Twelve Days (17 page)

"I could try," she said.

"Good. Why don't you start by telling me what's been bothering you all day?"

Emma shrugged and looked over to Zach, who hovered in obvious fascination around the horse.

"Sam will stay close," Rachel said, knowing what the girl was thinking. "He'll make sure Zach doesn't get hurt. I know it can seem like Sam's kind of... mad at times. But it's not that. He's been through a lot. He's been hurt, too. He tries not to show it, and sometimes when he's hiding it..."

"You think he's mad?"

"Yes. It can look like he's mad. Or that he doesn't care. But he does. I think he cares a lot about you and Zach and the baby."

"He doesn't like holding her," Emma said.

"It's just hard. It reminds him of bad things that happened before. But it's not about Grace. Not at all."

"Okay," Emma said.

"You were upset when I walked into the kitchen yesterday morning. When you were talking to Sam. And at the doctor's. Can you tell me why?"

Emma's face fell. "What was the blood for?"

"It's a test." Rachel didn't suppose she could do anything but level with the little girl. "A test to see where you and Zach belong."

"We know where we belong," she insisted.

"And you won't tell us. So we're trying to find out. Emma, you can't expect us not to try to find out where you belong."

"But the blood? It's for that stuff, isn't it? That stuff in blood... With the letters?"

"DNA," Rachel said. "It can tell you who your parents are by matching your blood to theirs."

"I know who my parents are."

"Both of them?"

"Yes," Emma said.

"You could tell us where your father is?"

"No. But I know who he is."

"Then give us his name, Emma. We'll find him."

"No. We can't go there."

"Why not?"

"We just can't. And I can't talk about it. I'm not supposed to."

"Did your mother take you away from him? Is that why she's afraid of the police?"

"I can't talk about it. Rachel, please..."

"Grandparents?" she tried. "Aunts? Uncles?"

"I can't say."

"Okay." Rachel put her arm around the girl.

"You said we could stay here. You said it was all right."

"It is. I'm not trying to make you tell us about your parents to get rid of you, Emma. I'm just thinking that if I were your mother and I didn't know where you were, I'd be so worried. I'd want you back as soon as possible. And I know you and Zach and Grace would feel so much better to know where your mother is."

Which was something Rachel didn't understand about this at all. All the children had to do was give them a name and a town, and someone would go find her. And yet the children wouldn't. They claimed that the same woman who abandoned them at that motel made them promise not to tell anyone who they were or where they belonged, and they'd kept that promise they made to her, even though they had to be terrified. It didn't make sense—this faith they had in the woman who'd deserted them.

"Emma," she said. "Listen to me. I would do anything for you and Zach and Grace. Anything at all. And I'm going to be here for you, as long as you need me. Do you understand that?"

"You said it was just until Christmas."

"I know that's what we said at first." But Rachel couldn't turn her back on them now, and there was no reason to. As Miriam pointed out, she had the time, the energy. She had the love, too.

She'd probably had all of that from the first moment she'd seen Emma and Zach on her porch in their pitifully inadequate clothing, from the moment Miriam showed up like something out of Rachel's dream and put the baby in her arms. Certainly from the time Zach had wrapped his arms around her and asked solemnly if his hug made everything all better. She was in it for the long haul. She would not desert them now.

Emma stared up at her, so troubled, so hesitant, so much need and longing in her eyes.

"I'm not going to kick you out after Christmas," she said, trying to lighten the mood and keep herself from saying something so heartfelt she'd burst into tears right there. "You can stay as long as you need to. I promise."

And it wasn't until she looked up into her husband's grim features—he heard everything she'd said to Emma—that she realized she'd done it again. She'd made a monumental decision without ever considering his feelings in the matter, without ever talking to him about it.

Was she simply going to sit back and let him go without trying to salvage something of the last twelve years? Did she think to use these kids as a way to fill up her life when Sam was gone? She looked at them, Zach and Emma piling into the sleigh, down at the baby in her arms, and felt again that connection between herself and them. It was real, Rachel thought. It was powerful and filled her inside in all those empty places she'd lived with for so long.

But it was no substitute for what she felt for Sam. She still ached at the thought, was still panicked.

Then she thought of one more thing. Could she keep the children without Sam? They'd been approved as foster parents as a couple. She didn't even have a job. Maybe she had made rash promises she wouldn't be able to keep. She'd have to check with Miriam right away, hopefully without going into all the specifics of what was going on between her and Sam.

She looked up, finding he was closer than she realized, that closed-off look to his face replacing the anger and shock she'd seen moments ago when she'd made her promise to Emma. Did he really want the children to go? Or was he thinking like a man who was leaving his wife, a man who knew the promises she'd just made, she might not be able to keep because he was leaving.

"Rachel?" he asked.

"Yes?" She was suddenly scared of what he was going to say. She still wasn't ready to talk about him leaving. God, she didn't think she ever would be.

"Get in," he said.

She looked at him once more, lost in her thoughts, only then realizing they were all waiting for her, staring at her.

"Sorry," she said, putting the baby in his arms.

He looked startled and uneasy at that, and his eyes seemed to accuse her of things she didn't quite understand. He might come off as gruff as a bear at times with the children, but she could swear it was pure defense mechanisms. He didn't want to get attached to them, didn't want to get hurt when they left. He was still trying to protect her from that, too. Didn't that mean something? That even as he was leaving her, he still cared enough to want to protect her.

