Twelve Days

by Teresa Hill

  "I want every part of you," she said. "The good, the bad, everything. I deserve it. Can you give me that?"

  "I have, Rachel. I've given it all to you now."

  "Then things should get easier from now on. At least between us. The kids... That's going to be hard. Do you think I can't handle it? Do you still think I'm going to fall apart on you?"

  "I think together, we can do this. We can help them." He smiled at her then.

  "What, Sam?"

  "I'd forgotten what it was like to see you spitting fire, the way you used to do for me, back when you were defending me to the whole damned town. I guess I wasn't sure you had any of that left in you."

  "You found it and dragged it out of me." She sighed, trembling again, because she thought it was going to be okay. She took hold of the side of his coat and pulled him closer, until they were almost nose to nose. "I meant what I said Christmas morning. I still love you, Sam."

  He held her for a long moment. She felt each shuddering breath, felt the fine trembling in his body. Sam, her rock, trembling.

  "I never stopped loving you, Rachel," he said finally. "I never will."

  Rachel's poor, battered heart felt full to the point of bursting, a mix of hope and joy and incredible sadness flooding through her. She and Sam were going to raise these children together. They would get them through this terrible loss, and then bring them up in the midst of as much love as they could provide, both for the children and each other.

  They held each other for a long time before they went back inside and told Annie Greene that her children had found a home and vowed to love them as they would have loved the baby girl they lost.

  Epilogue

  On the first day of the New Year, Sam was sitting on the floor of the family room trying to explain to Zach the intricacies of pro football and watching a very determined Grace crawl toward the fireplace one more time.

  He caught her by the foot and dragged her back once again. She had on one of those warm, fuzzy, one-piece pajama things, like long underwear with feet in them, and the floor was a heavily varnished hardwood. She slid along quite easily, and it had become a game to her now.

  He finished tugging her back, and she pivoted around on her belly to face him and giggled. Great. They could make a game of her trying to get close enough to the fire to singe her gorgeous eyelashes.

  "She doesn't understand," Zach said, shaking his head.

  "No, she doesn't." And he couldn't turn his back on her without finding her in some sort of trouble. It was definitely a whole new lifestyle.

  "Is Emma comin' back soon?" Zach asked. "Sometimes she listens to Emma."

  "Emma should be back anytime now." Sam glanced at his watch for the third time in ten minutes. Annie had decided it was time to tell Emma what was going to happen, and Sam had wanted to be there but their baby-sitter—one of his nieces—had canceled at the last minute, so Rachel took Emma and Sam was here trying to keep Grace out of the fire. But he was anxious to know how Emma was holding up.

  "I think I hear 'em," Zach said, racing for the door.

  "Don't go outside without your shoes, Zach!" he called out, maybe already too late. Kids were impulsive. About everything, it seemed.

  Meanwhile, Grace crawled over to him and pulled herself up until she was standing beside him, hanging on with great determination to fistfuls of his shirt and wobbling back and forth. She was determined to walk and fell down at least a hundred times a day.

  "You're going to give me heart failure," he told her.

  She patted his cheek. Hard. They hadn't convinced her yet to be gentle. Sam made a growling sound and went after her, his mouth landing against her soft, fabric-covered belly. She howled with delight and latched on to his hair. It was her favorite game of all.

  When she finally let go and he looked up, Emma was standing there staring at the two of them, looking a bit lost and afraid as she had that first day.

  So much had changed so quickly, he could hardly believe it. He'd growled at Emma for real that first day, scared her, resented her presence here, and been scared to death by her, too.

  This time he held out his arm to her and said, "Come 'ere, Em."

  Her face fell. She dropped to his side and buried her head against his chest. Her shoulders were shaking. She was crying, and he was fighting not to himself.

  Grace didn't understand this, either. She thought it was yet another game and soon she was hiding her face against his chest, too, and trying to get Emma's attention. Sam gently pulled her back, so she'd leave Emma alone.

  "Give us a minute, Grace," he said.

  She frowned—she was used to being the center of attention—and pointed to Emma and said, "Muh, Muh."

  "I know. It's Emma. She'll play in a minute." He reached behind him for her ball. Zach was trying to train her to fetch. Sam threw the ball into the corner farthest from the fire and said, "Get the ball, Grace."

  She didn't look happy about it, but she crawled off after it, her diaper-clad bottom swishing back and forth as she went.

  Emma finally lifted her wet face from his shoulder and said, "She's not a puppy."

  "Zach thinks she could be almost as good as a puppy. He wants to get her a leash and a collar, thinks we could keep her out of trouble easier that way. What do you think? We could stake her to the middle of the floor, give her some room to run, but still keep her out of the fire?"

  Emma laughed a bit, and then bit her bottom lip and cried.

  "We're going to take good care of her, Emma. You and Zach, too. We promised your mother."

  "I know. She told me. She told me everything."

  "If the doctors say it's okay, we'll bring her here to the house and take care of her. We did that with Rachel's grandfather and her mother before we lost them. We want you to have as much time with her as possible."

