The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

*
    The doorbell rang, disturbing all the silence in Rachel McRae's house, and she honestly thought about ignoring it, as she often did these days.
    She was sitting in her great-grandmother's rocking chair deep in the corner of the living room, in what she now realized was near darkness. When had it gotten so dark? Surprised, she looked at the clock on the wall. Five-thirty? She frowned. Where had the day gone?
    Sam would be home soon. Maybe. She hadn't even started dinner, hadn't done much of anything. She'd slowly retreated from everyone and everything over the past few weeks. Once again, she found herself at the end of a long day in which she'd done nothing. It all seemed to be too much for her lately. She had the odd feeling that the world was moving too fast all around her and she couldn't quite keep up.
    The doorbell rang again, and Rachel decided it would be easier just to open the door and deal with whoever was there this time.
    Moving slowly and quietly through the house, she flicked on the overhead light and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. At the front door she flipped on the porch light and pulled open the door, finding her aunt, a kind-hearted, sixty-something-year-old woman with more energy than most half her age, standing on the porch.
    "Aunt Miriam? Hi."
    "Hello, dear." Her aunt smiled. "How are you?"
    "Fine," Rachel said.
    "You threw a lovely party for your father and all of us over the weekend."
    "Thank you." It had been her father's sixtieth birthday, which had turned into a family reunion somehow. Her family welcomed any excuse to get together. "Do you want to come inside?"
    "Not just yet. I just wanted to make sure you were home. I brought you something," Miriam said, turning and heading for her car.
    "Oh, okay. Do you need help?" She crossed her arms in front of her, shivering a bit in the cold.
    "No, we can get ourselves inside, Rachel."
    Ourselves?
    Rachel frowned. She wondered who Miriam could have brought to visit. It couldn't be family, because they'd all been here over the weekend, all forty-six of them for brunch on Sunday. She'd spent Monday putting the house back together after everyone left. It wouldn't get messed up again until the family came for Christmas. Rachel and her husband, Sam, weren't messy at all, and it was just the two of them, probably it always would be.
    Neat, clean, and quiet, that was Rachel's life. Her sister Gail, who had four children, the oldest of whom was twelve, actually said she envied Rachel at one point over the weekend when the chaos level hit its peak.
    Envied?
    Rachel had nearly broken down. She'd hidden in the laundry room, wiping away her tears. Sam had caught her coming out. As he always did lately when he saw that she'd been crying, he stiffened. His whole body went on alert, sending out all those signals that said, "Don't start, Rachel. Not now."
    Not ever, she supposed. They weren't going to talk about it. It didn't matter if they did. Nothing would change. So many bad things had happened, and there were no children in this house. Probably, there never would be. How in the world was she supposed to accept that? How was she supposed to go on?
    Rachel crossed her arms in front of her, shivering a bit from the cold, and walked to the edge of the porch. That's when she saw the little face inside the car pressed against the window. A nose smashed flat against the glass. A mouth. A child-size hand.
    For a second, Rachel thought it was Will, that Miriam had brought Will back to them, when Rachel had given up on that ever happening. But the door opened, and a boy much smaller than Will hopped out. He was four or five, Rachel guessed. She had lots of nephews and cousins. She knew about little boys.
    Will was eleven, so tall and lanky, with arms and legs too big for the rest of him. He'd been too skinny and wary at first, but then he'd crawled inside of Rachel and taken root there, growing and changing and blossoming, right there in Rachel's lonely heart. She'd forgotten how much she'd always wanted a baby, and remembered that she simply wanted children.
    And then Miriam had taken him away. Rachel and Sam knew they'd likely never see him again.
    This wasn't Will. Looking up again, Rachel saw a second child climb out of the car, a girl in a thin sweater, an ill-fitting dress that was too short and showed her thin legs and bony knees. She must be freezing, Rachel thought.
    The girl took the little boy's hand, and they stood staring at Rachel and