by Teresa Hill
He bent his head and kissed her once more, slowly, softly. Still breathing heavily, he rolled off of her, and she followed him, until they ended up on their sides facing each other. She touched him lightly on the cheek and found it damp, his eyelashes, too. The corners of his eyes.
"Loving them wasn't a mistake," she insisted.
"I know." He touched his forehead to hers, stared down at her. "But I didn't want you to be hurt anymore."
"How do you ever ensure that? By not caring for anyone anymore? I tried that. We both know it didn't work. It failed miserably, and I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm still afraid, but I'm not going to let that fear rule my life. I love these kids. I love you. I'll accept whatever risks come with that because I can't stop myself from loving any of you."
"It's going to hurt both of us in the end," he said.
"And we've been hurt before. We're still here. It hasn't destroyed us. This won't, either."
His doubts might. The memories of what they'd become, what he feared they'd become again. But there was nothing left to say to convince him to take one more chance on her, one more leap of faith. It was up to him and the whims of the world now. She'd done all she could. She would survive, no matter what happened. Older and wiser and stronger, she would survive. Please, God, she thought, don't let her have to do it without him.
Chapter 19
They were sitting down to lunch the first day after Christmas when Miriam called and said Annie Greene wanted to speak to Sam and Rachel again. She came over and stayed with the kids, and they made the two-hour drive in a strained silence.
Sam held on to Rachel's hand as they walked into the ICU to find Annie asleep. Rachel sat in a chair beside the bed and Sam stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, rubbing slightly at the tension there. She leaned back against him thinking that everything she had was on the line now.
Annie stirred in her bed and moaned. Her eyes opened slowly and seemed to have trouble focusing at first, and then she gave Rachel a weary smile. "You came."
"Of course," Rachel said. "What can we do for you?"
"A favor... An enormous favor," she said slowly, as if each word cost her a tremendous effort that was nearly beyond her at the moment. "I wanted to try to explain. I want you to know... I love my children..."
"Of course," Rachel said. She believed it.
"I never meant for it to end this way... I..." Her breathing grew more labored. There was a monitor measuring her heartbeat, and it was speeding up, even as she spoke. "I should have done more... Protected them... Taken better care of them..."
"They're fine," Rachel said. "Honestly, they are. They're wonderful, and they have absolute faith in you. They knew you'd never willingly leave them all by themselves. They've been telling us all along that you'd be back."
"I..." She gasped.
The beeping of the monitor was starting to really scare Rachel. Sam was reaching for the call button to summon a nurse when one walked in, going straight to the monitor and then to Annie.
"I was afraid this would happen. Annie, you can't do this to yourself."
"Tell them," Annie said, catching the nurse's hand. "Tell them for me."
"Of course." The nurse smiled back at them. "You're the ones taking care of her children?"
"Yes," Sam said. "What's going on?"
"I've been with her most of the day, and we've talked a good bit in bits and spurts. It's all she can manage right now. She's been waiting for you, and there's a lot she wants to say, but I'm afraid it would take too much out of her."
"Tell us, please," Sam said.
The nurse gave them a kind smile and kept hold of Annie's hand, looking from her to Sam and Rachel. "She wants you to know their father wasn't always like this, that he was a good man once."
Rachel felt Sam tense. They didn't want to hear about the so-called good man who'd done this to Annie Greene.
"She said he got sick—really sick. Not because he was drinking. This was before all that. He missed a lot of work, lost his job. They lost almost everything. She said it was like they'd fallen into a string of bad luck and couldn't get out. About that time, she got pregnant with Zach. That's when things got really bad and when her husband started drinking. She never thought he'd hurt her, but of course, he did. She kept telling herself it would get better. It didn't. She didn't think he'd ever hurt the children, but one day her oldest daughter got between her and him, trying to save her... And that's when Annie knew they had to go."
"So ashamed... of myself," Annie whispered, tears in her eyes. "Should have known."
"It's all right," the nurse told her, and picked back up with the story. "She didn't really have anyone to turn to. Her husband's family... they all drank, too. And her family had been against her marrying him all along. They weren't interested in helping her out of the mess she'd made, and they were scared to have him coming around. So one day Annie packed their things and left. It wasn't until later that she realized she was pregnant again with Grace."
"Sweetest thing," Annie said. "Sweetest, happiest baby."
"She is," Rachel assured a crying Annie Greene.
"Don't want her to know... What she came from... How it was... Doesn't have anything to do with her."
"I understand," Rachel said. She was sure there weren't a lot of tender feelings left between husband and wife by then, but she doubted that would have stopped Annie's husband from taking what he wanted from her.
"She did the best she could, but it wasn't enough. She'd hate for people to judge them based on what their father was like or what she's done."
"We would never do that," Sam said.
"Thank you," Annie whispered.
