Twelve Days

by Teresa Hill

  "What?" she and Rachel said at the same time.

  "If no one knows who your father is or where he is, no one can take you back to him. Don't tell us, Emma."

  Rachel gaped at him, hardly able to believe what he was saying. Sam, who'd been so diligently trying to get the kids to talk. Now he was telling Emma not to.

  "Do you understand what I'm saying, Emma?" he asked.

  Emma nodded.

  "You don't have to tell anyone anything. I know I tried to get you to, but I didn't know why you couldn't, and now that you've told us, I understand. It's okay. Just don't tell. Don't tell me or Rachel. Don't tell anyone else."

  "Okay."

  Emma gazed up at Sam with what could only be awe, Sam who looked fierce enough to break someone in two at the moment. But obviously, Emma didn't see that in him. Or maybe she did. Maybe she saw it for what it was. He was furious on her behalf and on behalf of Zach and Grace, and he was ready to take their so-called father apart with his bare hands. Sam could be so hard when he was pushed too far. Rachel had seen it in him as a teenager, when life had been so cruel to him. And she'd seen steel in him over the years. When she'd leaned on him in bad times, and he'd held himself together and her, too.

  He was the kind of man a woman could depend upon when times got tough, a solid, unshakably strong, brave man, and at one time, he'd loved her very much. He'd loved their baby, too, and it seemed he loved Emma, Zach, and Grace, maybe just as much. And this was just what the man she'd always loved would do. He'd keep these children safe.

  Rachel was scared now that they knew the kind of battle they were facing, but they had Sam. He'd decided for all of them. They simply wouldn't tell. If Miriam asked if the children had told them anything, Rachel wasn't sure what she would say. But she wasn't going to worry about that now.

  She went to Emma and put one of her arms around the girl, the other around Sam. They were in this together now.

  * * *

  Sam stayed there until Emma lifted her head and dried her wet eyes. She looked embarrassed when it was all over and a bit self-conscious, and Sam found himself rashly promising her that everything would be okay.

  Then he asked her to take Grace downstairs and wait with Zach so Sam could talk to Rachel. Rachel, who'd opened the cedar chest and gotten out the christening gown and the rattle that was supposed to belong to their baby. The one she'd felt guilty for years for losing.

  Life was so strange, he realized. All those things they'd never said that had eaten away at the foundation of their marriage all these years. Things that had festered and grown and ached and threatened to rot it at its core. He hadn't quite been able to take it all in the night before. It had literally made him dizzy, just thinking of how she must have felt, how much it had to hurt, all this time. He knew, because he'd felt the exact same way, and there had been days when he'd thought it might well kill him, days when he wished it would. Guilt was a powerful thing, an irrational, powerful thing.

  "I always thought it was my fault," he said.

  "What?" She looked up from her spot on the floor, where she'd sat down to play with Grace for a moment.

  "Our baby. I thought it was my fault we lost her."

  Rachel looked genuinely puzzled. "Why?"

  "Because I was driving. Because the car needed brakes and the tires were bald. Because it crumpled like the tin can it was when we hit the car, and I should have been able to afford a safe car to put you and the baby in."

  "Sam—"

  "Your father said as much to me that day at the hospital, and I thought he was right. I thought the same thing myself."

  "Oh, Sam. He was angry. He was hurt. It was a terrible day."

  "I know."

  "You can't still think it's your fault," she began.

  "You do," he said. "You blame yourself because you wanted to get pregnant and you made love to me that night knowing it was possible. And that's not why we lost our baby, Rachel."

  "I did." And then she began to understand. Her eyes filled with tears. "You felt that way, too? All these years? That it was your fault?"

  He nodded. "And afterward, when I was trying my best to help you, and you pushed me away—"

  "Because I felt so guilty," she said.

  "I thought it was because you blamed me, too."

  "Sam, I never did. Never."

  "And I never blamed you. As much as I wanted someone to blame, it was never you."

  He didn't know what to say then, what to do. He ended up walking over to the chest, which was still open, and pulling out the pair of booties. So tiny, so delicate. He forgot sometimes how truly tiny she would have been, even if she'd been born at the right time, and he really didn't want to cry right now. He despised tears; he'd been taught to at a very young age and he didn't care about any of this new-age man shit that said it was perfectly fine for a man to fall apart. He didn't think it was.

  But the booties were tiny. What in the world would her feet have looked like? Suddenly, he wished he'd looked, wished he'd held her, as the doctors had told him to do. He wished he'd had just that little bit of time with her and that maybe the memories he had left were even stronger, the way she smelled and the feel of her in his arms.

  He wished he and Rachel had done this a long, long time ago. Had talked this out, had gotten the poisonous grief and guilt out of their systems before it had taken such a toll of them.

  He felt her hand on his arm, and then her cheek pressed against his shoulder.

  "We have to stop this," he said, more gruffly than he intended because he was trying to keep his voice from breaking. "We have to stop hating ourselves. We have to let it go."

  "I know. I've just held on to it for so long, I don't know how to let it go."

  He got himself under control, at least enough to face her, and for the first time, he thought about the future, about all the possibilities. Him and Rachel and children. And then he had an idea.