  "I'd like that, if she was here," Emma said.

  "We love you, Em," he said.

  "And I love you. But I'm scared. It's gonna be so hard..."

  "I know. But Rachel and I have been through a lot of bad times. We know how much it hurts sometimes, and I won't lie to you. Some things just always hurt. But things can get better, too. You'll get to the point where you can remember someone you lost, someone you loved, without hurting so bad you want to cry. Where you can be happy again. Where you know there are still good things in life ahead of you."

  "You think?" she asked.

  "Listen to me." He turned her head up to his. "I know it's true. All you need are people around you who love you. You just hold on tight to them and you'll get through it. You already know how to do that. You've done it with Zach and Grace. Rachel and I know how to do that, too. We'll hold on tight. Have a little faith, okay?"

  She nodded.

  "Hey," he said, seeing something coming at him out of the corner of his eye. "Look at that!"

  Grace was up on her feet, in the middle of the room, holding on to nothing at all. Just standing there grinning and wobbling back and forth.

  "Careful." Emma held out a hand to her.

  Sam did the same thing. Grace raced toward them, three, four, five steps, more off balance with each one she took. She would run instead of walk. Sam barely managed to catch her before she hit the floor. It scared her a bit. She fussed as he pulled her close and looked bewildered and maybe a bit mad.

  "So you're really mobile now?" he asked. "And that's supposed to be a good thing? Because the way I see it, you'll move even faster now and get into even more things."

  She blinked up at him and frowned.

  Emma gave her a kiss on her soft cheek. Grace threw her little arms around both him and Emma and squeezed hard. Sam held on to them both and looked up to find Rachel and Zach standing in the doorway. Zach was grinning, and Rachel was about to cry. But she was smiling, too. These days, she smiled through her tears.

  They were going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

  * * *

  Sam and Rachel finished taking down the tree that ni
ght. By tradition, it didn't come down until New Year's Day.

  Rachel worked so carefully, especially with the personalized ornaments. She wrapped them in specially made containers and stacked them in little boxes that would go on special shelves nearly at the ceiling in the basement, so they wouldn't get damaged from year to year.

  Sam watched her, thinking about Christmas after Christmas in this old house. Rachel's grandparents had lived here. Her mother. Now Rachel and him and the children. Someday Emma would stand here carefully wrapping the same ornaments after taking them off her tree, he imagined, and felt once again that unending sense of family, of connections that were never truly broken.

  A sense of place, of belonging.

  He felt rich beyond anything he'd ever imagined. Rich in memories and in people around him who loved him, rich in the possibilities the future held, and he knew he'd done a great disservice to his wife, that it was time to put that to right. He thought he knew how.

  There was some part of her that feared he'd remained here simply because of the three children asleep upstairs, and he didn't want there to be any doubts about that. Because he knew how painful those doubts could be. He didn't want her to live like that.

  He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a tiny box wrapped in red. When her back was turned, he slid it amid the branches between the spot where his ornament and hers hung, then tried not to grin and ruin the surprise.

  She turned back around and reached for another ornament, finding the box and just staring at it for a moment. He waited through three heartbeats before she reached for it. The tentativeness of her movements, the way she studied the package and her name scrawled across the front of it, told him how unsure of the two of them she still was.

  "Find something?" he asked through an impossibly tight throat.

  She nodded and held it out to him with a trembling hand.

  "It has your name on it, Rachel. Open it."

  She did, being careful with the wrapping paper, as she always was. It took forever, as it always did. She finally opened the lid of the box and then nearly dropped it.

  Sam took it from her and pulled out the ring. He stuck it on the end of his index finger and held it out to her. She didn't say a word, just stared. He hadn't had the money to give her a diamond the first time around. It had been a plain gold band. A cheap one she'd treasured anyway.

  "Do you ever watch those sappy diamond commercials on TV?" he asked.

  "All women watch those, Sam."

  "Really?"

  She nodded.

  "Diamonds are amazing. So strong. They last forever. And this one..." He held it up in front of her, showing the simple beauty of the ring. A solid band of diamonds, a never-ending circle. "It's forever, Rachel. I know so much more about that now—about the commitment it takes and what it means to me—than I did the first time around. It means so much more to me now. You do. I'm sorry I ever doubted that."

  "Oh, Sam." She started to cry again. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

  "And you're not ever going to find out," he promised, then remembered the ring and what he needed to tell her. "The sappy commercials?"

  "Yes."

  "The one I saw said this is what you give a woman to tell her you'd marry her all over again. I'd do it in a heartbeat."

  And then he slipped the ring on her finger and dried her tears and carried her upstairs to their bed.

  The End

  Page forward for more an excerpt from

  Book 2 of The McRae's Series

  Edge of Heaven

  Excerpt from

  Edge of Heaven

  Book 2

  The McRae's Series

  by

  Teresa Hill

  Chapter 1

  He got into town just before dawn, having driven all night. Once he'd decided to go, he'd gotten into his truck and left, not wanting time to think about giving into this impulse one more time.

