The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

years.
    "Whose baby things? Yours?"
    "A few of them," Rachel said. Her mother had saved some of the things Rachel had as a baby for Rachel's own children.
    She came up with an old white box, fished out of the depths of the chest, and laid it on the bed. Opening it, she pulled back layers of tissue paper and found a very old, slightly yellowed, once-white gown and held it up to Grace. It was musty, and Grace wrinkled up her little nose and sneezed once, then again, then laughed. Her smile could just about light up the world.
    "She's so beautiful," Rachel said. "Let's try this on her. It's going to be long and maybe too tight through the chest. It's made for younger babies. But it just might work."
    "What is it?" Emma said.
    "A christening gown. One that's been in my family for a long time."
    They put Grace on the bed, and she immediately reached for the box, wanting to chew on it. Emma took it away, and then Grace got her hands on the tissue paper, obviously fascinated with the noise it made when she grabbed it. They took that away, too, and then Grace grabbed for the gown.
    "Maybe we should wait until we get there to put it on her," Emma suggested.
    "I think you're right," Rachel agreed, holding the gown up to her and deciding it would do, just for the picture.
    Grace rolled over and got up on her hands and knees, grinning like a wild thing set free, and lunged for the tissue paper again. Emma laughed and took it away from her again, then set her on the carpeted floor and gave her a rattle from inside the chest, which held her interest at the moment.
    "It's okay?" Emma said.
    Rachel nodded, still holding the gown, still feeling as if she might choke at any moment.
    "Why do you have all the baby things in the chest?" Emma asked.
    "Sam and I had a baby once. A little girl."
    "Oh. What happened to her?"
    "We were in an accident before she was born, and she died."
    "Oh." Emma didn't say anything for the longest time, and then she slipped her hand inside of Rachel's and gave it a squeeze. "That's why you and Sam are so sad?"
    "Part of it," Rachel said. "Probably the biggest part."
    "I'm sorry." She slipped an arm around Rachel's back and leaned against her. "I didn't know little babies died."
    "Not very often, thank God. But sometimes."
    "Do you want to tell me about her?"
    "I think I do," Rachel realized. "Her name was Hope. It was a family name, after one of my favorite great aunts. We'd already decided on the name, even though she wasn't due for another eight weeks. It was March, and we'd had sleet and snow. The roads were a mess, but I had a doctor's appointment. Sam and I were on our way there when we had a car accident."
    Rachel remembered the slow, sickening slide. The light changed, and they hadn't been going that fast. There was a firm layer of snow on the roads. Snow wasn't that hard to drive on. As long as they took it slow, they were fine. But the ice... Ice was a different story, and apparently they'd had ice overnight, a layer of it under the snow. In spots the snow had melted away, leaving just the ice. Ice was nearly impossible to manage.
    "We hit a patch of ice," Rachel said. "Just one of those things. There it was all of a sudden, right in front of a traffic light that had just turned to caution, then as we slid into the intersection, to red. Someone coming from the other direction had probably done the same thing—hit ice—and we slid into each other. We weren't going that fast, but the car we were in was tiny, and the other one was huge."
    She omitted a lot after that. Being trapped in the car. Bleeding. Knowing she was losing the baby. Sam's ashen face in front of hers, him trying to calm her, trying frantically to get her out, making all sorts of rash promises if only she and the baby would live.
    It had taken a long time for the emergency crews to cut her out of the car, and she hadn't known then but it was already too late for the baby. The force of the crash had torn the placenta loose, cutting off the baby's oxygen supply. When they finally got her to the hospital and got the baby out, the damage had been done. After that, they'd simply waited, waited for the baby to die, and wondered if Rachel might die, too. Her mother had told her all of it later, as her mother sat by Rachel's bedside and wept.
    The baby had been without oxygen for too long, and there was nothing to do but let her go. They could have kept her on the machines, but there was no point. Her brain... There was no point.
    Rachel