Chapter 27
The delivery list sat on the counter that morning already sorted by street, something Samson hadn't gotten around to doing himself in longer than he cared to admit, and he knew without asking that it wasn't his own handiwork.
"Ella's doing," he said, mostly to himself, and decided not to mention it. There seemed little point in raising the subject, not this morning, not when he'd asked her plainly the night before to stay clear of the store for a few hours and let Maria have the place to herself.
"You're worried," Maria said, watching him study the list a moment too long. “About me. About us.”
"I'm not worried." He set it down. "I'm only noticing things I don't say much about."
“That’s worrying. That’s exactly how I’d define worrying, if somebody ever asked me.”
He allowed himself a small smile at that, and set about loading the wagon with the morning's deliveries, the list making the work go faster than usual, crates grouped by street rather than scattered the way his own lists tended to end up.
"I asked Ella to keep away from the store this morning," he said, when he'd finished loading. "Thought it might do you good to have a day of it to yourself, without anybody looking over your shoulder."
Maria's face did something complicated, gratitude and nerves both at once. "You don't think I'll manage."
"I think you'll manage fine," he said, and meant it. "That's rather the point. I want you to see it too, not just have me tell you so."
"And if it goes poorly?"
"Then it goes poorly, and we'll sort it out together, same as anything else.
" He came to stand in front of her, serious now.
"Maria, I believe in you. I want you to hear that plainly, not just guess at it from whether I leave you alone with the counter for a morning.
Whatever's been sitting heavy on you these past days, I don't fully understand it, but I know you're capable, and I know this family is better for you being in it. "
"Thank you," Maria said, quiet, and something in her shoulders eased at the words in a way he was glad to see, even if he still didn't understand what exactly had put the weight there in the first place.
"I'll be back by early afternoon."
"I'll be fine," Maria said, with more certainty than she'd shown in days, and he thought, climbing up onto the wagon a few minutes later, that the certainty in her voice was worth more to him than any amount of help Ella had managed to fold into a delivery list.
He set off down the street with the reordered crates riding easy in the back, glad of the morning's quicker start, and put the small nagging thought of Ella's competence out of his mind entirely, telling himself there was nothing in it worth dwelling on, only a woman finding useful ways to make herself helpful to a family that had, after all, invited her to stay as long as she liked.