Maria caught her breath and studied Sam. “When did you get in, Samantha?”
Sam awkwardly cleared her throat and forced herself to look into Maria’s eyes as she replied, “Late. Who did you think gave you the blanket?”
Maria’s towel hung limply by her side, and she raised her chin in defiance, daring Sam. “House elves?”
They stared at one another, the second hand of Eva’s cuckoo clock on the wall ticking once, twice, five times. Sam licked her lips and felt the heat rise to her face even before she lost the battle. Her eyes dropped to Maria’s chest, which was still rising and falling heavily from being startled. Maria’s eyes narrowed, and she threw her towel over Sam’s head, brushing past her as she moved into Sam’s bedroom and closed the door. Sam stood there a moment, covered by a wet towel; it smelled sweet, and the heat from her face trickled down throughout her body.
Her hair was growing damp, and Maria was in her bedroom. Sam finally managed to collect herself and remove the towel, slinging it over the rack on the bathroom wall before marching toward her bedroom door.
“What exactly are you doing in my room?” She tentatively reached out for the door handle. What if Maria wasn’t dressed yet?
Before she could make up her mind, Maria pulled open the door, took the mug from her hand, and walked past her toward the kitchen. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said over her shoulder as she passed through the archway into the kitchen. Sam wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or disappointed that she was wearing a shirt now.
In one of Sam’s shirts. Who the hell did this woman think she was, and why on earth was she wandering around Eva’s house like she lived here?
Maria poked her head into the hallway. “Did you grow roots there?”
Sam followed her into the living room where Maria folded the blanket and draped it over the back of the couch. As Maria gathered her purse and put her coat on, she indicated her shirt.
“I’m borrowing this. I hope you don’t mind.” Sam’s favorite long-sleeved T-shirt, a San Francisco 49ers one, pulled tight across Maria’s full chest. For a moment, Sam forgot to be mad, as the shape of the body underneath the shirt flickered across her vision. She blinked to dispel the image.
“Remind me again why you’re in my house?”
“I never told you in the first place. Your mom woke up in the middle of the night, confused. When she couldn’t find you, she called me, and I sat with her until she was asleep again.”
“Oh.” That made sense. Didn’t it? “How does she have your number?”
“It was in her phone. I gave it to her a long time ago. Before her accident. She used to come into the restaurant for scones or frittatas every morning.”
“She did?”
“Yes, Samantha. We were friends. She talked about you a lot—how proud she was of you, that sort of thing. You reek, you know,” Maria said pointedly.
“No, I don’t,” Sam lied.
“Yes, you do. You stink of booze and cigarettes.”
“I went out last night.” She ran a hand through smoke-infested locks.
“No kidding. Been doing that a lot, huh? Trips to Burlington to forget? Are you driving home drunk? Jesus Christ, Sam, you wanted to be a doctor! What are you thinking?”
“What gives you the right to march in here and judge me? Where do you get off?” Sam’s voice started to rise.
“Your mom called me! She was confused, and you weren’t here for her!” Maria’s voice matched Sam’s, and they stood toe to toe, bellowing at each other.
“You have no idea what I’m going through!”
“Oh, I don’t? You think you’re so special? Listen, you’re no better than the rest of us, Sam. We’ve all got shit to deal with, but you’re acting like a child. You can’t drink this away. If you’re not up for this, if you’re too immature to take care of her, you need to make other arrangements.”
Too immature? Sam was the one who had left Stowe, who had made a full life for herself outside this sleepy town. “What do you know about it? You with your perfect restaurant and your perfect little life in this perfect American town?”
Silence descended. Making an ass out of herself had never been so easy, Sam thought.
“Feel better now?” Maria asked coldly. “Just so you know, this isn’t the first time she’s called me in the middle of the night while you were getting wasted forty miles away.”
“Samantha?” Eva appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily on the frame, looking small and lost. “Can I…tea?”
Noticing Maria, her demeanor brightened considerably, and she seemed to wake up. “Maria! Nice…see you.”
