The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

someone was upset everyone knew about it. Sorrow and joy were shared with equal abandon. There were many tears and much laughter, and there had never been any doubt that anyone had to go through anything alone. Help was there, given as freely as the love. She'd never doubted that she was loved, that they'd always be here for her. She'd always believed Sam would be, too, but at the same time, so often she'd doubted his love, never quite able to tell if it was her own insecurities talking or simply his lack of feelings for her. Or both. Maybe it was both.
    Finally she understood at least a part of it. This distance he kept, the way he could close himself up so tight and not let anything get to him. Because he'd been hurt too much over the years. He didn't have to tell her that part of it for her to know without any doubts. Her big, strong, so-capable husband hid a world of hurt inside.
    And for the first time in a long time, she wondered if maybe he did love her. Maybe she'd read him all wrong. Maybe it was just the way he was, what he'd been taught, shuffled from place to place over the years.
    "I thought I knew you," she said, despite the fact that she was talking to the wall again. Sam was so good at the wall. "But I can't imagine what you must have gone through—"
    "Don't," he said. "Don't do that."
    She backed up a step, bruised by the harsh tone, even knowing it was simply him trying to protect himself and why he did it now. Even now, he wasn't going to open himself up to her.
    She sat there simmering with anger and so much hurt, ready to scream at him to pull some kind of reaction from him, when his phone rang.
    "Don't," she said. "Please."
    But he picked it up, and she could tell from the part of the conversation she could hear that it was a work problem. She intended to sit there, to not let him out of this room until they talked about this. But the next thing she knew, Zach showed up in the door to Sam's office, a big smile on his face for Sam and a slight frown when he saw Rachel sitting there.
    "Hi," he said tentatively.
    "Hi, Zach," she said. "Does Emma know where you are?"
    He shook his head back and forth, caught but clearly not regretting it too much. He seemed inexplicably drawn to Sam and kept sneaking out here to find him, disappearing from the house and worrying her and Emma both.
    "What did we talk about earlier, Zach?"
    "I'm not s'posed ta come out here without telling you first?"
    "Right." She looked from the boy to Sam, only now realizing the powerful connection between the two. They'd both lost their mothers, lost everything familiar to them, around the same age.
    Sam, she thought, looking at Zach, imagining her husband nearly as little as Zach and just as lost. She wondered if Sam had ever ended up in foster care, wondered what might have happened to him there. When they'd discussed foster parenting and possibly adopting through the program, he'd said, "How could we ever know what had happened to a child there? What kind of damage that might have been done?"
    What in the world had they done to her husband?
    She let go of the anger that he hadn't been able to tell her then his true fear, that he was afraid of looking down into a little boy's eyes, hearing what the boy had been through, and being reminded of all he'd been through himself. He'd been worried about seeing someone exactly like Zach. It was almost too painful for Rachel to bear, because she loved Sam so much.
    He probably wouldn't believe her if she told him, and she didn't think she'd said the words to him in a long time, something that made her sad all over again. But she loved him. She'd loved him her whole life.
    "Miss Rachel?" Zach asked.
    Turning back to him and forcing a smile across her face, she said, "Yes."
    "I'm sorry," he said sincerely.
    "What?" And then she remembered. He'd come out here without asking. "It's all right, Zach. I'm not mad at you. But I bet Emma's worried, if she's figured out you're gone."
    She glanced back at Sam, still talking on the phone. This wasn't the time for the discussion they needed to have. They didn't need an audience, and she needed to calm down.
    She turned back to Zach. "I think you'd better come back to the house with me. Sam's busy. Okay?"
    He nodded, waved shyly at Sam, and then slipped his small, cold hand into Rachel's.
    "Forgot your gloves?" she said as they walked back to the house.
    "I guess. Can we play in the snow later?"
    "Maybe. If we have time. My aunt Jo called. She said we