Chapter 19
By the time the afternoon light had turned gold through the front window, Maria had stopped reaching for things before Ella could get to them first.
It wasn't that anything had gone wrong, not in any way she could point to and name.
Ella hadn't been unkind to her, not once, not all day.
She'd smiled at Maria, included her in conversations when she remembered to, asked her small polite questions about Boston.
And yet Maria felt, standing behind the counter with very little left for her hands to do, smaller than she had that morning, as though the store had quietly rearranged itself around someone else's shape while she wasn't looking.
"You look tired," Ella said, coming to stand beside her while Samson helped a customer load a wagon out front. "It's a lot to take in, a new place, new faces. I remember how it was, coming to visit, years back."
"I imagine it was easier for you," Maria said, and tried to keep the words light. "You already knew everyone."
"I suppose that's true." Ella considered her a moment, not unkindly. "You know, there's a stove in the back room. Livvy used to bake bread there most afternoons, filled the whole store with the smell of it. Samson always did love coming in from the counter to a fresh loaf waiting."
"I didn't know that."
"Why would you?” Ella said it simply, no unkindness in it that Maria could find, and yet it landed the way most things had landed today, a small reminder of a history that predated her.
"You ought to try it, though. Bake something for supper tonight.
I think it might do you good, and I know it would do Samson good, to have the smell of fresh bread in the store again. "
Maria hesitated, then found herself nodding, grateful, in spite of everything, for a suggestion that felt like an offered hand rather than another reminder of what she didn't know. "I'd like that. Would you show me where things are kept?"
"Of course," Ella said, and did, patient and thorough, and for the better part of an hour Maria lost herself in the plain, familiar work of kneading dough and watching a fire, work her hands knew from her father's kitchen even if this particular stove was strange to her.
She made a stew besides, using what she found in the store's own stock, and by the time Samson closed up for the evening and the children came in from their afternoon chores, the back room smelled warm and full, bread cooling on the counter, stew simmering low.
"Something smells wonderful," Samson said, and Maria felt a small flush of pride at that, the first easy thing she'd felt all day.
They ate together at the little table in the back, and one by one, they praised it.
Billy declared it the best bread he'd ever had. Meg agreed it was excellent, though she wasn’t willing to hand it such a definitive title.
Samson complimented the stew twice, and Ella, too, said the bread was lovely.
Maria smiled, and thanked them, then ate her own supper slowly. Underneath the warmth of the praise, something in her sat hollow and unconvinced, as though their compliments all had a qualifying clause that just hadn’t landed yet.