Sam hurried over to her mother and, taking her arm, escorted her to the recliner. Pecking her on the cheek, she said, “One tea, coming up!”
She glared at Maria. “You can find your way out.” Spinning around, she marched off to the kitchen.
Three hours later, Sam dropped Eva off at physical therapy and pulled her mother’s Chevy into the parking lot of Stowe Away. Nodding to the regulars, she proceeded behind the bar and into the kitchen. Brendon, the kitchen manager, stopped chopping leeks long enough to incline his head toward the office in the back. Normally gregarious, he had something of a menacing appearance about him today, and Sam noted the skilled way he wielded the large chopping knife. Word had clearly traveled about her less-than-chivalrous behavior that morning. Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she marched to the closed door and rapped three times.
“Yes?” Maria’s voice sounded heavy.
“It’s Sam. May I come in please?” A prolonged pause followed, and for a moment, she thought Maria would say no.
“Come in, Samantha.”
Sam closed the door behind her and found herself in a small room. Maria sat on the other side of a desk behind a laptop. Wall sconces provided soft uplighting. The floors were hardwood, but a rug took up most of the space. Stacks of timecards, receipts, and menus filled the top of Maria’s desk. There was something familiar about the three unframed canvas paintings of vegetables, fruits, and tamales that adorned the walls.
Closing her laptop, Maria leaned back in her chair. “Come to apologize?”
Sam mutely nodded. They stared at each other from opposite sides of the small office. After a beat, Maria laughed quietly. “You have to actually say it, Samantha.”
“Maria, I sincerely apologize for my dastardly behavior earlier today. I was rude and insensitive.” She softened her stiff, formal tone. “You didn’t deserve that. Thank you for coming when my mother called.”
“You’re welcome. And I’m sorry too, Sam. I shouldn’t judge you. I know you’re having a hard time right now.”
Sam dropped into the free chair. “How did you deal with it?” she asked. “When your parents…when everything changed for you?”
“Oh, I drank some. Didn’t drive to Burlington to do it, but I partied right here in Stowe. Once I decided to start the restaurant, though, I threw myself into that. Between meeting with contractors, planting gardens, and testing recipes, I didn’t have the energy to drown my sorrows.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
Maria leaned back in her chair and studied her. “You don’t want anything like that. You’re unwilling to commit to living here, Sam, so you’re just biding your time until something changes and you can go away again. Look, you can, of course. There are facilities you can move your mom to, and you can be on your merry way. Is that what you want?”
“No. Yes.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I really can’t say.”
“Well, you’ve got some shit to figure out. But this quiet little town isn’t as bad as you think it is. Why don’t you get to know it, and then you can make a more informed decision?”
With a sigh, Sam nodded. “I suppose there’s sound logic there.”
“I think we survived o
ur first fight. Always bodes well for the strength of a relationship.” They shared a smile, the tension in Maria’s office dissipating considerably.
“Hey, where did Pauly stay last night?”
“My uncle’s. Pauly can stay by himself here and there, but if I’m going to be out for a while, Uncle Rod takes care of him.”
“Oh.” Sam thought on that a moment. “Well, how about we work out a trade? I’ll watch Pauly and Eva when you want to go out, and you can watch them both when I want to go out?”
“Doesn’t work for me. We’d never be able to go out together,” Maria reasoned simply.
Sam’s cheeks reddened. “Oh.”
“Relax. I’m just trying to be your friend; you seem like you could use one.”
“Yeah, okay. I would be grateful to be your friend,” Sam said, hoping she came across as sweet and not pathetic.
Maria rolled with it either way. “Listen, I have to get back to planning next week’s menu. You should stop by my place sometime. Bring Eva. She and Pauly always got along well—they used to draw together. Don’t see why that has to change. And you and I can talk about what there is to do in this small town you’ve recently decided to get to know.” She scribbled her address and phone number on a strip of paper and slid it across the table, her eyes twinkling.
“Um, thanks.” Sam stood, but midway through her first step toward the door she stopped. “The paintings—”
“Yes,” Maria said, smiling.
