Twelve Days

by Teresa Hill

  "So you're going to interrogate them until they crack? You had them in tears, Sam. Do you want them gone so badly?"

  "No. I said they can stay, and I meant it. But there might be someone out there looking for them. Did you ever think of that? Someone might be worried half to death over them by now."

  "I'm sure Miriam is checking. She doesn't need you to give them the third degree. They're little kids, Sam. They have to be so scared."

  "Which is why they should be with people they know, people who love them—"

  "If such a person exists," she said.

  "Yes, if there is such a person, that's where they should be."

  "Why don't we let Miriam worry about that."

  "Miriam's not here. We are."

  "And we're taking care of them. That's all she asked us to do. We need to give them a place where they feel safe," Rachel said. "You make it sound like you can't wait to get rid of them."

  "That's not it," he insisted.

  "Did you ever really want children?" she said.

  "What?" Sam stared at her.

  "Children. Did you ever really want them?"

  "I wanted our baby," he said.

  "Did you?"

  "Of course I did, Rachel."

  But Rachel didn't look convinced. She stood there holding Grace tighter, Grace who snuggled against her so trustingly, so innocently, just as the baby had entrusted herself to Sam that morning when he'd found her awake and crying in her crib.

  She'd had big, bewildered tears rolling down her cheeks, and her arms were thrust out rigidly at her sides, her hands balled into fists. She was kicking her feet and working herself into a frenzy, no doubt because no one had come to tend to her.

  He'd stood there practically choking on his own breath and thinking that surely if he waited long enough someone would hear her and come get her. So that he wouldn't have to touch her and wouldn't have to think of the other baby girl who'd come into his life so briefly and torn his heart apart.

  But no one had come, and she'd gone right on crying and kicking her little feet until he picked her up, with great trepidation and very little skill, not that she seemed to mind. She settled against him with the kind of trust that tore at his heart once again. She was still taking big, gulping breaths that shook her entire body at first, but she snuggled against him like a cat and then started making breathy mewing sounds.

  The slightness of her body had scared him. Her scent had been somehow familiar, and he couldn't put her down fast enough, but the impression of her there lingered long after she was gone from his arms. She'd made him think of his precious daughter, whom his wife didn't even realize he'd wanted desperately and still missed?

  "She was our baby," Sam said.

  "You wouldn't still be in this town if it hadn't been for her. Or for me."

  "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "You always wanted out of here, Sam. You couldn't wait. You told me so all the time."

  "Maybe when I was teenager," he said, not understanding what this had to do with anything at the moment. "This wasn't the nicest place for me to be then."

  "And you couldn't wait to get away."

  "I guess I couldn't," he admitted.

  "You must regret that you never did."

  "I really hadn't thought about it," he said, honestly perplexed. Did she regret everything that ever happened between them? "Rachel, everything was different then."

  Even now, when he was leaving Rachel, he wasn't planning to leave town. He'd spent years building his business and his reputation. And even if he and Rachel weren't together, he couldn't imagine not seeing her every now and then. He wondered if it wouldn't hurt as much to see her once he was gone.

  "I thought you must have so many regrets," Rachel said.

  "About what?"

  "Being stuck here all this time."

  Was that how she felt? Stuck? "This is where our lives were."

  "I know, but..."

  "What?" She thought he really cared where they lived? Not as long as he'd been able to be with her.

  "If it hadn't been for the baby... we wouldn't have gotten married—"

  "Wouldn't we?" he asked, an old, familiar ache of insecurity gnawing at him again. He doubted he'd ever have presumed to ask if she hadn't been pregnant with his child. He wouldn't ask now if she'd agreed only because of the baby. It didn't matter anymore. Soon they wouldn't be married at all.

  "You would have left here, if we hadn't gotten married," she said. "You would have gone to college and been an architect. That's what you wanted."

  "It's what a teenage boy wanted, Rachel," he said softly, thinking about that long-ago dream. "I'm not that boy anymore."

