Twelve Days (33 page)

So, the tree was done. He and Rachel turned to each other, and he pulled her close, as close as he could with Grace between them.

"Merry Christmas," he whispered, kissing her softly.

"Merry Christmas," she said.

They both kissed Grace, too, at the same time. She was sandwiched between them, looking surprised and then very pleased.

"What's goin' on?" Zach asked.

"Tradition," Rachel whispered, grabbing him and lifting him into her arms.

"Trahh... Huh?"

"Something we always do," she said. "Now you're supposed to hug me and wish me Merry Christmas."

He did and then said, "Now what?"

"Now you hug everybody in this room. You can kiss them, too, if you want. And wish them Merry Christmas. And let them do the same to you."

"Ever'body?" He looked skeptical.

"Everybody," Jo insisted, grabbing him away from Rachel for her hug. Rachel's brother grabbed her, and Sam lost her for a moment in a flurry of hugs and kisses that he still found a bit awkward and disarming, too.

When that was done, Rachel's father settled into his place by the tree and started handing out presents, one by one and very slowly, telling stories about each of the recipients as he went. The rules said nobody got to open a thing until all the presents were passed out, which had the kids groaning and trying to make their grandfather speed up. He never did.

Emma was standing beside Sam, and he could see the surprise on her face when Frank called her over to him and treated her as he did all the other grandchildren. Zach wasn't surprised at all. He seemed to expect it, but Emma still didn't, even with her ornament on the tree.

She came back to stand by Sam's side, inching closer and closer. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "What did you get?"

"I don't know."

"No guesses?"

She shook her head.

"Anything wrong?"

She shrugged and looked around the crowded room. There were about sixteen conversations going on at once, not a spare inch of floor space in the room. All those happy faces, all the laughter.

"Is it always like this?" Emma asked.

"At Christmas. Easter. Memorial Day. Fourth of July. Labor Day. Thanksgiving. Christmas again. Rachel's family loves to celebrate."

"They're all so nice," she said.

"Yes, they are."

"They... they all act like they know me. Like they like me."

"It's the way they are," he said. Maybe not with him, but they would be with Emma and Zach and Grace. And even that probably wasn't fair, Sam realized. Rachel's father hadn't really accepted him, but the rest of the family had. They'd drawn him in, at least as much as he'd let them. He was a part of them now.

They were ready to draw Emma and her brother and sister into their midst, just as generously and eagerly as they'd welcomed Sam. He'd never loved them more than he did right now for the generosity they'd shown toward the children. He was awed by it, all choked up by it. He'd never thought to belong to anything like this family, to anything this strong, this enduring.

"They're good people, Em," he said.

She nodded. "I like the snowflake ornaments."

"Me, too."

"I like it here."

"I'm glad."

"And... I like you, too."

Sam nodded, thinking about grabbing her and just holding on to her, too, but she looked so shy at the moment, so ready to bolt and run. Emma would be slow to accept things like that, and he didn't want to spook her. So he just gave her as much of a smile as he could manage and said, "I like you, too. Merry Christmas."

She slipped away from him, as if the conversation had become too much for her. Oh, Emma, he thought. They had a lot in common.

He was still sitting there a few minutes later when Rachel came to him. She sat on the floor, settling in with her side pressed against his leg, her head against his knee.

"Your family really is amazing," he said, his hand teasing at the ends of her hair.

"Our family, Sam. They're yours, too."

He nodded.

She went to turn to face him and bumped into the sign she'd made for him, which he'd stashed in the relative safety of the corner. "Careful."

"Oh. I didn't know that was there." She reached for the sign again, tracing his name and then hers. "You know, it didn't turn out quite the way I expected."

"Rachel, I love it. It's perfect."

"That's not what I was saying. I love the way it turned out. It's just not what I thought it would be. I always start with an image in my mind of what it's going to be, but it's like projects take on a life of their own. Like there's something else they were just meant to be, and it used to drive me crazy. I'd work so hard to force my vision onto the work. It seemed like I ought to be able to do that. After all, I could hold all the pieces in my hand, the design and all the different kinds and colors of glass. I'd cut them and grind them and shape them into the pattern in my head, and no matter how careful I was and how determined, it never came out exactly the way I expected.

