Chapter 17
Samson had barely said a word since he'd come to collect her, and by the third silent minute, Maria had begun cataloguing reasons for it.
"Is something wrong?" she finally asked, when they'd nearly reached the store. "You've hardly spoken since you arrived."
"Something's on my mind," he admitted. "I ought to have come and told you yesterday, and I didn't, and I'm sorry for that. It was late, but that’s no excuse.”
“Told me what?"
He kept his eyes on the road ahead rather than on her. "My late wife's sister arrived in town last night. Ella. She came into the store, said she wanted to help with the children, be part of their lives again.”
“Really?”
"I don't want you thinking it changes anything," Samson said. "I only should have told you sooner, rather than let you hear it standing in the street."
They'd reached the store now, and a woman came around the corner from the opposite direction, arriving at the same moment they did. It hadn’t occurred to Maria that Samson’s sister in law arriving in town would change anything. At least, it hadn’t until he said he didn’t want her to think that.
"Samson," the woman said, warm, easy, as though she'd been expecting to find him precisely here at precisely this hour. Her eyes moved to Maria, curious and quick. "And you must be Maria. I've heard so much about you already."
"This is Ella," Samson said. "My late wife's sister."
"It's lovely to meet you." Ella's smile was wide and immediate. "I've been so eager to meet the woman who's stepped in to help this family. Goodness knows they've needed it."
"Thank you," Maria said, and found she meant it, a little. It was a kind enough thing to say. "I hope your journey wasn't too hard."
"Worth it, for family." Ella's gaze went briefly to the store window, where Billy could be seen moving about inside. “It's such an important thing, don't you think? I couldn't sit in Colorado knowing these two were growing up without any of their mother's people close by."
"That's a generous thing to do," Maria said, and meant that too, though something small and unplaceable had begun to settle in her chest, a feeling she couldn't yet name and didn't like the shape of.
"Shall we go in?" Ella was already moving toward the door. "I expect the children will be glad to see me again so soon."
She went ahead of them, Samson followed, and Maria trailed a step behind, feeling suddenly like a guest arriving late to a story already in progress.
She tried to remind herself that she’d been there first, but that wasn’t exactly true.
She’d arrived a day earlier, but this Ella woman had known Samson and his children long before that.
Inside, Billy looked up from behind the counter.
"Auntie Ella," he said, polite, and went back to what he'd been doing.
Meg appeared from the back room and greeted her aunt with the same brief politeness.
"You've both grown so much," Ella said. "I feel I've missed years of it. Billy, is that rock collection of yours still going? Your mother used to say you'd fill the whole porch with them if she let you."
"Still going," Billy said.
It was such a small exchange, and there was nothing unkind in it, and yet Maria felt something quiet and unhappy move through her all the same, watching the ease with which Ella slipped into memories that belonged to a history Maria had no part of.
She listened as the two of them talked. Billy’s rock collection.
Fishing trips she'd never heard mentioned.
A dozen small, ordinary things that Ella referenced in passing, things Maria would have to be told about secondhand, if she was told about them at all.
It wasn't that she thought Ella meant any harm by it. It was only that watching the three of them together, so easy with each other's histories, made Maria feel, for the first time since she'd arrived, like the newest and least certain thing in the room.
"You'll have to forgive me if I ask after all of you constantly," Ella said, glancing back at Maria with a smile that seemed friendly enough. "It's been so long, and there's so much I've missed."
"Of course," Maria said, and found herself looking toward Samson, not out of suspicion, but wanting some small anchor, some sign that the ground she'd only just begun to find her footing on hadn't shifted beneath her.