She spent the rest of the morning combing tangles from their hair, a process that brought both girls to tears. She sensed Becky cried less from pain than the humiliation of having someone else combing her hair. Unskilled at all aspects of hairdressing, Samantha could only give them lopsided pigtails that caused them to giggle at each other. This was one of many skills Samantha knew she would have to master now that she had taken custody of the girls.
Once she helped them dress, she stood back to look at her adorable little girls. Becky pudgy and dark in a gray frock; Molly scrawny and bright in an emerald dress. No one would ever mistake them for twins or even sisters, though Samantha supposed they were now by the loose standards of Eternity that allowed her to serve as their mother. She didn't suppose there could be a family more dissimilar from each other anywhere else.
"What do we do now, Mama Samantha?" Molly asked.
"You girls can go play for a few minutes while I put breakfast on," Samantha said. Molly and Becky skipped off, their laughter echoing until Samantha closed the cottage door.
Cooking was another skill she would need to acquire. Her first attempt at breakfast-oatmeal from the supplies purchased in Seabrooke-turned into a thick, tasteless paste. If they had any livestock left she doubted even they would eat the stuff. She set it aside and decided on plates of apples and bread.
While she waited for the girls, Samantha sat by the hearth and stared into the fire. Yesterday she had been kissing Joseph and planning to live in solitude and today she was caring for two little girls and worrying about her domestic skills. More than anything, she wished she could have Joseph at her side right now so she could reach over to caress his hand and then pull him tight into a kiss-
The front door banged open and in came Becky and Molly, their clothes already stained with dirt. "We saw a bunny outside," Molly said.
"You did? That's wonderful," Samantha said. Molly described the encounter with the rabbit throughout breakfast while Becky gnawed on her bread and apples in silence. Samantha kept feeling Becky's eyes on her, but when she looked in that direction, Becky always turned her head away.
After breakfast, Samantha spent a disastrous afternoon with the girls in the bakery trying to make bread. Their first loaves of bread never rose. The second batch overflowed the pans. The third batch came out black on the bottom, but otherwise all right. They scraped off the charred parts as best they could and served the overcooked bread for dinner.