The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

love my children..."
    "Of course," Rachel said. She believed it.
    "I never meant for it to end this way... I..." Her breathing grew more labored. There was a monitor measuring her heartbeat, and it was speeding up, even as she spoke. "I should have done more... Protected them... Taken better care of them..."
    "They're fine," Rachel said. "Honestly, they are. They're wonderful, and they have absolute faith in you. They knew you'd never willingly leave them all by themselves. They've been telling us all along that you'd be back."
    "I..." She gasped.
    The beeping of the monitor was starting to really scare Rachel. Sam was reaching for the call button to summon a nurse when one walked in, going straight to the monitor and then to Annie.
    "I was afraid this would happen. Annie, you can't do this to yourself."
    "Tell them," Annie said, catching the nurse's hand. "Tell them for me."
    "Of course." The nurse smiled back at them. "You're the ones taking care of her children?"
    "Yes," Sam said. "What's going on?"
    "I've been with her most of the day, and we've talked a good bit in bits and spurts. It's all she can manage right now. She's been waiting for you, and there's a lot she wants to say, but I'm afraid it would take too much out of her."
    "Tell us, please," Sam said.
    The nurse gave them a kind smile and kept hold of Annie's hand, looking from her to Sam and Rachel. "She wants you to know their father wasn't always like this, that he was a good man once."
    Rachel felt Sam tense. They didn't want to hear about the so-called good man who'd done this to Annie Greene.
    "She said he got sick—really sick. Not because he was drinking. This was before all that. He missed a lot of work, lost his job. They lost almost everything. She said it was like they'd fallen into a string of bad luck and couldn't get out. About that time, she got pregnant with Zach. That's when things got really bad and when her husband started drinking. She never thought he'd hurt her, but of course, he did. She kept telling herself it would get better. It didn't. She didn't think he'd ever hurt the children, but one day her oldest daughter got between her and him, trying to save her... And that's when Annie knew they had to go."
    "So ashamed... of myself," Annie whispered, tears in her eyes. "Should have known."
    "It's all right," the nurse told her, and picked back up with the story. "She didn't really have anyone to turn to. Her husband's family... they all drank, too. And her family had been against her marrying him all along. They weren't interested in helping her out of the mess she'd made, and they were scared to have him coming around. So one day Annie packed their things and left. It wasn't until later that she realized she was pregnant again with Grace."
    "Sweetest thing," Annie said. "Sweetest, happiest baby."
    "She is," Rachel assured a crying Annie Greene.
    "Don't want her to know... What she came from... How it was... Doesn't have anything to do with her."
    "I understand," Rachel said. She was sure there weren't a lot of tender feelings left between husband and wife by then, but she doubted that would have stopped Annie's husband from taking what he wanted from her.
    "She did the best she could, but it wasn't enough. She'd hate for people to judge them based on what their father was like or what she's done."
    "We would never do that," Sam said.
    "Thank you," Annie whispered.
    "She would never have come back here, but she was sick herself," the nurse said. "A problem with her kidneys from the beatings. They'd damaged her kidneys, and she hardly ever got proper medical care. Battered women seldom do. The damage was done, and getting pregnant again... Well, pregnancy takes its toll on a woman's entire body. It's especially difficult for someone with kidney problems. Honestly, I don't see how she made it through the pregnancy, and afterward, Annie was getting weaker all the time. She knew she wouldn't be able to go on taking care of the children on her own.
    "She risked calling her mother, who refused to help. But Annie was desperate. They were losing their apartment in Georgia. She hadn't been able to work. There wasn't any money. She thought maybe if she told her mother the whole story in person, her mother would listen. But she was afraid to take the children anywhere near her husband, afraid of what he might do.
    "She knew all about Baxter, Ohio. She'd read about the Christmas festival there. It seemed like a nice town, and she thought if