“Yes? Yes what? I haven’t asked you anything.”
“You’re wondering if your mother did them. The answer is ‘yes’. They were a present when the restaurant celebrated its first anniversary.”
Sam nodded, lost for words. The paintings provided concrete evidence for Sam that her mother had been able to complete projects, that her friends and neighbors had thought highly enough of her and her work to display them, that Eva once had connections to people and art that she could no longer access.
Sam tried to make her way toward the door, but managed to trip on either the legs of the chair or the rug underneath it—she wasn’t sure which. Clutching the doorknob to steady herself, she flushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry again, for this morning,” she mumbled. “And last night. And the nights before.” She rubbed her shin where it had collided with the chair.
Maria made no attempt to stifle her laugher at Sam’s less than graceful exit.
“Oh, come on, Zeus, just bring it back!” Sam hollered at the mutt wagging his tail and looking at her expectantly. “I already threw the damn thing. Fine, here!”
Sam pretended to throw something else, and her new dog took off after air. The sunshine warmed the afternoon, the sky was dappled with fluffy white clouds and in the small clearing of Cady Hill Forest, there were no hikers or cars to interfere with dog training. On the north side of Stowe, with tall trees, sloping trails, and the occasional clearing, Cady Hill was the perfect spot to train a rescue dog: it had enough space for Zeus to run, but Sam also knew the woods like the back of her hand. She grew up hiking with Jack here.
“Okay, now bring it back. That’s a good boy. Yeah, right here, boy. Oh, for crying out loud, stop! Come back. Here. Here, Zeus! Here, boy!” Sam patted her leg as Zeus overshot her, ran in a wide circle, and traipsed back to her thigh. He dropped the disgusting, slippery Frisbee at her feet, sat down, and whined. “Good. Yes, this is called fetch. You’re doing well, my canine friend. Let’s see if we can improve our record to two for nine.” Sam flung the Frisbee again and Zeus took off.
A normal, small-town American life included things like a big dog to play fetch with in a park, or so Sam had always assumed. If she wasn’t headed back to a lab sometime soon, she’d decided, she might as well go down to the pound and pick up something to drool on her. Plopping down on the blanket she’d brought from home, she pulled out her thermos of tea. If history was any indication, it would be at least six minutes before Zeus returned with the Frisbee. He’d already run right past it and was now barking at a squirrel. Sam squared her shoulders. She could train a dog; she knew it.
As she was musing over whether or not to buy a book on the subject, a shadow fell over her lap, and she looked up to see Maria.
“May I join you?”
“Sure, of course.” It wasn’t worth asking how Maria knew she’d be there; Maria always seemed to know where Sam was.
She sat on the available half of the blanket, just as Zeus returned triumphant from his Frisbee hunt. He deposited the much-gnawed toy in Maria’s lap and began thoroughly licking her face. Struggling to keep her mouth closed and her tongue protected from inadvertent French kisses with a retriever, Maria tried in vain to push him off her while Sam struggled to gain control of him
“Zeus, down, boy. Down. Yes. Good. Now, sit. Sit! Good. Okay, good. We’re getting somewhere.” Turning to Maria, she said, “Sorry about that. Our lesson in manners isn’t scheduled until next week.”
“And what’s today’s lesson?” Maria showed no real signs of being bothered by Zeus’s affection.
Sam launched the Frisbee into the air again and yelled, “Fetch!” This time, rather than sailing parallel to the ground for twenty yards like her previous throws, the Frisbee gained height until it became perfectly lodged in the upper branches of an oak tree.
“Of course,” Sam mumbled. Zeus, unfazed, bolted to the maple tree next to the oak tree and began barking vigorously. “My dog is literally barking up the wrong tree. My life has turned into a bad joke.” She stood, wiped the drool from her hands onto her jeans, and marched over to her misguided dog. “Zeus! Zeus, this tree!” She tried to point her dog’s nose in the right direction, but he wasn’t having it. Cursing and physically struggling with her wayward retriever was a losing battle.
