Twelve Days (16 page)

Finally she understood at least a part of it. This distance he kept, the way he could close himself up so tight and not let anything get to him. Because he'd been hurt too much over the years. He didn't have to tell her that part of it for her to know without any doubts. Her big, strong, so-capable husband hid a world of hurt inside.

And for the first time in a long time, she wondered if maybe he did love her. Maybe she'd read him all wrong. Maybe it was just the way he was, what he'd been taught, shuffled from place to place over the years.

"I thought I knew you," she said, despite the fact that she was talking to the wall again. Sam was so good at the wall. "But I can't imagine what you must have gone through—"

"Don't," he said. "Don't do that."

She backed up a step, bruised by the harsh tone, even knowing it was simply him trying to protect himself and why he did it now. Even now, he wasn't going to open himself up to her.

She sat there simmering with anger and so much hurt, ready to scream at him to pull some kind of reaction from him, when his phone rang.

"Don't," she said. "Please."

But he picked it up, and she could tell from the part of the conversation she could hear that it was a work problem. She intended to sit there, to not let him out of this room until they talked about this. But the next thing she knew, Zach showed up in the door to Sam's office, a big smile on his face for Sam and a slight frown when he saw Rachel sitting there.

"Hi," he said tentatively.

"Hi, Zach," she said. "Does Emma know where you are?"

He shook his head back and forth, caught but clearly not regretting it too much. He seemed inexplicably drawn to Sam and kept sneaking out here to find him, disappearing from the house and worrying her and Emma both.

"What did we talk about earlier, Zach?"

"I'm not s'posed ta come out here without telling you first?"

"Right." She looked from the boy to Sam, only now realizing the powerful connection between the two. They'd both lost their mothers, lost everything familiar to them, around the same age.

Sam, she thought, looking at Zach, imagining her husband nearly as little as Zach and just as lost. She wondered if Sam had ever ended up in foster care, wondered what might have happened to him there. When they'd discussed foster parenting and possibly adopting through the program, he'd said, "How could we ever know what had happened to a child there? What kind of damage that might have been done?"

What in the world had they done to her husband?

She let go of the anger that he hadn't been able to tell her then his true fear, that he was afraid of looking down into a little boy's eyes, hearing what the boy had been through, and being reminded of all he'd been through himself. He'd been worried about seeing someone exactly like Zach. It was almost too painful for Rachel to bear, because she loved Sam so much.

He probably wouldn't believe her if she told him, and she didn't think she'd said the words to him in a long time, something that made her sad all over again. But she loved him. She'd loved him her whole life.

"Miss Rachel?" Zach asked.

Turning back to him and forcing a smile across her face, she said, "Yes."

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely.

"What?" And then she remembered. He'd come out here without asking. "It's all right, Zach. I'm not mad at you. But I bet Emma's worried, if she's figured out you're gone."

She glanced back at Sam, still talking on the phone. This wasn't the time for the discussion they needed to have. They didn't need an audience, and she needed to calm down.

She turned back to Zach. "I think you'd better come back to the house with me. Sam's busy. Okay?"

He nodded, waved shyly at Sam, and then slipped his small, cold hand into Rachel's.

"Forgot your gloves?" she said as they walked back to the house.

"I guess. Can we play in the snow later?"

"Maybe. If we have time. My aunt Jo called. She said we can have the sleigh tomorrow night. You want to go with us to get the tree, don't you?"

"Yes." He grinned at her, the best grin she'd ever gotten out of him. "Sam said we can cut it down. With an ax!"

"You think you're big enough?"

"Uh huh. I'm strong."

He was excited, too. They stomped the snow off their boots and went inside. Rachel tugged off his boots and unbuttoned his coat. That's when she found the book tucked inside.

"What's this?"

"My Chris'mas book," he said.

"Can I see?"

He nodded. She took it, turned it over, and found an edition of
The Night Before Christmas
illustrated with her grandfather's work. Not her first edition, but an inexpensive one, with the same story and the same illustrations.

"It's magic," he whispered.