"She would never have come back here, but she was sick herself," the nurse said. "A problem with her kidneys from the beatings. They'd damaged her kidneys, and she hardly ever got proper medical care. Battered women seldom do. The damage was done, and getting pregnant again... Well, pregnancy takes its toll on a woman's entire body. It's especially difficult for someone with kidney problems. Honestly, I don't see how she made it through the pregnancy, and afterward, Annie was getting weaker all the time. She knew she wouldn't be able to go on taking care of the children on her own.
"She risked calling her mother, who refused to help. But Annie was desperate. They were losing their apartment in Georgia. She hadn't been able to work. There wasn't any money. She thought maybe if she told her mother the whole story in person, her mother would listen. But she was afraid to take the children anywhere near her husband, afraid of what he might do.
"She knew all about Baxter, Ohio. She'd read about the Christmas festival there. It seemed like a nice town, and she thought if anything did happen to her, someone there would take care of her children. So she left them, thinking it would just be for a few hours. She was so scared when she finally regained consciousness and realized how much time had passed. I didn't think we'd ever get her to calm down enough to even tell us what was wrong. And when she found out they'd spent three days there all by themselves..."
"Monster," Annie whispered. "You must have thought..."
"It's all right," Rachel claimed. "They're fine now. Emma took good care of them. You would have been so proud of her. This whole time... She's so good with them, so strong."
Annie nodded gratefully.
"She didn't get very far with her own mother," the nurse said. "Her mother's already raising two of her other grandchildren, and she didn't think she could handle any more. And someone Annie knew must have seen her in town and called her husband, because the next thing she knew, he took her and left her for dead on the side of the road."
"I messed it all up," Annie said. "Everything."
"You don't have to worry about the children right now," Sam said. "Whatever time you need to get back on your feet... And Rachel's family knows almost everybody in Baxter. I'm sure we know someone who could help you get a job, a place to stay. Whatever you need."
Annie smiled at him, truly smiled. "I for
get sometimes.... There are good people left in this world.... But..."
"It's more than that," the nurse said. "She's had me asking about the two of you. She knows how much you've always wanted children, that it's just never worked out. Your aunt said the nicest things about both of you, that she's sure you'd make wonderful parents. So did your minister. And even the mayor."
"I don't understand," Sam said. "What does she want from us?"
"Dying," she said. "I'm dying."
"No," Rachel said.
"It's not the beating," the nurse said. "It's her kidneys. That's why she was so desperate, why she came back here. She's dying, and she needs someone to raise her children for her."
"You," Annie whispered. "Both of you."
Rachel didn't say a word. Neither did Sam. They were too stunned.
"She wants you to be sure. To take some time to think it through. She doesn't have long, but she wants you to be sure."
"What's wrong with her?" Rachel asked.
"She developed kidney disease, from the damage done years ago from the beatings, which worsened with the added strain of the pregnancy, and now with the added stress of the beating, her kidneys have shut down."
"But she could get a transplant, couldn't she?" Sam asked.
The nurse shook her head. "Maybe if she'd tried to get help sooner. But she let it go on for so long. The damage adds up, and at times, if there's a lot of trauma to the body and one organ starts to shut down, the other organs start to shut down, too. I'm afraid she's in organ failure, so far gone that no one would ever put her on a waiting list for a transplant."
"Not now, you mean?"
"You don't understand. She's not going to get better."
"You're just going to let her die?" Sam asked.
"She probably wouldn't live through the surgery, even if she could get on the list and last long enough to get a transplant. I'm sorry. I know that seems harsh. But there are never enough organs to go around. We set strict criteria for patients who get them. The idea is that if only so many people are ever going to get a transplant, we want it to be people with a good chance of surviving," the nurse said. "Annie's accepted that. The only thing she's worried about now is her children."
"What about her husband?" Sam asked.
"The sheriff's been here. They videotaped her testimony, and he promised her husband's going to prison for what he's done to her. Her mother doesn't want the children. Annie's afraid no one will," the nurse said. "Your aunt told her if she picked someone to take them that the courts would likely give a great deal of weight to her request. Your aunt didn't think you'd have any trouble getting approval to adopt them, if that's what you want."
Again, Rachel just sat there, overwhelmed. This woman was dying. She was going to have to leave this earth and leave three young, helpless children behind. It was staggering to think about.
It was only three days ago that Rachel had really come to terms with the loss of her baby and truly known in her heart that her baby was fine, in a place where no one would ever hurt her. But Annie Greene was leaving her children to the mercy of an often-cruel world, faced with no one to trust but people who were all but strangers to her. Rachel couldn't imagine how difficult that must be.
And Emma and Zach and the baby were going to lose their mother...
"You're sure?" Rachel asked. "There's nothing anyone can do for you?"
"Sure," Annie said.
It seemed she wasn't even going to fight anymore.
Rachel started to cry. She couldn't help it. The tears just rolled down her cheeks as she sat there hardly making a sound and struggling to breathe. Sam's hands tightened on her shoulders, and she leaned back against him, hardly able to look at the woman on the bed anymore. It was so sad. Emma and Zach were going to be devastated.
"She wants you to be sure," the nurse said. "If you can't love them, the way they deserve to be loved..."
