Chapter 18
"Icould walk them to school," Ella said, already reaching for Meg's coat where it hung by the door. "Save you the trouble this morning, Samson, with the delivery coming in."
"You don't need to do that."
"I want to. Come on, you two, we'll be late." And she was out the door with Billy and Meg before Samson had properly agreed to it, the bell still swinging behind them.
The store felt quieter with them gone, and Samson turned back to the crate he'd been unpacking, aware of Maria standing near the counter, quiet in a way that made him look up.
"Does this change anything?" she asked. "Ella being here.”
“I said it didn’t.”
“I know. But I didn’t think it did until you said that, and now I don’t know. So I’ll ask again… does it change anything?”
"No." He said it plainly, because he meant it plainly.
"I'm glad she's taking an interest in them, that's all.
Billy and Meg lost their mother. Ella's the only piece of her they've got left walking around and breathing.
That's worth something, even if I don't know yet what to make of the rest of it. "
"I understand that," Maria said, though something in her voice suggested the understanding hadn't settled anywhere comfortable.
"It doesn't change what I want with you," he added, and meant that too, although as the words came out he realized he could’ve expressed them a little more gently. Still, he thought, watching her shoulders ease slightly, that the matter was settled.
Ella returned inside twenty minutes, breathless from the walk, and went straight past the counter toward the shelf of tinned goods, lifting a crate Samson hadn't gotten to yet.
"These want to go on the top shelf, not the middle," she said, already sorting them. "Livvy always kept the tins up top, out of the children's reach. Habit from when Billy was small enough to pull the whole shelf down on himself."
"I didn't know that," Maria said.
"No reason you would." Ella said it lightly, without any edge Samson could hear, and went on sorting.
The bell rang, and Mr. Dutton came in, hat in hand. "Samson, you got any of that harness leather in yet? Mine's about worn through."
"Back wall, third peg from the left," Ella said, before Samson could answer. "I noticed the delivery when I came through yesterday."
Mr. Dutton blinked, then nodded toward it. "Well, aren't you handy to have around?”
Samson watched this exchange with something like relief. It was one less thing to manage, one less question he had to field between customers, and he found himself grateful for it in the plain, uncomplicated way a tired man is grateful for anything that lightens his load.
"You're nearly out of lamp oil," Ella said to him a few minutes later, nodding toward the shelf. "I noticed when I came through yesterday, too. You'll want to order more before Thursday, or half the town will be sitting in the dark come the weekend."
"I hadn't gotten to counting stock yet," he admitted.
"I know. I counted that part for you.” She said it without any particular weight to it, already moving toward the back room. "Where's that mug of yours, the chipped one? I'll make coffee, you look like you could use it."
"Top shelf, behind the?—"
“Oh, same place it always was," Ella said, and was gone into the back before he finished the sentence, returning a few minutes later with his coffee in exactly the mug he favored, the one with the chip in the handle that Livvy had bought him years back and he'd never had the heart to replace.
"Thank you," Samson said, taking it, and didn't notice, in the small comfort of it, the way Maria had gone quiet again behind the counter.
"You've still got the spare key under the loose board by the back door?" Ella asked. "I remembered that just now, walking past it."
"Still there," Samson said, surprised she'd remembered something so small.
"Livvy showed me once, years back, in case of emergency." Ella smiled, the smile of someone recalling something fond. "Funny, the things that stick."
The morning went on that way, small thing after small thing, Ella answering a question before Samson had finished asking it, Ella knowing which customer wanted credit and which wanted cash on the spot, Ella reaching for a jar before he'd said which one he needed.
None of it was wrong, exactly. All of it was helpful, and Samson found the morning going easier for her being there, the store running the way it hadn't run easily in longer than he cared to admit.
He was simply surprised. Surprised by Ella’s sudden change of attitude. Surprised by her sudden appearance. Surprised by the effort she was going to in an effort to show that she belonged.
"You've got a memory like a steel trap," he told her, mid-afternoon, watching her settle an argument between two customers over a delivery date without once consulting him. "I'd forgotten half of what you just recalled."
"I suppose some things just stay with you," Ella said. "Being part of a family long enough, you learn things without meaning to."
Samson nodded, pleased, and didn't think much more on it, because there was a store to run and Ella was making the running of it easier.
He didn't see, because he wasn't looking for it, the way Maria had grown quieter as the day went on, answering customers a beat slower than she had the day before, her confidence, so newly built, going soft and uncertain again at the edges.
He didn't notice that every time Ella reached for something before he could ask, Maria's hand, which had been reaching too, drew back a little further.
As though she were slowly learning that this store, this family, this world had a shape already fixed before she'd ever arrived to it.