Delighted, Rachel asked, "Really?"

Zach nodded and pointed to the cover. "It's the Chris'mas house! We're in it now!"

"That's right. And you already had this? Before you came here?"

He nodded mischievously. "I di'n't reco'nize it at first. 'Cause the lights 'n' stuff weren't on it. But it's a sign. Emma said so."

"Oh?"

"Ever'thing's gonna be all right. Nothin' bad can happen in this house."

Rachel wished nothing bad had ever happened here, and she didn't know what to say to that statement. She had a little boy who desperately needed reassurance. She settled for telling him, "I used to come here when I was a little girl, as little as you. It was always a happy house."

"Magic," he insisted, satisfied and happy at the thought.

Rachel thought of letting herself believe just for a moment. It was seductive, the idea of Christmas magic, of any kind of magic at all. But once, she'd believed that there'd been magic in this house and in the season. Love and light and all that goodwill, all swirling together to make Christmas magic.

She took it inside of her, just for a moment.

Magic.

What would that be like?

Maybe like someone bringing her children after she'd wished and hoped and prayed for so long. Long after she'd despaired of it ever happening?

What if this was meant to be? That seductive thought crept into her head, swirling around like fake snow inside one of her grandfather's snow balls. Part of her wanted to believe these children were meant to be here. That someone or something had brought them to her because they all needed one another so desperately.

There'd been a time when she'd believed in so much goodness in the world and in God's guiding hand in it all. But she'd stopped asking God for anything years ago and had never felt the distance between her and whoever might be running the universe more than when she and Sam lost their baby, more recently when they'd lost Will. It had been the last blow. The one to end all blows. She'd given up then. No wonder she was such a mess.

"Miss Rachel?" Zach whispered again.

"Yes."

"Are you sad?"

"Sometimes," she admitted.

At the moment she felt utterly lost, found herself questioning all the anger she'd directed toward a God she thought had let her down and betrayed her in the worst way. Questioned the way she'd always found someone to blame for the bad things that happened to her. It was so much easier than blaming herself or accepting the terrifying notion that bad things simply happened in this world. Very bad things. That at times there seemed no rhyme or reason for it.

How could someone ever accept that? It was terrifying.

Zach tugged on her hand until she bent down, and then he wrapped his skinny arms around her and gave her a big squeeze. Rachel thought he might have ripped her heart in two at that moment. She slipped to her knees, kneeling in front of him, and found her arms full of little boy.

"Mmmmmm," he hummed, squeezing tighter. Finally, he stepped back and asked, "All better?"

There was an adorable grin on his face, a wealth of warmth in his deep brown eyes and that childish belief in magic, including the magic of hugs. She blinked back tears and smiled a genuine smile.

"My mommy says hugs make everythin' better," he confided.

"She does?"

He nodded vigorously.

"She's a good mommy?"

"The best."

He seemed to genuinely believe that, and Rachel wanted to believe it for his sake. All morning she'd been imagining what the couple in Virginia had gone through, all these years never knowing if their children were alive and where they were and how they were being treated.

It made her think of her baby. At first, she'd tried not to imagine exactly where her daughter might be, except maybe in nothingness. Not lonely. Not cold. Not hurting at all. Simply suspended in nothingness. Her grandfather, even as angry as he'd been, had never questioned the notion that her daughter was in heaven, even as she'd all but threatened God that if her daughter was there, he'd certainly better be taking good care of her.

When her grandfather had passed away soon after that, Rachel had been by his side in the end. He'd whispered with his last breath that he saw her baby. That she was beautiful, and that he planned to spend his days rocking her in heaven, and that was an image she found comforting, if fleeting. She wasn't at all sure what she believed. She'd come to a sort of armed truce with God after that, even if he did have her baby and her grandfather and her mother in all that nothingness. And as hard as Rachel had tried to get there herself—to a feeling of nothingness herself—she hadn't been able to. She'd been tugged back to life.

Maybe for a purpose? For this purpose? She had Zach, who was so terribly funny and so happy, and Emma and Grace. She wondered if someone up there was trying to fill up her empty arms, finally, wondered again if this was somehow meant to be.

