Twelve Days (38 page)

"Give us a minute, Grace," he said.

She frowned—she was used to being the center of attention—and pointed to Emma and said, "Muh, Muh."

"I know. It's Emma. She'll play in a minute." He reached behind him for her ball. Zach was trying to train her to fetch. Sam threw the ball into the corner farthest from the fire and said, "Get the ball, Grace."

She didn't look happy about it, but she crawled off after it, her diaper-clad bottom swishing back and forth as she went.

Emma finally lifted her wet face from his shoulder and said, "She's not a puppy."

"Zach thinks she could be almost as good as a puppy. He wants to get her a leash and a collar, thinks we could keep her out of trouble easier that way. What do you think? We could stake her to the middle of the floor, give her some room to run, but still keep her out of the fire?"

Emma laughed a bit, and then bit her bottom lip and cried.

"We're going to take good care of her, Emma. You and Zach, too. We promised your mother."

"I know. She told me. She told me everything."

"If the doctors say it's okay, we'll bring her here to the house and take care of her. We did that with Rachel's grandfather and her mother before we lost them. We want you to have as much time with her as possible."

"I'd like that, if she was here," Emma said.

"We love you, Em," he said.

"And I love you. But I'm scared. It's gonna be so hard..."

"I know. But Rachel and I have been through a lot of bad times. We know how much it hurts sometimes, and I won't lie to you. Some things just always hurt. But things can get better, too. You'll get to the point where you can remember someone you lost, someone you loved, without hurting so bad you want to cry. Where you can be happy again. Where you know there are still good things in life ahead of you."

"You think?" she asked.

"Listen to me." He turned her head up to his. "I know it's true. All you need are people around you who love you. You just hold on tight to them and you'll get through it. You already know how to do that. You've done it with Zach and Grace. Rachel and I know how to do that, too. We'll hold on tight. Have a little faith, okay?"

She nodded.

"Hey," he said, seeing something coming at him out of the corner of his eye. "Look at that!"

Grace was up on her feet, in the middle of the room, holding on to nothing at all. Just standing there grinning and wobbling back and forth.

"Careful." Emma held out a hand to her.

Sam did the same thing. Grace raced toward them, three, four, five steps, more off balance with each one she took. She
would
run instead of walk. Sam barely managed to catch her before she hit the floor. It scared her a bit. She fussed as he pulled her close and looked bewildered and maybe a bit mad.

"So you're really mobile now?" he asked. "And that's supposed to be a good thing? Because the way I see it, you'll move even faster now and get into even more things."

She blinked up at him and frowned.

Emma gave her a kiss on her soft cheek. Grace threw her little arms around both him and Emma and squeezed hard. Sam held on to them both and looked up to find Rachel and Zach standing in the doorway. Zach was grinning, and Rachel was about to cry. But she was smiling, too. These days, she smiled through her tears.

They were going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

* * *

Sam and Rachel finished taking down the tree that night. By tradition, it didn't come down until New Year's Day.

Rachel worked so carefully, especially with the personalized ornaments. She wrapped them in specially made containers and stacked them in little boxes that would go on special shelves nearly at the ceiling in the basement, so they wouldn't get damaged from year to year.

Sam watched her, thinking about Christmas after Christmas in this old house. Rachel's grandparents had lived here. Her mother. Now Rachel and him and the children. Someday Emma would stand here carefully wrapping the same ornaments after taking them off her tree, he imagined, and felt once again that unending sense of family, of connections that were never truly broken.

A sense of place, of belonging.

He felt rich beyond anything he'd ever imagined. Rich in memories and in people around him who loved him, rich in the possibilities the future held, and he knew he'd done a great disservice to his wife, that it was time to put that to right. He thought he knew how.

There was some part of her that feared he'd remained here simply because of the three children asleep upstairs, and he didn't want there to be any doubts about that. Because he knew how painful those doubts could be. He didn't want her to live like that.