  "Still, I... I wasn't sure you ever wanted the baby. Not like I did."

  He gaped at her, putting the whole issue of their marriage aside and thinking—as he never let himself do—of their daughter. Their precious baby girl.

  He still hurt. His heart hurt. He still had an image of her in his mind, one that came to him at the oddest of times, a memory so fleeting and yet so clear. Once upon a time, they had a daughter. His and Rachel's. She'd been tiny, born two months too early and under the worst of circumstances, and through the tears in his own eyes, he'd seen her, lying so helpless and so very still in an incubator at the hospital in town. He'd known from that first look that there was no hope, none at all, and he could only imagine what she might have looked like one day, had she been born under different circumstances and lived.

  He remembered, and he still hurt. He could hardly look at the baby Rachel now held in her arms, as he had trouble watching her with any child she'd held over the years.

  "I wanted our baby," he said roughly.

  "Sam? When I told you... that day..."

  Sam frowned. He remembered stone-cold panic, one night, maybe two, when they hadn't been as careful as they should have, a foolish thing for which he'd blamed himself. She never had. He'd waited for her to shout at him, to be angry, but all she'd done was tell him so softly that they were going to have a baby and fought the urge to cry.

  She had seemed to brace herself for him to say something back—something ugly and irresponsible and maybe to walk away from her. As if he could have ever walked away from her back then. He still wasn't sure how he was going to do it now, in less than two weeks.

  "Rachel, I don't remember exactly what I said then, but... Oh, hell, I had just graduated from high school. You still had a year of school to go, and your parents were having a fit. The timing sucked. We knew that."

  "You looked so scared," she said.

  "I was. I didn't know anything about being a father or a husband. I was afraid your father was going to kill me or try to separate us again, and if he did that, I didn't know who would take care of you and the baby."

  "Oh."

  She looked up at him, and he tried to read the emotions flickering across her face, found that he couldn't.

  "Why are we doing this, Rachel? It doesn't change anything," he said wearily. It just hurt. It made everything hurt even more than before.

  "I always thought I wanted her so much more than you did," she said, and she believed it even now.

  He stared at her. He'd told her in no uncertain terms already, but she obviously still needed more. He said it once again. "You were wrong. I always wanted our baby."

  Sam was afraid he still hadn't gotten through to her, but he had no idea what else he could say.

  She sniffled, rubbed her cheek against the top of Grace's head, and said, "All of it would have been different, don't you think? If we had our baby."

  "Yeah," he said. "I think it would have."

  If he'd been more careful. If it had been years later when he married her and had children with her, when he had so much more to offer her. If they'd never gotten into that accident. If the baby had survived, and Rachel hadn't been hurt so badly. If there had been other babies, maybe she could have been happy and forgiven him. Maybe it wouldn't all be ending this way.

 
Even these children... Maybe if they'd come sooner and gotten to stay, it would have been enough. And a part of him was already thinking that even now maybe it wasn't too late for him and Rachel. Sam really didn't want to leave her. It just hurt too much to stay.

  But these children wouldn't stay, either. Children never did in this house.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "Me, too."

  She took the baby and left, leaving Sam feeling more alone than he ever had in his life.

  Chapter 5

  Rachel was shaking when she walked out of Sam's workshop and she might have fallen apart, if not for the stern talking-to she'd given herself earlier. Whatever happened, she was going to deal with it.

  She found Zach inside looking none the worse for his little interrogation from Sam. He was quite happily eating leftover lasagna, Emma hovering by his side.

  "I warmed up the food in the microwave for Zach," she said. "Is that all right?"

  "You do that at home?" Rachel asked. "Cook in the microwave?"

  "Yes. It's okay?"

  "Of course," Rachel said, then thinking to add, "we always have plenty to eat here, Emma. You and Zach can have whatever you want."

  Emma's gaze fell to the floor, and Rachel saw a flush of embarrassment in the girl's cheeks. She went to Emma and put an arm around the girl's shoulders, felt terrible just thinking of the burden Emma was carrying. To be so young, she was doing amazingly well under these circumstances.