  He took her face in his hands and tilted it up to his. His gaze locked on hers, and in a moment, he saw everything there. The young girl he'd first known. The one he'd fallen in love with. The one he'd held so tightly while they'd buried their baby, and the one he'd ached for, for so many endless nights. She was still his, despite all they'd gone through and all the things that had threatened to tear them apart.

  "Do you trust me?" he asked.

  "Yes," she cried.

  "Then listen to me. I forgive you, Rachel. I know what happened. I know what you did. I know why you did it. I know how much you've suffered over the years, and I don't blame you at all for what happened to our baby. I don't think it was your fault. I never thought it was."

  She closed her eyes, dipped her head until it was nestled against his chest, and she was trembling. He held her even tighter.

  "I forgive you, too," she cried. "Can you let me do that for you? Can we do it for each other and put it all behind us? Finally?"

  "We can try," he said.

  "I want to, Sam. I want that more than anything."

  * * *

  By the eighth day of Christmas, Sam still felt shell-shocked, like someone who'd been purged of a poison or had woken up after a long, long sleep.

  He knew enough about guilt to realize that it took more than a few words to absolve a person of emotions he'd hung on to for more than a decade. But things definitely looked better.

  He was actually looking forward to Christmas, and since he couldn't get any work done, he might as well get ready for it. Rachel and the children were baking today. She always made baskets of goodies she delivered to the neighbors, and she had a whole crew of women baking for the elderly people served by the Meals on Wheels program she helped start. He was no help when it came to baking, and Rachel had given him a pointed look when he'd claimed he had nothing to do that day, reminding him that Christmas was next week and then looking over at the children.

  He suddenly found himself with a large number of people on his Christmas list this year. He was in the bike department at the t
own's only toy store when he ran into Miriam.

  "Bikes?" she asked.

  Sam ignored that. He felt foolish enough, looking at bikes while there was snow on the ground. Bikes implied that the person riding them would still be around in the spring when the snow thawed.

  "Did you hear back on the blood tests?" he asked instead.

  Miriam nodded. "That's why I came over to talk to you. They were negative. The children don't belong to the couple in Virginia."

  Sam nodded. He'd known that after what Emma told them yesterday.

  "Still," Miriam went on, "from what Emma said, about being afraid of the police and running away, someone's probably looking for them. Someone other than their mother."

  Oh, hell. Sam forgot about mentioning that. "I thought you sent out all sorts of bulletins about them."

  "We did, but bulletins about a mother who abandoned them. If we focus on the father, children taken by their mothers from their fathers... Those cases aren't as clear-cut. Lots of times, law enforcement isn't exactly jumping up and down to get involved. It's a custody issue, for the courts to handle."

  Sam nodded, feeling sick inside, thinking what he'd told Miriam before he'd understood what the children were facing might help send them back to an abusive father. And then, he had to ask one more question. "What happens if you don't find anyone for them?"

  "We look for a long-term placement. If we're very, very lucky, an adoption, if it goes that far. Most people don't truly abandon their children, Sam. They might dump them somewhere for a while, but things get better. People sober up. Or feel guilty. Or panic and come back. Or we find out where they're from and that leads us to someone who can take them. A grandmother, an aunt, someone."

  "Anyone?" he asked, offended by the thought.

  "What are their options? They're three children. Do you have any idea how few people are willing to take on three children at once? If we split them up, I could place Grace in a second. People would fight to get her. And I might be able to place Zach. He's still young enough. But Emma..."

  "You can't split them up," he said.

  "I may not have a choice. I'd be out begging, just like I was when I showed up at your and Rachel's door," she said. "Oh, I have a few possibilities. People call me from time to time who are looking to adopt, and there might be someone on my list I could talk into taking them all. In fact, now that I think about it there's a woman I know in her mid-forties, someone who's spent the last twenty years building up a business she just sold. She's regretting never having a child, and she certainly has the financial resources to raise three children. She's looking for one child, but she might be convinced to take them."

  "A single parent? You let single people adopt?"

  "Yes. We'd prefer two-parent families. They tend to get priority, especially with infants. But it's not always possible to find two-parent homes for all the children up for adoption. If it's a choice between long-term foster care and a single-parent adoption, we'll go for the adoption."

  "So if..." God, he was going to say that even if he and Rachel split up, Rachel could still keep the children.

  She didn't need him as much as he thought she did.

  "Sam?" Miriam asked. "Are you okay?"

  He nodded. All these years, children had been the one thing he and Rachel hadn't had, one thing he hadn't been able to give her. Now he found out she didn't need him at all for that. Not to keep these children.

  "What's going on?" Miriam asked.

  "Nothing," he insisted.

  "Do you and Rachel want them if they become available for adoption?" she asked. "I have to warn you, I don't know how long we might be living in limbo here—how long we'll look for their parents, whether we'll ever find them, whether the children will ever be free for adoption. There are no guarantees here, and I thought after what happened with Will..."

  "I don't know," he said. "I have to talk to Rachel."

  And then he thought of what his wife had already done, the promises she'd already made on their behalf, and took a leap of faith himself.