He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a tiny box wrapped in red. When her back was turned, he slid it amid the branches between the spot where his ornament and hers hung, then tried not to grin and ruin the surprise.

She turned back around and reached for another ornament, finding the box and just staring at it for a moment. He waited through three heartbeats before she reached for it. The tentativeness of her movements, the way she studied the package and her name scrawled across the front of it, told him how unsure of the two of them she still was.

"Find something?" he asked through an impossibly tight throat.

She nodded and held it out to him with a trembling hand.

"It has your name on it, Rachel. Open it."

She did, being careful with the wrapping paper, as she always was. It took forever, as it always did. She finally opened the lid of the box and then nearly dropped it.

Sam took it from her and pulled out the ring. He stuck it on the end of his index finger and held it out to her. She didn't say a word, just stared. He hadn't had the money to give her a diamond the first time around. It had been a plain gold band. A cheap one she'd treasured anyway.

"Do you ever watch those sappy diamond commercials on TV?" he asked.

"All women watch those, Sam."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"Diamonds are amazing. So strong. They last forever. And this one..." He held it up in front of her, showing the simple beauty of the ring. A solid band of diamonds, a never-ending circle. "It's forever, Rachel. I know so much more about that now—about the commitment it takes and what it means to me—than I did the first time around. It means so much more to me now.
You
do. I'm sorry I ever doubted that."

"Oh, Sam." She started to cry again. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"And you're not ever going to find out," he promised, then remembered the ring and what he needed to tell her. "The sappy commercials?"

"Yes."

"The one I saw said this is what you give a woman to tell her you'd marry her all over again. I'd do it in a heartbeat."

And then he slipped the ring on her finger and dried her tears and carried her upstairs to their bed.

The End

Page forward for more an excerpt from

Book 2 of
The McRae's Series

Edge of Heaven

Excerpt from

Edge of Heaven

Book 2

The McRae's Series

by

Teresa Hill

Chapter 1

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

He wasn't sure what he was going to say once he got there. He usually played it by ear, and so far, it hadn't been too difficult to find out what he wanted to know. The hard part had been making himself keep searching.

It started snowing on I-75 in the mountains in Tennessee and kept it up the whole way to the tiny town of Baxter, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River just west of Cincinnati.

There were 8,436 people living here, according to the sign on the edge of town, which also bragged about being the home of an artist named Richard Landon, who made, of all things, snow globes.

Rye shook his head over that. A town would have to be pretty hard up for things to brag about to mention a man who made kids' toys.

But it was pretty here, like something out of a wintry postcard. The streets of downtown were wide, the sidewalks broad, many of the old brick storefronts preserved intact, everything neat and polished. There was an honest-to-goodness town square, an old courthouse behind it, a block of streets surrounding it with a parklike setting in the middle.

He turned into a neighborhood of Victorians, late 1800s, three stories, high-pitched roofs, stained-glass windows, wide porches. As someone who worked in construction, he couldn't help but admire the workmanship that had gone into restoring them.

He drove slower and slower, the closer he got. If he wasn't careful someone would call the law on him, and that was the last thing he needed.

Finally, he saw it. No. 12. Maybe the prettiest house on the street. A soft gray with touches of blue on the trim and in the exquisitely beautiful stained glass in the windows and the panels of the front door.

There was money here. He frowned even more.

There was a pretty sign in stained glass hanging from the mailbox that said, MCRAE CONSTRUCTION, PROPS. SAM AND RACHEL MCRAE.

Yeah, this was it.

He parked on the opposite side of the street, cut the engine and the lights, and sat there, snow falling softly all around him, the neighborhood just starting to stir.

What now?

Knock on the door?

It was too early for that.

But soon lights started coming on inside the house, one by one, upstairs first and then down. A car came by, driving slowly, and the morning paper was hurled onto the front lawn. The front door of the house opened. A dark-haired man in worn jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt came outside and retrieved the paper. What was he? Early forties? Late thirties? That would be about right.