"We can love them. It's not that. Not at all. But we need to talk," Sam said. He put a hand on Annie Greene's shoulder, told her, "We'll be back."
Rachel wasn't sure how they got outside, but there they were. Out in the cold, the automatic doors of the hospital swishing closed behind them, snow flurries rushing at them on the cold breeze.
There were Christmas lights strung up around the entrance of the hospital, the lights blinking on and off in a way that seemed to mock everything to do with Christmas.
Annie Greene was dying, and she wanted Sam and Rachel to take her children. Rachel, it seemed, was going to get what she'd always wanted.
"Not this way," she said, conscious of the fact that Sam had steered her to the side of the main walkway, out of the line of people rushing in and out. He held her by the arms, held her hard, maybe to keep her from falling down in the snow, maybe to get her attention. "Oh, God. Not like this."
"Rachel, we did not do this," he said. "We didn't wish that woman dead. She isn't dying because of anything we did."
"But I wanted them. I wanted those children, and they're hers. The only way we're going to get them is if she's gone."
"Wishing doesn't make things happen. You and I both know that. If it did, our entire lives would have been different. Things just happen. This is just one of those shitty things that happens."
"Emma..." she said. "Oh, God, Sam. Emma! And Zach! Grace won't even remember her, but the other two..."
"I know," he said, pulling her close. "I know."
And he did. They both knew. Him better than her.
"It's so awful. How in the world are we going to tell them?"
"We're not. It's not up to us. It's up to Annie. They're still hers."
Rachel nodded. Still, it would be up to her and Sam to pick up the pieces. So much sadness... She could see it all coming. How odd to be able to sit here and see it all coming.
They stood there for a long time. Finally, her tears subsided and she stopped shaking so badly, and Sam let her go. Then he stood there staring at her with the saddest look on his face, as if he felt every bit as weary as she did.
It occurred to her that she'd stood outside a number of hospitals just like this. Feeling as if someone had shoved a booted foot into her midsection. And every one of those times, Sam had been right here beside her.
She was awed by his strength, by the sheer determination with which he'd stayed by her side through the years. She reached for him, taking his face in her hands, finding his cheeks damp and his mouth trembling.
He frowned down at her and asked, "What are you thinking?"
"That you've been with me through the worst days of my life. That I've depended on you and leaned on you and taken and taken and taken without—"
"It wasn't like that, Rachel."
"Wasn't it?"
"No. It was a marriage. Two people together through good and bad. Doing our best to take care of each other. To love each other and to stay together."
"There's more inside of me to give, Sam. Not just to these children. To you. And... I don't even know how to ask you what's going to happen now. Because I know you love these children, and I can't imagine you leaving when they need us so much. And that's not fair to you at all. I don't want you to have to stay because of the kids."
"Single people adopt all the time. It wouldn't be a problem. And I can't imagine Annie would object, not if you told her how much you love those kids. You don't need me to have these kids."
"Of course I do."
"No, you don't. I talked to Miriam. There wouldn't be any rules standing in your way."
"I know. I talked to her, too. She told me you'd asked her about that. But I thought you were going to stay. I thought... after Christmas Eve. All the things we said to each other. All the things we figured out about each other, I thought you'd stay."
"I didn't say I was going anywhere. I just said that if you're thinking the only way you'll be able to have these children is by having a husband—having me—that's not true."
"You think I want them more than I want you?"
&n
bsp; "I think the way either of us feels at the moment isn't as important as how those kids feel and what they need."
"No, it is, Sam. You're important and how you feel is important. You think I could be happy with them, but without you?"
"You've never really been happy with just me, Rachel," he said.
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?" he asked, then held up his hands. "No. Forget it. Forget I ever said it."
"I can't do that. I won't. Sam... you're the only man I've ever loved in my whole life. The only one. I never wanted anyone else. I never will. And there has to be some way of making you believe that, short of giving up these children and having just you in my life. Because I know you. You would never ask that of me. We would never abandon them now."
"No. We won't, and I wouldn't ask that of you."
"Is it so hard for you to believe I love you?"
"Maybe it is," he said. "Maybe that's what the problem's always been."
"I'm not your mother or your father. I'm not all of those cold-hearted people who took you into their homes when you were little and sent you off to someone else without a backward glance. I'm your wife. I've always seen the real you, the man at the core, and I've always loved him." She put her hand over his heart. "Give me another chance. Give us a chance. And try to believe me when I say I love you. Is that really so hard for you to believe? Have you lost every bit of faith you had in me? In us?"
"Rachel—"
"I can't believe you have. And you know something else, you haven't given me a fair chance, either. You kept things from me, important things. You didn't let me into your life, Sam. Not really. You kept things bottled up inside, and now they're tearing you up. They're tearing us up. You want me to accept you as you are, to understand you and fulfill every need you have? You have to tell me. I can't help heal what I don't know is hurting you. Give me a chance to do that now that I finally know everything. I do know everything now, don't I?"
"You know the worst of it," he said. "I never wanted you to know. I never wanted you to see those parts of me."
