Chapter 23
Two days of watching Maria grow quieter had turned into something Samson couldn't name, and by Thursday morning he'd decided the fault was his own for working her too hard, too fast.
"You've earned a day away from the counter," he told her, before she could argue. "All of us have. I thought we'd take the wagon to the creek. Ella can mind the store."
"Ella?" Maria's face did something that he read, wrongly, as simple surprise at the idea of a day off.
"She's offered before. Seems only fair to let her earn her keep for once." He said it lightly, meaning it as a joke, and didn't notice it land as anything else.
Billy's face fell the moment he heard the plan. "Auntie Ella's not coming?"
"She's minding the store, so we can all go together," Samson said.
"Oh." Billy looked between his father and Maria, clearly turning something over. "Can she come next time?"
"We'll see," Samson said, and didn't think much more of it, though he noticed, in passing, that Maria had gone very quiet at the exchange.
They set off midmorning, the wagon loaded with a basket Maria had packed.
A pie wrapped in cloth, and towels for swimming.
The creek, when they reached it, ran clear and cold over smooth stones, shaded by cottonwoods that threw long patches of relief across the water.
It was, by any measure, a fine place for a fine day, and Samson felt some of the week's tension ease out of his shoulders the moment he stepped down from the wagon.
"Race you to the water," Billy said to Meg, already pulling off his boots, and the two of them went tearing down the bank, shrieking when the cold hit their ankles.
Maria sat on the blanket Samson spread out, her hands folded in her lap, watching the children rather than joining them.
"You're not swimming?" he asked.
"In a minute," she said, and didn't move.
He let it be, and went to check on the children.
When he came back she'd cut the pie and was handing pieces around, smiling for Billy and Meg in a way that seemed easy enough on the surface.
It was only when she turned to hand him his piece that he caught something tighter in her face, something that didn't match the smile.
"Everything all right?" he asked.
"Fine," she said. "Just tired."
They ate, and afterward Meg convinced Maria to come down to the water's edge.
Samson watched the two of them wading in together, Meg showing her where the current ran gentlest, Maria laughing, genuinely it seemed, at something Meg said.
Billy splashed them both and got a splash back, and for a while it looked like the day was going exactly the way Samson had hoped it would.
But he noticed, watching from the bank, that whenever Maria's attention wasn't caught up in the children, her face settled back into something distant and worn, like a held breath she only released for their sake.
"You've barely said two words to me all day," he said, when they'd found a moment alone later, the children further up the bank hunting for smooth stones. "Have I done something?"
"No," Maria said, too quickly.
"You'd tell me if I had?”
"There's nothing to tell." She looked away from him, out at the water. "I'm only tired, Samson."
He studied her a moment, and a thought crept in that he didn't much want but couldn't seem to push back out again.
She'd been quieter every day since she arrived.
Perhaps it wasn't tiredness at all. Perhaps, faced with the reality of the life he was offering her, the store and the children and all the daily weight of it, she was having doubts about the whole arrangement.
"If you've changed your mind about any of this," he said carefully, "you can tell me. I'd rather know now than have you stay out of some sense of obligation."
Maria turned to him sharply, something wounded flashing across her face before she caught it. "Is that what you think? That I want to leave?"
"I don't know what to think. You've hardly said anything all week."
"I haven't changed my mind," she said, quiet, and there was something almost angry underneath the quiet, though it didn't seem aimed at him exactly, more like it was aimed at something she couldn't name aloud.
"I don't know how to make you understand that. I traveled across the country for you. I came here. I couldn’t imagine giving up on all of that, all of this, all of us, after only a few days.”
“So is there another problem? One I just don’t understand? You’ll tell me if there is, won’t you?”
"I don’t want to have this conversation." She stood, brushing off her skirt. “I need to help Meg with the stones."
She walked off before he could press further, and Samson sat alone on the bank, turning her words over and finding no comfortable place to set them down.
I don't know how to make you understand that.
It sounded, the more he turned it over, like a woman working up the courage to say something he wouldn't want to hear.
The ride back to town was quiet, the children tired and content in the back of the wagon, Maria beside him on the seat with her hands folded and her eyes on the road ahead. He tried once more, gently, to draw her out, and got nothing more than a small shake of her head for his trouble.
By the time they reached the store, the sun was low and gold behind them, and Samson helped her down from the wagon feeling, in spite of the pie and the swimming and the children's obvious pleasure in her company, that the day had failed at the one thing he'd meant it to accomplish.
Whatever weight Maria was carrying, he hadn't lifted it.