The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

where they belong or I'll find someone else to take them. Right after Christmas. I promise."
    Rachel sat there, stunned. Miriam took advantage of that, too. She put the baby back in Rachel's arms. Baby Grace snuggled, all warm and soft, against her neck. She made a little rumbling sound as she breathed, and she was surprisingly sturdy, the way one-year-olds were. Rachel hadn't even looked at her face, but she knew it would be perfect. Absolutely perfect.
    "Sam will never agree to this," she said, a weak protest at best.
    "Don't ask him. Tell him. Or better yet, I'll tell him."
    Rachel laughed, giving in. Oh, God, she was giving in, because she had a baby in her arms and she couldn't stand to think of these poor children scattered from one end of town to another. "I've never seen this side of you before," she told her aunt. "I never knew you could be so fierce."
    "Tough love." Miriam grinned. "We had a seminar at work last month. I've been nice too long."
    Rachel laughed a bit, looking out her window and thinking. It was almost Christmas. Somehow, she'd missed that, too. When Will left it had been hot—Indian summer—and now it was almost Christmas.
    She used to think Christmas was pure magic, especially in this town, in this neighborhood, in her grandfather's house. She and Sam had lived with him the first two years of their marriage, working on the house when they could, with Rachel taking care of her grandfather until he died and left the house to them. Rachel had always loved it here. She'd always seen this as a special place. At one time, she would have said a magical place.
    Her grandfather, Richard Landon, was an oddball in a little town like Baxter, Ohio, never quite able to keep a job, his family always on the brink of financial ruin. His heart had always been in his art, and Rachel thought it was the height of irony that the town had come to revere him after his death in a way no one had when he was alive.
    He loved Christmas and this town almost as much as his work, and the result became pure Christmas magic. He made snow globes, big, heavy balls of glass on intricate bases of swirled pewter, and inside were exquisite scenes of Christmas in Baxter. His sense of light and warmth and wonder radiated from his work. Somehow he had managed to take the magic of Christmas and capture it in a sphere of glass, where it snowed at will and Christmas music played and even grown-ups, just by watching, felt like kids again.
    Collectors now paid huge sums of money for original pieces, and his designs were mass-produced in the only factory in town. People had jobs here because of him. He'd immortalized the town in his work. All four churches, city hall, the town square, all the major historic buildings, and most of the Victorian houses in the historic district. Even this house where Rachel lived. His house. The first Christmas house in his first famous Christmas scene. Rachel lived here now, in the midst of all that Christmas magic.
    Somehow she'd forgotten all about the magic.
    "You've gotten awfully quiet," Miriam said.
    "I was just thinking... about Christmas. And Granddad."
    She reached out and ran her fingers along the glass in the fancy window by the door. It was diamond-shaped, and filled with hundreds of tiny diamonds of beveled glass. It sat in just the right spot that the light hit it in the afternoon and seemed to dance its way across the hardwood floors in the front room. He'd always loved playing with glass and light, and had tried to teach her.
    "We did this together," Rachel said, "when he was too weak to do much more than tell me how to fit it all together. Sam installed it the week after he died, but I remember him making me take him outside on the porch and making me hold this up to the sunshine so we could both watch what it did to the light. He said it would be our way of letting the magic inside."
    Rachel hadn't watched the play of light across the floor in a long time.
    "I used to think this was a magic place. That anything could happen here. Even miracles," she said solemnly. "Do you still believe in miracles?"
    "Of course," Miriam said.
    "I think I gave up on them."
    "I think you've given up on everything, dear. And you just can't do that. You've got to believe, Rachel."
    "Believe in what?"
    "That things can change. That they can get better. You'll see."
    "I told myself that for so long," Rachel said.
    "Well maybe you'll just have to tell yourself a little longer." Miriam gave her a gentle smile.