Unbreak My Heart (41 page)

Emma nodded, knowing they were running out of chances.

"Zach," Miriam said. "You stay in your seat belt and in that backseat. Emma, don't let him near the steering wheel or the gearshift. Cars aren't playthings. I'll be right there on the porch. You yell if you need me."

"Yes, ma'am." Emma put her arm around Zach. She could take care of him and the baby. If someone would just give them a place to stay and something to eat, she could take care of everything else.

Ana Miriam got out of the car, a blast of cold air came in before she got the door shut again. Emma shivered a bit. This had to work, she thought closing her eyes and wishing, praying. This might be their last chance.

Zack brushed past her to get to the window on the other side of the car.

"Zach!" She scolded.

"I gotta see.! I gotta see the house," he said, then wailed, "Oh, no!"

"What?" Emma leaned over the sleeping baby to look herself. It was like all the other houses, big and expensive, certainly like no place they'd ever lived.

"Chris'mas!" Zach cried.

"What?"

"It's not comin' here," he cried. "No Chris'mas."

"Oh," Emma said, realizing now what was different about this house.

She should have known they didn't belong in a place like this. From the moment they pulled into the neighborhood, it all seemed too good to be true. The nice lady from social services had brought them to the only house on the street with no Christmas lights, no tree, no ribbons, no bows, no fake reindeer statues decked out in lights on the lawn.

Christmas wasn't coming here.

Emma didn't believe it was coming for her in sac and the baby, either.

* * *

The doorbell rang, disturbing all the silence in Rachel McRae's house, and she honestly thought about ignoring it, as she often did these days.

She was sitting in her great-grandmother's rocking chair, deep in the corner of the living room, in what she now realized was near darkness. When had it gotten so dark? Surprise, she looked at the clock on the wall. Five-thirty? Where had the day gone?

Sam would be home soon. Maybe. She hadn't even started dinner, hadn't done much of anything. She slowly retreated from everyone and everything over the past few weeks. Once again, she found herself at the end of a long day in which she done nothing. It all seemed to be too much for her lately. She had the odd feeling that the world was moving too fast all around her and she couldn't quite keep up.

The doorbell rang again, and Rachel decided it would be easier just to open the door and deal with whoever was there this time.

Moving slowly and quietly through the house, she flicked on the overhead light and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. At the front door she flipped on the porch light and pulled open the door, finding her aunt, a kindhearted, sixty-something-year-old woman with more energy than most half her age, standing on the porch. "Aunt Miriam? Hi."

"Hello, dear." Her aunt smiled. "I just wanted to make sure you were home. I brought you something," Marian said, turning and heading for her car.

"Oh, okay. Do you need help?" She crossed her arms in front of her, shivering a bit in the cold. "No, we can get ourselves inside, Rachel."

Rachel frowned. Who could Miriam and have brought to visit? It couldn't be family, because they'd all been here over the weekend, all forty-six of them for brunch on Sunday. She'd spent Monday putting the house back together after everyone left. It wouldn't get messed up again until the family came for Christmas. Rachel and her husband Sam weren't messy at all, and it was just the two of them problem, probably always would be.

Neat, clean, and quiet, that was Rachel's life. Her sister Gail, who had four children, the oldest of whom was twelve, actually said she envied Rachel at one point over the weekend when the chaos level hit its peak.

Envied?

Rachel had nearly broken down. She'd hidden in the laundry room, wiping away her tears. Sam had caught her coming out. As he always did lately when he saw that she'd been crying, he stiffened. His whole body went on alert, sending out all those signals that said, "Don't start, Rachel. Not now."

Not ever, she supposed. They weren't going to talk about it. It didn't matter if they did. Nothing would change. So many bad things had happened, and there were no children in this house. Probably, there never would be. How in the world was she supposed to accept that? How was she supposed to go on?

Rachel crossed her arms in front of her, shivering a bit from the cold, and walked to the edge of the porch. That's when she saw the little face inside the car pressed against the window. A nose smashed flat against the glass. A mouth. A child-sized hand.

The door opened, and a boy hopped out. He was four or five, Rachel guessed. She had lots of nephews and cousins. She knew about little boys.

Looking up again, Rachel saw a second child climb out of the car, a girl in a thin sweater, an ill-fitting dress that was too short and showed her thin legs and bony knees. She must be freezing, Rachel thought. The girl took the little boy's hand, and they stood staring at Rachel in the house. She couldn't help but wonder if they were scared. They had to be cold, and she'd bet they hadn't had enough to eat lately, maybe not for long, long time. It hurt to think about that, hurt in places Rachel hadn't hurt for a long, long time, places in her heart she thought had died. It would be better if all those sad, lonely corners of her heart just shriveled up and died. Miriam knew that. She had to understand. So Rachel couldn't understand why her aunt was doing this to her.

Then, in the worst betrayal of all, her aunt leaned into the car and came out with a baby in her arms.

"Oh." Rachel closed her eyes.
A baby
.

Miriam walked right up to her and put the child into her arms, giving Rachel no choice but to take it. The other two children gazed up at Rachel waiting for her reaction, their own expressions hard to read. Sadness, uncertainty, fear? Little children shouldn't ever be afraid.

So although Rachel wanted to shove the baby back into her aunt's arms and run inside, she didn't. Not at first. She didn't want the children to think she was rejecting them. She wasn't. She was rejecting the pain of her own memories and the most dangerous thing of all.
Hope.
For years, Rachel had had a dream. An utterly elusive fantasy that one day she opened her front door and someone would put a baby in her arms. It was her own, personal version of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. They could put her on national television if they wanted, broadcast live from her front porch, if she ever won the baby sweepstakes.

A little shiver ran down Rachel's spine. She had the baby dream just a few hours ago. It had snowed in her dream, she remembered, and it was snowing today. She'd missed that, too. There was a soft, pristine white blanket of snow covering the ground, and it was cold. Just like in her dream.

The dream, too, always started with the doorbell ringing. Sometimes Rachel opened the door and saw no one. Then she looked down and found a basket at her feet, an oval-shaped basket filled with something that might have been mistaken for laundry. But the linens would wiggle, and she pulled them aside to find the baby waiting for her. In a basket, at her front door, like a present. Sometimes—the last time she'd had a dream in fact—she opened the door and found a person standing there. She didn't know who, didn't see anything except the baby in that person's arms. She held out her arms and found them filled with the warm, soft, sweet-smelling baby. Right there, on an otherwise absolutely ordinary day.

Just like today.

She looked down at the baby in her arms, hardly able to believe it, fighting fiercely not to hope that this time, it would all work out.

Twelve Days

The McRae's Series

Book One

by

Teresa Hill

~

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Twelve Days

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Page forward and continue your journey

with an excerpt from

Edge of Heaven

The McRae's Series

Book Two

Excerpt from

Edge of Heaven

The McRae's Series

Book 2

by

Teresa Hill

USA Today Bestselling Author

He got into town just before dawn, having driven all night. Once he decided to go, he got 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 he didn't need to look at them. He'd memorized them long before he found the courage to come.