"My grandfather used to try to explain it to me—that I hadn't failed just because in the end, I had something that was different than I envisioned. That part of creating art is letting it just be what it wants to be, accepting what comes, rejoicing in it, even," she said, laying her head on his knee again. "And he was talking about life, too, I think. All those things I thought I had to have, all that time I spent trying to make all the pieces fit together the way I imagined they should."

"What are you saying, Rachel?" he asked quietly.

"I'm saying, look around this room, at all that's here. This place and these people are all the pieces of our lives. We can make something so beautiful of this, Sam. It is beautiful. It's beautiful right now."

And it was.

* * *

She was still waiting for what he might have said a moment later when Zach brought a present to Sam and one to Rachel. They'd missed her father calling their names. And a moment later, Frank said, "Let 'er rip!"

Everyone tore into presents all at once in a race to get them opened, and general chaos ensued once again. Sam and Rachel got separated as he supervised a marginal cleaning of the living room. At least enough that they could walk through the room, and she went to the kitchen. The meal had to go on the table soon because all of her siblings' spouses had family in the area, too, and they spent the evening with them.

Late afternoon and evening, by tradition, was drop-in time for neighbors and various other relatives who didn't make it to Christmas dinner. Soon after they finished the meal, the house was overflowing even more with people, and it seemed a general Christmas truce had been lifted—the subject of the truce, Rachel's troubled marriage. She could just imagine them all getting together and deciding they couldn't ruin Christmas with all this talk. But the presents had been opened, the ornaments were on the tree, dinner eaten, and soon her siblings would be leaving. They couldn't leave without saying anything.

Her first clue was her brother, who came up to her and hugged her and said, "I don't know what's going on. That little scene with the ornaments?" He placed a hand theatrically over his heart. "Got me right here. And I don't know if that was staged—"

"We didn't stage anything," Rachel said.

"Okay, I just wondered. I wondered too if maybe you wanted me to beat him up?"

"Sam?" Rachel asked.

"Yes, Sam."

"Why?"

"I don't know. What's he done?"

"He hasn't done anything," Rachel said. "And your wife's looking for you. I think she managed to corral your entire crew and wants to escape before they get loose. You have to go to her parents', right?"

"Yes."

"Go," she said, shooing him away and retreating to the kitchen.

Her friend Mary Ann, from the shoe shop, caught her there and rambled aimlessly for ten minutes about nothing, which was a relief. But then Mary Ann's face fell and she whispered, "I just can't imagine you without Sam."

"Neither can I," Rachel said, smiling and playing dumb about it all.

She stuck her head in the refrigerator and when she emerged from there, her neighbor, Mrs. Potter, was giving her a kindly smile and patting Rachel's hand.

"You can never give up, my dear. Never," Mrs. Potter said.

"I'm not," Rachel promised.

Her sister Ann confessed, "I was about to strangle Greg if he didn't get his mother to leave me alone about the fact that we hadn't had children yet. You think Daddy was bad? Greg's mother was relentless. I couldn't have a conversation with her without her asking me about it and making me feel like a bad wife because we hadn't reproduced yet."

"Oh?" Rachel said.

"Yes. She's never liked me, and I can accept that. But I don't think it's any more her business than Daddy's when Greg and I chose to have children, and don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's happening. But we just weren't ready before. We wanted a little time to ourselves. I think we deserve that."

"Of course," Rachel agreed.

"But his mother just kept pushing, and Greg kept telling me to just ignore her. I guess that's how he's dealt with her all these years, but I don't have to do that. She's not my mother. All I wanted was for him to stand up to her for me, and for the longest time, he wouldn't. We used to fight all the time about it."

"You did?" Rachel had no idea.

