Chapter 26
The morning started easier than the ones before it, Samson at her side, patient with her the way he'd been that first day, before Ella's arrival had quietly rearranged her sense of things.
"You're doing well," he told her, when she settled an order without needing to ask him anything at all. "Better than well."
"I had a good teacher," Maria said, and found she meant it, some of the week's weight easing at the simple warmth of his attention returned to her.
By afternoon the store had gone quiet, Billy and Meg off at their lessons, Ella out on some errand of her own, and Maria found herself alone with Samson for the first time in days without anyone else's voice filling the space between them.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, before she'd fully decided to.
"Anything."
"Would you be happier with Ella?" The question came out plainer than she'd meant it to, but once it was out she found she couldn't call it back, and didn't entirely want to.
"Better off, I mean. She knows the children, the store, the town.
She knew Livvy's ways, and Livvy's recipes, and she fits into all of it so easily.
I've watched this week, and I've wondered. "
Samson set down the ledger he'd been holding and looked at her, and there was nothing hesitant in the way he answered.
"No," he said. "I wouldn't be."
"You don't have to say that just to be kind."
"I'm not saying it to be kind. I'm saying it because it's true.
" He came around the counter, closing the small distance between them.
"Ella was always flighty. Wanted things she hadn't earned, and got frustrated when the world didn't hurry up to meet her.
I'll admit, this week's given me reason to think she's grown some since Livvy passed.
Maybe grief taught her something. But grown or not, she isn't her sister, and I don't want her to be.
I don't want a copy of what I lost, Maria.
I had that, once, and it was good, and it's gone now, and trying to build it again with a woman who only looks the part would be its own kind of grief, stretched out longer than it needs to be. "
"Then what do you want?"
"Something new," he said. "Something that's its own thing, with its own charms, and its own troubles too, I expect, but ones I haven't already grieved the ending of.
" He reached for her hand, careful, the way he'd been careful with her from the start.
"That's you, Maria. Not a replacement for anything.
Just you, and whatever we build, being the first of its kind, not the second of somebody else's. "
Maria felt her chest, tight for days now, come loose at last, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding since the morning Ella first walked through the door.
* * *
The window had been open just enough, and Ella had been close enough, gathering herself before going in, to hear every word of it.
I don't want a copy of what I lost.
She stood very still on the step, her hand still raised to push the door open, and something hot and furious moved through her, though she let none of it reach her face by the time she finally stepped inside and found the store empty.
Ella needed Samson to want her, otherwise she’d never have a claim on the money he was going to come into any day. She didn’t have a lot of time to convince him he did want her, and it seemed like nothing she’d done so far was having the effect she needed it to.
If one tactic was failing, she needed to double down on the others.
She left without going in, walking instead toward the schoolhouse, timing her arrival to catch Billy and Meg as they came out for the afternoon.
"There you are," she said, warmly, as though nothing at all had shifted in her since morning.
"I thought I'd walk you both home today.
In fact, I've been thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I stayed on properly?
Not just visiting, but living here, in town, close enough to see you both whenever you liked? "
Meg considered this with the careful seriousness she brought to most things. "That would be nice. We'd like seeing more of you."
"But Maria's going to live with us," Billy added. "Papa's going to marry her. So you'd have to get your own house, I guess, since ours has already got a mother coming."
"We didn't mean anything by it," Meg said quickly. "We just meant, there's already a plan. But you could still visit lots. Maybe live close by."
"Of course," Ella said, and made herself smile, made herself sound pleased with the compromise they'd offered her, though it sat in her chest like a stone. "Close by. That would suit fine."
She walked the rest of the way with them, smiling, asking about their lessons, but inside, she had gone cold.