  "You always take care of Zach and Grace, don't you?"

  "I try," Emma said, her head down, refusing to look at Rachel.

  "I think you're doing a great job," Rachel said.

  Certainly much better than Rachel would have herself. Even with all Rachel had lost, she suspected Emma's life had been infinitely more difficult than her own. Emma could get knocked down one day and bounce back the next. Not only that, she still managed to take care of everyone around her. She doubted Emma gave much time or effort at all to feeling sorry for herself. Miriam said Emma was a little rock the whole time they'd been at Miriam's office, not knowing where they'd end up or if they would all be together.

  Rachel hugged the girl more tightly, awed by the courage she'd shown.

  "What's wrong?" Emma said, finally looking up at Rachel.

  Rachel shook her head, unable to speak for the moment. She'd been so caught up in her own problems, she'd lost track of everyone and everything else—including her husband.

  Sam was so strong. He was the man she'd leaned on for fully half her life. He didn't run when things got tough. Look how long he'd fought to make things work between them. So for him to be leaving her, he must have been unhappy for a long time. Which meant Rachel must have missed so much. She was ashamed all over again.

  "Rachel?" Emma tugged on her sleeve.

  "It's nothing," Rachel said, automatically denying, as she so often did. Emma didn't buy it. "I was thinking of something else, something to do with me. And I shouldn't be doing that now, because you and I have lots to do today."

  "We do?" Emma said, still looking worried.

  "Yes." She was ready to outline her plans when the phone rang.

  "I forgot," Emma said. "Mrs. Kramer called. I wrote it down here. And somebody else. One of your neighbors."

  Rachel thanked her and picked up the phone, wondering what was going on. "Hello."

  "Rachel, dear. It's Margaret Doyle. How are you this morning?"

  "Fine, thank you." A third neighbor? Rachel was stumped. "How are you, Mrs. Doyle?"

  "Just fine, dear, but I was a bit worried about you. Are you and Sam all right?"

  "Yes," she said, probably hesitating a bit too long. Why would Mrs. Doyle be worried about her and Sam?

  "I was just wondering because... Well, it's the second day of the Christmas festival and..."

  "Oh," Rachel got it. The festival. The Christmas decorations.

  They couldn't forget, not when the whole festival had been Sam's idea. He'd been one of the first to see what the restored Victorian district and the growing popularity of her grandfather's work might do for the whole town. Downtown had been dying, stores moving out, heading for the outskirts of town and the big shopping malls. They'd worked hard over the years, restoring not just the district, but downtown as well, bringing back all that old-fashioned feel to it. The charm and the uniqueness, which had at one time merely seemed old and out-of-date, were being celebrated now, along with Richard Landon's work. The combination brought thousands of people to Baxter, Ohio, for Christmas. And they expected it to be all decked out for Christmas.

  "I'm so sorry," Rachel told her neighbor. "We didn't get the house decorated yesterday because... Well, we had some unexpected guests come to stay with us."

  Rachel suspected Mrs. Doyle, Mrs. Kramer, and whoever else had called this morning had to be the only people in town who didn't know three children had been found abandoned at the Drifter motel and that Sam and Rachel had taken them in. Otherwise, she'd have heard from two dozen people by now. She explained as quickly as she could and let that be her excuse for having put up no Christmas decorations.

  "Oh, my," Mrs. Doyle said. "How terrible for those poor children."

  "Yes, I know. But we're going to take good care of them, and we'll get the decorations up today. I promise."

  With Mrs. Doyle satisfied, Rachel turned back to Emma and Zach. "We have to decorate the house."

  "I like dec'rations," said Zach, who was stuffing himself quite happily.

  "Good. You can help."

  "You put up all those fancy things, like at all the other houses?" Zach asked.

  "Yes, we do. We're just a day late this year." And had left this little boy thinking Christmas wasn't coming here. She could just imagine what he'd thought when Miriam had brought them to what had to be the only house on the street with no Christmas decorations yesterday.