"Now she's driving me crazy
about
the baby. You'd think she was the only woman on earth to ever raise a child successfully. She thinks she knows everything, and I can already see it's going to be trouble. Greg doesn't always do what I think he should to get her to just butt out of our marriage, and as much as that irritates me, I still love him," Ann said.

"Of course." Rachel had never doubted that part.

"Sometimes it just gets so hard," her sister Gail added quite sincerely, then stood there waiting expectantly.

"Oh," Rachel said, beginning to see where the conversation was going. She had honestly thought for a moment it was going to turn into a gripe session about men, and she hadn't understood what brought that on.

"Alex wanted to take a job in Phoenix the year Mom got sick," Gail said finally, when it was clear Rachel wouldn't say anything more. "Can you imagine? I mean, it was a good opportunity for him, but we were doing fine here, and there was no way I could have left with Mom so sick. I couldn't believe he'd even suggest it. We had terrible fights about it, and one night I told him if he had to take that job, to just go ahead and go. The kids and I would stay right here, where we belonged."

"Really?" How had Rachel missed that?

"We all have problems," Gail said.

"I know," Rachel agreed, but really, she hadn't known any of this.

"I wish Mom were here. She'd know what to say," Gail said, sighing and looking around. "It's almost like old times, you know? Like when we were kids. Being here in this house at Christmas, with the family all around. Ever since Mom was gone, we've all been together here. It's the Christmas house and the Thanksgiving house and the Fourth of July. All of those things. I can't imagine us all not being here, and..."

Her sister broke off, almost in tears.

"I'm sorry. Here I am thinking of me and my holidays, when—"

"It is a holiday. Today. Let's think of that," Rachel suggested.

"But—"

"Let's," she said. "Or even better, how in the world did you keep all these problems from me and from Dad and everyone?" That part absolutely fascinated Rachel.

"That's not the point," Ann said.

"Maybe not for you," Rachel said, but right now everybody in the world was sticking their collective noses into her marriage.

"The point is that marriage is hard. You don't just give up," Gail said.

"I'm not giving up," Rachel insisted. "And right now, I'm going to find my husband."

She thought she should probably try to rescue him from the same treatment she was getting. She saw him being cornered as often as she was, and she could tell from the knowing look in his eyes that they were hearing the same things. Right now, her father had him at the foot of the stairs.

She made her way, as fast as she could, to Sam's side, just in time to hear her father say, "I think I said a lot of things over the years that you didn't deserve. That day at the hospital, especially."

"What?" she asked, surprising them both. "What did you say to him?"

"Rachel, don't," Sam said.

"No, I want to know. Daddy, what did you say to him?"

"Something along the lines of him not doing his job, not doing what he promised me he would—which was to take good care of you and that baby."

"Oh, Daddy," Rachel said, then looked to Sam, who stood there staring back at her father.

"I'm sorry," her father said.

"It wasn't his fault," Rachel said.

"No," her father said. "That was a father talking, a father who was scared he was going to lose his little girl and thinking he'd failed her somehow. I thought I hadn't done enough to keep you safe and happy, little girl. It's hard for a man to let his daughter grow up. To give her into the safekeeping of another man. I don't think any father thinks the man who wins his little girl's heart is good enough for her, but I should have gotten over that a long time ago. It's been obvious to anyone who wasn't blind that you love Sam and that Sam's loved you for a long time."

He turned to Sam and stuck out his hand.

"You've worked hard, made something of yourself, and I know you've been good to my little girl. After twelve years, I guess it's a little late to welcome you to the family. But I'm proud of you, Sam. Proud of what you've done here to this old house and to this town. And I don't think you're the only one who needs to hear that."

Rachel didn't know what he planned to do, but before she knew it, he'd dragged her and Sam a third of the way up the stairs, where they could see everyone in the front part of the house and everyone could see them.

Her father had a glass of spiced cider in his hand. He called for everyone to be quiet, then raised his glass and announced that he had a toast to make. He talked about how happy he was to be there, to have all his friends and family around him, how blessed he felt. And then he turned to Sam and Rachel.