“I brought you a sandwich,” Maria called out.
It had been a really long time since someone had made food for her—since someone took care of her, instead of the other way around. “That was thoughtful.”
“Why don’t you let Zeus be a silly dog and come eat?”
Sam returned to the blanket and gratefully accepted a sandwich from Maria’s bag. She took a bite, and her eyes rolled back for a second. “How on earth can you make a sandwich this good? It’s just a sandwich.”
“Mmm. I don’t divulge my secrets that easily. You’ll have to work for them, slowly, over time.” Her rich voice made the roof of Sam’s mouth tingle.
Some of the sandwich went down the wrong pipe, and Sam coughed. Her eyes watering, she gestured to the thermos on the other side of Maria, who chuckled as she handed it over. In her rush to drown her coughing, Sam dumped half of the contents of the thermos over her face and down her shirt. “Oh, for crying out loud!” she sputtered. By this point, Maria’s laughs had deepened to guffaws.
After drying Sam off using the blanket they’d been sitting on and trying to quell her laughter, Maria solemnly informed Sam, “You really might be the clumsiest person I’ve ever met.”
“That’s me. I excel in all I attempt,” Sam said, although truthfully she wasn’t especially graceless—or at least, she wasn’t before she moved back to Stowe. Chalk it up to an off-kilter life, she thought.
Dried and no longer choking, Sam sat down again and managed to finish half of her sandwich without further incident. Wiping her hands on her pants, she turned to Maria. “I was wondering about your parents. Tell me about them?”
Maria raised her eyebrows, evidently surprised by the question. Her eyes unfocused, and she went far away from the forest and Sam’s blanket. “I dreamt about them last night—about their accident. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I see it vividly in my dreams. He died instantly. She died a few hours later in the hospital from blood loss.”
Sam regretted asking; Maria’s wounds were clearly still too raw, and she worried that talking about them was like a finger pressing on a bruise.
&nb
sp; “We had been a close family. My dad, Roberto, taught me how to make tamales and told me stories about growing up outside Mexico City. He moved to Vermont to study with the Bread and Puppet Theater, but after he met my mom, he wanted something more stable. Once they got engaged, he took a position at Stowe High teaching English and drama.” She plucked a blade of grass, tied it into a knot, and pulled it into two pieces. They drifted away in the wind when she released them. “He played catch with me in the backyard and taught me how to ride a bike. My mom, Sophie, owned a small accounting firm. I guess I owe a lot of my business acumen to her—she instructed me on the finer points of management. She used to braid her hair—and mine too. We played board games together.”
“And Pauly?”
“We all helped him through speech and physical therapy. After eighth grade, my parents wanted him to attend a private school where he could get more one-on-one attention, but I felt strongly that he would do best at Stowe High. I promised every day for a month that I would look after him and help him with his homework, and eventually my parents gave in.”
“You took care of him even before your parents died.”
“Mmm. Something like that.” She gathered more bits of grass and fiddled with them. “I miss them every day. It took me a long time to adjust to a world without them, and it seemed like I could only really mourn at night, after Pauly had gone to bed. I wanted to be strong for him.”
“Do you have anyone who’s strong for you?”
Maria took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders as though dislodging the weight of the years since her parents had died. She smiled at Sam, her face transformed from grief to something approximating happiness. “I have Pauly.”
Zeus chose this moment to return from the nearby river he’d discovered and shake off vigorously next to Sam. Maria bit her lip, but couldn’t suppress her laughter. She dragged her index finger across Sam’s brow, collecting river water, mud, and part of a leaf Zeus had flung there. She held it up for Sam to see. “You need a shower.”
Sam’s damp locks clung to her forehead and the back of her neck, and she was painfully aware that she and Zeus both looked like drowned rats. “That’s it; it’s decided,” she said. “I’m never leaving the house again.” Zeus plopped down next to Maria and began devouring the remaining half of Sam’s sandwich. “Thief,” she said, scratching his ears.
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