  "Don't worry, Zach. We're going to fix everything."

  * * *

  Before they could think of decorations of their own, the children had to have clothes, coats, boots, the works. Rachel and the children piled out of the car and began their shopping excursion at Mary Jane Walter's shoe store, where Mary Jane fussed over the kids, especially Grace, and turned the cash register over to a college girl home already on break so she could wait on them herself.

  "What do we need here?" she asked Zach, who'd turned shy all of a sudden and hid against Emma's side.

  "Snow boots," he suggested hopefully.

  "Definitely. Boots, dress shoes, and sneakers, too," Rachel said. All Zach had were sneakers and they had holes in them. "And for Grace... I don't know. She's not walking yet."

  "But she will. And when she does, she'll need shoes." Mary Jane held up some little white baby shoes, tiny and perfect.

  "She'll eat 'em," Zach claimed.

  "She wouldn't be the first," Mary Jane said.

  They got Zach outfitted with boots he adored and chose to wear out of the store, sneakers that he found acceptable, and dress shoes that left him grumbling.

  "Dress up?" he asked. "Why?"

  "In case we go anywhere... nice," Rachel said. "Where people dress up."

  He frowned down at the still shiny shoes on his feet, clearly not seeing the appeal.

  "Don't worry about it, Zach," Mary Jane said, ruffling his hair. "You can wear the boots today."

  Which was enough for him. He set off to the corner of the store where Mary Jane had a collection of toys for kids to play with while their parents shopped. Grace was easy. They just measured and put the shoes on her. She had no opinion whatsoever about them. But Emma seemed uneasy about the whole process. She seemed ready to accept the snow boots but didn't want to try on anything else.

  "Emma, you've got to have more than boots," Rachel insisted.

  "You've outgrown what you're wearing. I know they have to be uncomfortable," Mary Jane added.

  "They're fine," Emma insisted.

  "Just try these." Mary Jane held a pair of shiny brown leather
shoes.

  Emma glanced at them and shook her head. Rachel had never seen her so stubborn. "One pair is plenty," she said. "The boots are fine."

  "They're fine for the snow and the rain, but your feet will roast in them once spring comes," Rachel said, and she might not have anyone to buy them for her then. "You'll need sneakers when the snow melts, and if we go somewhere nice and you dress up, you'll need dress shoes."

  "We don't have any money," Emma whispered urgently, her eyes big and sad and pleading with Rachel.

  "That's all right. I do. I want to do this." In truth, Rachel had been shocked by how little the children had and the shape their things were in. It was amazing to think of having so little, of being so alone. And this was one thing she could fix easily. "And don't worry. Miriam said the state will provide some money to buy some basic things for each of you, so..."

  "Oh." Emma's cheeks got red again.

  Rachel realized she'd made it worse. Eleven-year-old girls cared a great deal about their appearance, she remembered. But it would still be hard to think of the child welfare system buying your clothes, especially if you were proud and strong and brave and just eleven years old.

  She gave the girl a quick hug and said, "Let me do this, okay? I insist."

  And Emma gave in. She took the first things Mary Jane suggested and wore her new boots out of the store, too, carefully insisting that her old shoes go into the box and go home with them, as well.

  Rachel winced when Mary Jane rang up the total. She hadn't wanted to let Rachel pay at all, but Rachel insisted. And she'd spent a small fortune just on shoes. She wondered if Sam had any idea what kids' shoes cost.

  But truly, it would be no hardship to her and Sam. She and Sam would never be considered wealthy. Their early years together had been rough financially. There had been years when they'd plowed nearly everything they had either into the house or the business. But the business had taken off in the last few years, and neither one of them had ever been big spenders. These days, if they ever truly needed anything, the money was there. She'd never imagined needing a warm coat for a child and not having the money. True poverty had always been an abstract concept to her until she'd met Emma, Zach, and Grace.