  There was a note on the seat of the pickup with directions to the town and an address, but Rye didn't need to look at them. He'd memorized them long before he'd found the courage to come.

  He wasn't sure what he was going to say once he got there. He usually played it by ear, and so far, it hadn't been too difficult to find out what he wanted to know. The hard part had been making himself keep searching.

  It started snowing on I-75 in the mountains in Tennessee and kept it up the whole way to the tiny town of Baxter, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River just west of Cincinnati.

  There were 8,436 people living here, according to the sign on the edge of town, which also bragged about being the home of an artist named Richard Landon, who made, of all things, snow globes.

  Rye shook his head over that. A town would have to be pretty hard up for things to brag about to mention a man who made kids' toys.

  But it was pretty here, like something out of a wintry postcard. The streets of downtown were wide, the sidewalks broad, many of the old brick storefronts preserved intact, everything neat and polished. There was an honest-to-goodness town square, an old courthouse behind it, a block of streets surrounding it with a parklike setting in the middle.

  He turned into a neighborhood of Victorians, late 1800s, three stories, high-pitched roofs, stained-glass windows, wide porches. As someone who worked in construction, he couldn't help but admire the workmanship that had gone into restoring them.

  He drove slower and slower, the closer he got. If he wasn't careful someone would call the law on him, and that was the last thing he needed.

  Finally, he saw it. No. 12. Maybe the prettiest house on the street. A soft gray with touches of blue on the trim and in the exquisitely beautiful stained glass in the windows and the panels of the front door.

  There was money here. He frowned even more.

  There was a pretty sign in stained glass hanging from the mailbox that said, MCRAE CONSTRUCTION, PROPS. SAM AND RACHEL MCRAE.

  Yeah, this was it.

  He parked on the opposite side of the street, cut the engine and the lights, and sat there, snow falling softly all around him, the neighborhood just starting to stir.

  What now?

  Knock on the door?

  It was too early for that.

  But soon lights started coming on inside the house, one by one, upstairs first and then down. A car came by, driving slowly, and the morning paper was hurled onto the front lawn. The front door of the house opened. A dark-haired man in worn jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt came outside and retrieved the paper. What was he? Early forties? Late thirties? That would be about right.

  Not five minutes later, a taxi stopped in front of the house. Doors to the taxi and the house were thrown open. The man came back out. He must have been watching and waiting himself.

  A woman climbed out of the taxi and ran to him, throwing her arms around him. He picked her up and spun her around in a circle before lowering her to her feet and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. They were both laughing.

  It looked like she'd been gone a while.

  The man picked up her bag to go inside, but she stood there for a minute staring up at the house like she'd been absolutely aching to see it.

  Someone was home.

  Rye wondered if he ever would be again.

  * * *

  Emma sat hunched down in the backseat of the taxi, her cheek pressed against the cold of the window, careful the whole way not to make eye contact with the driver.

  She'd done a hasty makeup job on the train ride home from Chicago, hoping to keep the worst of the last twenty-four hours from showing on her face—because she didn't want to talk about it. Not yet. It was still too raw. She was still shaking too much. Later, once she'd calmed down and had a chance to think it through, she'd tell.

  She came down the snow-covered street to find the house waiting for her like the sanctuary it had proven to be. The people inside of it had opened up their arms to her and her brother and sister and given them what they'd desperately needed—a home, a place to
belong.

  She'd never been afraid here. Never. She was counting on that now.

  The taxi parked by the curb. Emma grabbed her hastily packed bag, paid the driver, and climbed out. The front door of the house opened and Sam stood there. She ran across the snow to him. He caught her in his arms and lifted her off the ground, swinging her around like he used to do when she was younger.

  It hurt. She tried not to let that show, then feared she'd start to cry. She pressed a hand to her mouth, somehow turning a near sob into laughter, which made the tears all right. Sam understood. She could see it in his face as he brushed a kiss across her cheek.

  "God, Em, I didn't think you'd ever get home."

  "I'm sorry. I should have come home for Thanksgiving. I missed you all so much."

  "It's all right," Sam said.

  They'd tried so hard to let her be on her own now that she was in college. The freedom had been heady at first, but on the back of that came the realization of how terribly hard it was to be so far away from all of them.

  "I wish I'd come sooner," she said, fighting the urge to pour out the whole sad story to him. "It's felt like forever since I've been home."

  "For us, too, Em."

  She eased away from him, the side of her face throbbing. She was afraid she hadn't managed to hide the bruise, but Sam didn't say anything. Good. She'd bought herself some time.

  Emma looked up at the house and forced herself to smile like nothing was wrong. "Where is everybody? Still asleep?"

  "No. Not today. Let's get you and your bags inside, and I'll tell you what's going on."

  * * *

  Rye drove around town, had breakfast, killed some time thinking about his options.

  This Sam McRae was in construction, probably a small contractor if his business was based out of the house. Rye could ask about a job. He had the experience. It would probably get him in the door, give him a chance to talk to the man. That's all it had taken before. A little conversation, a few subtle questions, and he'd known he was in the wrong place.