  "But you don't have to look for someone else to take them after Christmas. They can stay at our house. Rachel already promised them that. It's not a problem, is it? We've still got all our paperwork in order?"

  "Yes. You and Rachel can have them for as long as you want them, provided we don't find where they belong."

  "Okay." He frowned. "You have single-parent foster homes, too?"

  "Of course."

  "It's not a problem? Being a single parent?"

  "We're not exactly overwhelmed with people dying to take foster kids into their homes, Sam. We have plenty of kids to go around." She frowned at him. "What's going on?"

  "Just curious," he said, shaking his head back and forth.

  A few days ago he felt trapped because of the kids. He couldn't have walked out on Rachel and the kids. Now he worried that they didn't need him at all. Oh, he could probably take the coward's way out, stay for the sake of the children, and maybe Rachel would keep him around for the same reason.

  But it was about the saddest reason he could think of for him and Rachel to stay together, and he didn't think it was enough for him anymore. And he didn't know what to do.

  Chapter 11

  On the ninth day of Christmas, Rachel got out of bed very early, dressed quickly, gave Grace a bottle and put her back down, then went downstairs to find Sam still asleep on the sofa in the den.

  Good. She'd made it down here before he crept out the back door. She'd waited up for him the night before and the one before that, but he hadn't come in until very late. He was doing it again, sometimes disappearing before she woke up, sometimes coming home long after she'd gone to sleep at night.

  Not today, she vowed.

  She went to work in the kitchen, intending to have him wake to a house filled with the smell of homemade biscuits baking and bacon sizzling in a skillet. It was going to smell so good, he wouldn't be able to leave without eating, and she intended to make him do it sitting across the table from her. He couldn't ignore her sitting across the table from her. She wouldn't let him.

  It was time they got on with this. He didn't blame her for anything that happened in their past, had generously offered his forgiveness for it all, if that wasn't enough. He'd said he would have married her anyway, even without the baby, and she was trying to make herself believe it.

  He'd decided not to ask the children anything else about their mother and didn't intend to let them tell him or Rachel anything about their father. Rachel had never been prouder of him than she was in that moment. That was the man she knew, the one she'd loved for so long. A man three lost children could count on to stand by them, to help them. A man she could count on, as well. When he wasn't hell-bent on avoiding her.

  That seemed the way it had always been for her and Sam. Two steps forward, one step back. They had just been coming out of the fog of losing the baby when Rachel's grandfather had died. Two years later, her mother had died. The next year, they'd gotten involved in an adoption gone wrong. A birth mother who had changed her mind at the last minute. They'd actually seen the baby at the hospital. Rachel had held him in her arms, but they'd never been able to take him home. And then there'd been the adoption that was nothing more than a scam. A woman who'd been pregnant and promising her baby to a half-dozen couples throughout the Midwest and in the process managing to scam them out of thousands of dollars. And then there'd been Will.

  It was like they'd hardly been able to breathe between one tragedy and the next, and considering it all together, Rachel supposed it was a miracle they'd made it this far, her husband's post-Christmas plans notwithstanding.

  But they were still together. They were talking about things they'd never been able to discuss before. There was a long way to go and no guarantees of any kind regarding these children. But they had reason to hope.

  Rachel was just putting the biscuits in the oven when she thought she heard a car out front. Glancing at the clock, she couldn't ima
gine anyone showing up at her door this early unless...

  She hurried to the front door, afraid of finding her father or one of her sisters there, but it was Miriam climbing the porch steps.

  "Good morning," Miriam said.

  It scared her, seeing her aunt here so early, so unexpectedly. "What did you find out?" she asked.

  "About the children?"

  "Of course, about the children."

  "Nothing. Just what I told Sam yesterday. That the DNA tests showed they couldn't possibly belong to the couple in Virginia."

  "Oh."

  Miriam frowned at her. "Can I come in, Rachel? It's freezing out here."

  "Oh. Of course." Rachel stepped back and held open the door. "Sorry."

  She took Miriam's coat and led her to the kitchen, where she offered her fresh coffee, conscious of the fact that Sam was still asleep on the sofa in the family room. Which Miriam would know instantly if she took three steps down the back hallway. That was all she needed—Miriam to see that, if she hadn't heard from someone else about all that was wrong at the McRae house.

  "Sam said you'll keep the children after Christmas if I still haven't found out where they belong."

  "He told you that?"

  "Yes. I assume you'd both agreed..."

  "We had," Rachel claimed. It wasn't exactly a lie. "I just didn't know he'd told you. That's all."

  Miriam was giving her that all-knowing mother look, the one Rachel's own mother used so often. She'd claimed mothers just knew things, that one day they were going to find a gene for it on the X chromosome. The all-knowing-mother gene. Rachel had hardly ever been able to put anything over on her mother or Miriam.

  "Sam and I talked about a lot of things. Oddly enough, he was interested in the fact that single people could be foster parents or adoptive parents."

  "What?" What did single people have to do with anything?

  "Singles. Foster parenting. Adopting. For instance, if you were single and wanted to continue foster parenting these children or to be considered as an adoptive parent, we could probably make that work just fine."