The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

"She just left them? Left a baby that age and a boy and a girl who's all of eleven and didn't come back?"
    "Near as we can tell."
    "And that woman could show up tomorrow, and you'd give those kids back to her, wouldn't you? If she came up with the right story, and you believed her and the judge believed her, you'd give her her kids back?"
    "I don't know, Sam. I don't make the rules. I just have to follow them."
    "Well let me tell you something, the rules suck!"
    "Sometimes, they do."
    "Oh, hell, Miriam." He got all choked up, worried he would embarrass himself, like he had when she'd come to take Will away. "Rachel can't have these kids here and not fall for them, and I don't know if she can take getting hurt again. I don't think she can take losing one more person she loves."
    Sam winced at his own choice of words. Maybe he was thinking selfishly here. Maybe he was hoping she could take losing one more thing. Him. But that was it. Nothing else.
    When he'd come out of the office and she'd looked so uneasy, Sam had thought for a moment that she'd heard him on the phone, that she knew. He had no idea what she'd say to him. Maybe she'd ask him to stay. Maybe she'd say she still needed him or that she just didn't want to be without him. But he wasn't holding out much hope of that, either.
    "I don't want her hurt, Miriam." That was his bottom line.
    "Neither do I, but I don't think she can hide inside this house much longer and never come out, either. I know sitting in that rocking chair of my grandmother's isn't doing her any good."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Rachel," she said. "God, are you in as bad a shape as she is?"
    "What's wrong with Rachel?" he growled.
    "She doesn't do anything anymore. She hardly ever comes out of this house. She just sits here. Sam, where have you been?"
    "Right here," he argued. But hell, he hadn't. He'd been working and sleeping in his office or in the front bedroom upstairs.
    He'd been avoiding her and their problems, thinking they might get better on their own somehow, but it wasn't going to happen. Then Rick had mentioned that his friend Stu was moving out of the spare room above Rick's shop and did Sam know anybody who might want it. The more Sam had thought about it, the more he had known it was time. There was no point in going on any longer the way things were between them.
    Rick's place was cheap and it was close to Sam's shop and office. He wouldn't move his office right away. He couldn't take being so far away from Rachel, at least not at first. He'd still keep an eye on her and help with the house. As much as they'd done to the old place, it always needed more.
    He'd decided. All he had to do now was hold out until after Christmas, tell Rachel and go.
    Then all he had to do was learn to live without her.
    Now it seemed he'd been so caught up in his own problems that he hadn't been paying enough attention to her.
    "What's going on between the two of you?" Miriam asked.
    "Nothing," he lied. The family gossip system was more highly developed than any communications satellite in the world. He wasn't interested in being fodder for the family roundtable. This was between him and Rachel.
    "Sam—"
    "We haven't gotten over Will, okay?" That shut Miriam up. She still felt guilty, and Sam was mad enough to use that against her right now. "So, Rachel doesn't go anywhere?"
    "Not for weeks," Miriam said.
    How could that be? She'd always been busy, taking care of her sick grandfather, helping Sam get the business off the ground, and later with her stained glass. She did amazing things with the glass, first on jobs Sam had taken on and then on jobs of her own. She helped her sisters with their kids, helped take care of her father now that her mother was gone. She volunteered at the church and for Meals on Wheels and all sorts of organizations around town. He'd always been proud of all she did, all she gave to everyone around her.
    "I know she cleared her schedule a lot while she was working on the Parker mansion the past year, but..." She'd finished that weeks ago, hadn't she?
    Sam had trouble remembering what day it was lately. Until he'd given himself a deadline to move out, he simply hadn't cared.
    "All her volunteer stuff?" he began, shaken and trying not to show it.
    "She's turned it all over to other people. No one's seen her outside the house in weeks—before the birthday get-together, at least. Everyone who's knocked on your front door has found her here, full of excuses as to why