoke.
"I'm glad I came," she said. "I want you to know that, even though I'll admit I miss home more than I expected to. My father. The shop. The way the street sounded in the mornings."
"I'm glad you came too." He glanced at her. "Maybe, once you're settled, your father might come out and visit. See the place for himself."
"I'd like that," Maria said, and something in her face lifted at the thought of it.
They reached the guest house, and Samson found himself slower to leave than he had reason to be, lingering at the gate a moment longer than the walk required.
"Goodnight, Miss Burns," he said, and leaned down, pressing a careful kiss to her cheek, uncertain even as he did it whether it was welcome.
Maria's face colored, but she smiled, a real smile that reached her eyes. "Goodnight, Mr. Tolliver."
He walked back toward the store with the evening settling gold and quiet around him, and thought that whatever else the coming weeks held, tonight at least, he had reason to hope.