The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

was so strong. He was the man she'd leaned on for fully half her life. He didn't run when things got tough. Look how long he'd fought to make things work between them. So for him to be leaving her, he must have been unhappy for a long time. Which meant Rachel must have missed so much. She was ashamed all over again.
    "Rachel?" Emma tugged on her sleeve.
    "It's nothing," Rachel said, automatically denying, as she so often did. Emma didn't buy it. "I was thinking of something else, something to do with me. And I shouldn't be doing that now, because you and I have lots to do today."
    "We do?" Emma said, still looking worried.
    "Yes." She was ready to outline her plans when the phone rang.
    "I forgot," Emma said. "Mrs. Kramer called. I wrote it down here. And somebody else. One of your neighbors."
    Rachel thanked her and picked up the phone, wondering what was going on. "Hello."
    "Rachel, dear. It's Margaret Doyle. How are you this morning?"
    "Fine, thank you." A third neighbor? Rachel was stumped. "How are you, Mrs. Doyle?"
    "Just fine, dear, but I was a bit worried about you. Are you and Sam all right?"
    "Yes," she said, probably hesitating a bit too long. Why would Mrs. Doyle be worried about her and Sam?
    "I was just wondering because... Well, it's the second day of the Christmas festival and..."
    "Oh," Rachel got it. The festival. The Christmas decorations.
    They couldn't forget, not when the whole festival had been Sam's idea. He'd been one of the first to see what the restored Victorian district and the growing popularity of her grandfather's work might do for the whole town. Downtown had been dying, stores moving out, heading for the outskirts of town and the big shopping malls. They'd worked hard over the years, restoring not just the district, but downtown as well, bringing back all that old-fashioned feel to it. The charm and the uniqueness, which had at one time merely seemed old and out-of-date, were being celebrated now, along with Richard Landon's work. The combination brought thousands of people to Baxter, Ohio, for Christmas. And they expected it to be all decked out for Christmas.
    "I'm so sorry," Rachel told her neighbor. "We didn't get the house decorated yesterday because... Well, we had some unexpected guests come to stay with us."
    Rachel suspected Mrs. Doyle, Mrs. Kramer, and whoever else had called this morning had to be the only people in town who didn't know three children had been found abandoned at the Drifter motel and that Sam and Rachel had taken them in. Otherwise, she'd have heard from two dozen people by now. She explained as quickly as she could and let that be her excuse for having put up no Christmas decorations.
    "Oh, my," Mrs. Doyle said. "How terrible for those poor children."
    "Yes, I know. But we're going to take good care of them, and we'll get the decorations up today. I promise."
    With Mrs. Doyle satisfied, Rachel turned back to Emma and Zach. "We have to decorate the house."
    "I like dec'rations," said Zach, who was stuffing himself quite happily.
    "Good. You can help."
    "You put up all those fancy things, like at all the other houses?" Zach asked.
    "Yes, we do. We're just a day late this year." And had left this little boy thinking Christmas wasn't coming here. She could just imagine what he'd thought when Miriam had brought them to what had to be the only house on the street with no Christmas decorations yesterday.
    "Don't worry, Zach. We're going to fix everything."
    * * *
    Before they could think of decorations of their own, the children had to have clothes, coats, boots, the works. Rachel and the children piled out of the car and began their shopping excursion at Mary Jane Walter's shoe store, where Mary Jane fussed over the kids, especially Grace, and turned the cash register over to a college girl home already on break so she could wait on them herself.
    "What do we need here?" she asked Zach, who'd turned shy all of a sudden and hid against Emma's side.
    "Snow boots," he suggested hopefully.
    "Definitely. Boots, dress shoes, and sneakers, too," Rachel said. All Zach had were sneakers and they had holes in them. "And for Grace... I don't know. She's not walking yet."
    "But she will. And when she does, she'll need shoes." Mary Jane held up some little white baby shoes, tiny and perfect.
    "She'll eat 'em," Zach claimed.
    "She wouldn't be the first," Mary Jane said.
    They got Zach outfitted with boots he adored and chose to wear out of the store, sneakers that he found