For so long, they'd lived their lives trying not to get hurt, curling up inside themselves and being wary of where the next blow was coming from, but it had to stop. It was time to reach for something better, something wonderful, and she wanted to reach out to Sam, the man she used to know. The one she'd fallen in love with. Laughed with, cried with, and lived with for a dozen years.

Rachel held out her hands for the baby, and Sam climbed in, having no choice but to sit beside her, his body pressed close to hers. He pulled a big, green blanket around all five of them and picked up the reins and off they went.

* * *

Emma sat with Zach on her lap. He talked the whole time, so excited he couldn't even sit still. There was the big yellow moon and all the stars, the snow, the horse, the sleigh, all the trees. He couldn't imagine Christmas trees growing in a field and kept saying theirs had always come from a box and had to be put together, kind of like his Tinkertoys.

He squirmed and grinned and seemed totally happy, and Emma was glad for that. Grace, too, seemed perfectly content here with Sam and Rachel. But Emma was getting more worried every moment.

It had been eight days since she'd seen her mother, and she simply couldn't imagine what could have kept her away for so long. She knew her mother loved them. She knew it. But she was gone. She'd been gone for so long.

Emma was afraid something awful had happened to her.

She remembered the place where they used to live, remembered how it had been there. All the yelling and how afraid she'd been. She and Zach and the baby couldn't go back there. Not ever. And yet if their mother was gone...

Emma looked over at Rachel, who said they could stay as long as they needed to. She wasn't going to make them leave after Christmas.

Emma wanted to believe Rachel about that.

Of course, she'd believed her mother, too, when her mother said she'd only be gone for a day and now it had been eight.

Chapter 9

Sam held the reins as the horse made his way along the path through the woods to one of the back pastures. There were rows and rows of trees for the public at the front of the farm, but the family got the privilege of taking the sleigh and finding a tree in one of the back fields.

It was beautiful back there, the light of the moon shining off the snow, the utter silence. There had been times in the past that it seemed he and Rachel were the only two people in the world.

They'd made love in the snow one night when they set off to find their tree, and had nearly frozen to death. It had started as a snowball fight, back in those years when they still laughed together, and the next thing he knew, he had her pinned to the ground beneath him, tugging at her clothes, crazy to touch her and have her touch him. It had been urgent and frenzied. Cold hands and cold skin, her warm mouth and welcoming arms. Now he had trouble remembering the last time she'd welcomed him into her arms, had opened herself up to him and truly wanted him, needed him.

A part of him wanted her so badly he could hardly stand it. Rachel, the woman he'd loved for so long. Sometimes he thought she had truly loved him, that she was the only one who ever had. And sometimes, he thought she'd willingly give him up now in favor of what was truly important to her. Children. They'd always seemed more important to her than he was.

And here he was, hurting and acting like a child himself, foolishly wanting to measure her feelings for them against her feelings for him, sometimes even resenting the fact that they made her happy when he never had. It made him feel as if he were six again, or eight, or nine or twelve or fifteen. How many places had there been? How many relatives and strangers who'd found a way to let him go?

Shit! Sam wasn't going to spend his life whining about how difficult his childhood had been. He didn't want to examine it in minute detail and make excuses for everything in his life. These kids just reminded him too much of himself, and damned if there wasn't a part of him who wanted to save them from all he'd endured.

He and Rachel could give them what they wanted—a place all their own, a place to belong and feel safe and be loved. He went to sleep and it was the last thing he thought of. Woke up, and it was the first thought that rushed through his head. If they had no place else to go, he and Rachel could keep them. She would be happy, and if she was happy, he could be happy, too.

Of course, there were only about a dozen little variables capable of ruining that whole plan, like the fact that he was supposed to be leaving her in eight days.

He'd been so sure nothing could save their marriage, and now he wondered if he was about to give up the best thing he ever had. The only woman he'd ever loved and the closest thing to a home he'd ever known.

These children had done that to him. They were really good kids, and they'd made him hope again. He wasn't that comfortable around them or that sure he could be a good father to them, but he understood them. He had something to give them.

It had been that way with Will. He'd seen so much of himself, of his past and the chaotic life he'd led, in Will. One of the hardest things about letting Will go was knowing what Will was going back to. But he wasn't going to think about Will today. He couldn't.

Sam thought about what he had in this sleigh, his wife and a worried almost teenage girl, a funny, adorable, lost boy, and a beautiful baby girl born near Christmas, like a gift. He saw them all as a gift, as elusive as all those things he'd always wanted and never gotten as a boy.

Or was this his gift to treasure? Would the world finally send him something as precious as everything he had in this moment in this sleigh?

"That's it!" he heard Zach shout, realizing they'd come to one of the clearings, deep in the woods. Zach stood and pointed to a huge fir tree.

"That's two stories high," Sam said.

"Is that bad?"

Sam couldn't help but smile. He smiled a lot around this kid. "We couldn't get it in the front door, Zach."

"How 'bout that one?" He pointed to one that was maybe fourteen feet.

"We could probably get it in, but we'd have to cut a hole in the ceiling if we wanted it to stand up."

"We could do that?" Zach asked earnestly.

"No, but keep looking. You'll find one that's just right."

They drove on. Somewhere along the way, Rachel relaxed against him, the baby held snug in her arms, looking truly like an angel.

He'd almost gotten to the point where he could look at her and not think of their daughter, and not hurt, and he'd almost managed to stop thinking about having to send such a truly innocent, helpless child off into the world with someone who might abandon her again someday. He could almost look at her and simply smile back at her and appreciate how soft her skin was, how sweet she was when she cooed and patted his cheeks with her tiny hands. He could almost hold her in his arms and be happy, just to have her close.