It was a dangerous thought. She'd promised herself she wouldn't do this, and yet here she was. The little boy smiling brightly at her most certainly was a rare and precious gift, one that just might save her.

"I love you, Zach," she whispered as it welled up inside of her, warming her through and through.

He just grinned, as if people told him that every day and he was quite used to being loved. Which is exactly what she wanted for him.

"Come on," she said, rising to fight another day. "Let's see if Grace is awake yet. And tomorrow, we'll get our tree."

* * *

It snowed again on the fifth day of Christmas. Rachel didn't remember the last winter they had this much snow. And it was altogether lovely snow. The kind that floated gently from the sky in big, fluffy balls.

They arrived at her aunt's farm as it was getting dark, a sliver of a moon hanging low in the sky. Zach danced in the snow beneath it.

Aunt Jo, Rachel's mother's youngest sister and the kindest, the most fun one, was waiting for them. She fussed over the children, especially the baby, and then took Rachel aside and slipped an arm around her.

"They're wonderful," Aunt Jo said.

"Yes, they are."

"It's going to work. I know it is. This time, it's going to work."

"Oh, Jo," Rachel insisted.

"I know it in my heart, Rachel. This was meant to be. And I'm so happy for you. I know it's been a long road, filled with a lot of pain, but you have to believe in something again someday. Until then, I'll just believe for you."

"I'm trying," Rachel said. "Miriam told me not to even think this way, but—"

"Miriam has seen too many bad things happen to people and too few miracles," Jo insisted, then pointed toward Zach, practically beaming up at the sleigh and the horse pulling it. "It's almost Christmas. It's a beautiful night and you're going off into the snow in a sleigh to find a Christmas tree. Anything can happen tonight, Rachel."

And Rachel supposed it could.

She thanked her aunt and approached the sleigh.

The horse was pitch black and regal looking. His mane and tail had been braided with red ribbons and bells, which he seemed to bear with great dignity, and there were ribbons and bells on the reins, as well. The sleigh was at least seventy-five years old and painted red. It might have come straight out of a 1940s movie.

Even Emma seemed enchanted with it. She ran a hand tentatively along the side and looked almost blissful.

"Do you still believe in magic, Emma?"

The girl frowned at first, then sighed. "I don't know."

"Zach showed me his Christmas book yesterday."

"He did?"

"Actually, he went to show it to Sam, but found me there. When I took him back inside, he showed it to me. It's really something that he had a book with a picture of this house on it, and now the three of you are living here."

"I guess," she admitted. "I've read him that book lots of times. It's one of his favorites."

"So you knew?" And Emma hadn't said anything about it?

"Yes. It's silly, but I used to think that nothing bad could happen in that house. I used to think nothing bad could happen to me, if I could find a way to live there," she confided. "It looked... magical. It's silly, I know, but—"

Rachel pulled the girl close. She wasn't one to lecture anyone about hope, but she thought it was what Emma needed to hear, and maybe Rachel did, too. It was leap-of-faith time. They were down to nothing but that. Did Rachel have any faith left?

"I don't think it's silly at all," she said. "And we all need reasons to hope."

"I want to. I want to believe," Emma confided.

"Then just do it, Emma. I'm not very good at it, either, but maybe if we both help each other we can manage. Let's believe something good is going to happen, rather than something bad. We'll make a pact. Okay?"

Sad eyes slowly came up to hers. "You get scared, too?"

"Of course." Emma leaned in closer. Rachel held on tight. "Did you think it was just you? That you were the only one who got scared?"

Emma nodded.

"Oh, baby." Rachel fought back tears. "You're so brave. I've been watching how you are with Zach and the baby through this whole thing, and you're so strong, Emma. You've inspired me and made me ashamed of myself. I've wished I were as strong and as brave as you."

"But you're a grown-up," Emma said.

"Supposed to be, anyway," Rachel said. "You know what? Why don't you let me work on being the strong one, the brave one. I need the practice. You let me do your worrying for you."