Twelve Days (32 page)

"A rose window." She said it almost reverently. "They used to put them in churches. In the grand cathedrals in the Middle Ages. They'd be down front, behind the altar."

Beautiful circles of stained glass.

"I've always wanted one," Rachel said. Turning around, she pointed to the landing where the stairs made a right-hand turn. "For there, right above the stairs. There used to be a rose window there. The oldest photos we have of this house show it, but it must have gotten broken a long time ago and someone just took it out, rather than try to get it repaired."

"Can you fix this one?" Sam asked.

"I don't know if I can match the glass exactly. I don't even know if anyone makes it anymore. But it'll be fun trying to find out, trying to see how close we can come to restoring it to its original shape."

And Rachel would do that. She liked putting things together, fixing them. She was good at it. Look what she'd done with Sam so long ago.

"I can fix it," she said, then looked up at him. "It's the one we saw in that old house in the next county, isn't it? The one that was sold before we got there?"

"Yes."

"How did you find it?"

"The dealer who bought it had an estate sale three days ago. I took a chance he might sell it there."

"It matches the colors on the house," Emma said. "It has the same blues and lavenders in your stained glass and the same gray that's on the outside of the house."

"Yes, that's another reason I wanted it," she said. Then she stood up and wrapped her arms around Sam and gave him a kiss, a not-too-fast one on his mouth. "Thank you. I love it."

"You're welcome," he said.

"I love you, too."

The kids giggled, probably because of the kiss. Emma looked shyly fascinated, and Zach was making faces. Grace clapped and beamed up at him. Rachel wiped a tear away and said, "We have so much to do."

"More?" Zach asked.

"Lots more," she said. "I have to have a shower, and we all have to get dressed, and before long, lots and lots more people are coming."

"Who?" Zach asked.

"My family. My entire family. My father... Remember him?" Zach nodded. "And my sisters."

"You have sisters?" he asked.

"Yes. You know that. You met them. Or you met two of them. But I have three and a brother. And Aunt Miriam and Aunt Jo—the one with the sleigh."

"Will she bring it? Can we go for a ride?"

"No, she won't bring it today. She'll come in her car. With her husband and her kids and grandchildren."

"Oh." Zach was disappointed now.

"But she'll probably bring more presents," Sam said. "Everybody will bring more presents." The house would be overflowing. Christmas with Rachel's family was like nothing he'd ever imagined before he married her.

"And little boys," Rachel told Zach. "My sisters and my brother together with Miriam's and Jo's children have eighteen kids, ten of whom are boys."

"Wow!" Zach said. "I like boys."

"I know. We'll have so much fun. But for now, we have to get ready because everyone will be here soon."

They managed to talk the kids upstairs. Not easily, but they did it, and rushed through the morning routine. Sam made it downstairs with Zach first, and soon Emma was back with Grace and finally Rachel.

Sam watched her come down and the smile on her face took his breath away this morning. She'd lost that pinched look to her face, those little lines of tension in her brow, all that sadness she'd worn for so long. It was gone, and she was beautiful this morning.

Her hair was shining and her eyes. There was a hint of color in her cheeks, and that smile. There'd been a time when he couldn't take his eyes off her, that she'd absolutely dazzled him and he'd been so proud, so happy to know that she was his. He'd forgotten all about that.

She came to his side, and he eased his arm around her waist and kissed her softly. "You look beautiful this morning."

She caught her breath and said, "You're going to make me cry."

"No," he said. "Not anymore."

"I can cry if I'm happy, can't I?"

"No, Rachel. Not even happy tears. I want to see you smiling like this again."

She sniffled and worked hard to put a smile across her face, and he just wanted to grab her and hold on to her, hold on to this day, this newfound happiness.

The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and the house started filling up. Rachel's father arrived with Gail and her husband, Alex, and their four kids. Gail kissed him, and Alex slapped him on the back. Their two oldest sons walked in with a football and big grins.

"I brought the ball," Alex Jr. said. He was as tall as Sam now and might even outweigh him.

"You're nuts," Sam said.

"Hey, it's tradition. Snowball."

Sam frowned. They'd nearly ended up with frostbite some years playing tackle football in the snow, a viciously brutal game played not so much for touchdowns as the opportunity to shove someone down in the snow and pile on top of them. He'd had snowballs shoved down his shirt, down his pants, had eaten mouthfuls of snow, in last year's game.

Alex Sr. gave his son a playful shove and said, "It was more fun when they weren't so big. When we could push them around."

"I know." Alex Jr. grinned and shoved right back. "It's revenge time."

Sam was saved from agreeing to anything when Rachel's sister Ellen and her husband, Bill, and their four came in. Davy, Rachel's brother, a miniature version of her father, and his wife, Jane, a petite, perky blonde, and their three arrived next.

Davy held up his watch to show Sam the time. "Three hours and counting. I'm counting on you to move this along. Get this meal served so we can sneak upstairs by kickoff time."

"Hey, I don't have anything to do with this meal. Talk to your sisters and your aunts."

"It's your house, Sam. Be a man. Put your foot down."

Jane got her coat off and slipped in beside him, hearing the tail end of the conversation. "You mean, like you do at home, honey?"

Davy frowned. Sam laughed.

"He can live without football for a day," Jane said, dragging him into the midst of the crowd.

The next time the doorbell rang, it was Miriam, her daughters and grandchildren. Rachel's Aunt Jo and her husband came next, followed by their children and grandchildren. Rachel's sister Ann and her husband, Greg, came last.

Everyone came with a stack of presents, which they piled under the tree.

Zach gaped at them and tugged on Sam's pants leg. "Are all those for us?"

"For everybody here," Sam said.

"Wow! Can we open 'em now?"

"In a minute," Rachel said. "We have to do something first."

"What?"

"The ornaments," she said.

He pointed to the tree. "It's got orn'ments."

"Special ones," Sam said.

"Those look special."

"Extra special," Sam said, nodding toward Gail and Ellen, who'd come into the room with three boxes. "You'll see."

Miriam and Jo took their places beside the tree, because this was Rachel's mother's family tradition, and damned if it didn't get to him every time they did it. Gail and Ellen put the boxes down beside the two women, who looked very much alike at the moment and reminded him of Rachel's mother. Frank tapped a spoon against a glass to get everyone's attention and welcomed them all, telling them he was happy they were all here to see another Christmas together, and then he turned things over to Miriam and Jo. They opened the first box and from among the tissue paper pulled out one delicate glass ornament each.

"It looks like a snowflake," Zach said. "Or a star."

And they did. They were some of the first projects Rachel's grandfather made when he started working with glass, long before he hit on his success with snow globes.

One year, he had some diamond-shaped pieces of beveled glass, and he put them together into three-dimensional ornaments. He trimmed them in a gold tone and engraved each one with his three daughters' names and the date of their birth.

They loved them, and the next year, all the relatives had their own ornaments that went up on the tree Christmas Day as they all gathered together, and one of their most sacred traditions was born. It was a way of remembering everyone they'd loved and lost, of remembering all the blessings they had and the strength that comes from family.

This was the house where the tradition first began.

Sam and Rachel were the caretakers now of both the house and the ornaments. Jo still made them, just like her father had taught her. One day when she was gone, Rachel would make them.

Miriam and Jo put their ornaments on the tree, then ones for their own mother and father. Frank put up his and his wife's next, and they went on like that, one by one.

Finally, it was Rachel's turn. She took Sam by the hand and pulled him to the tree with her. Jo handed him his ornament. It read
Sam
and the year he and Rachel were married.

He remembered that year so well, how bewildered he'd been to find himself in the middle of a Christmas celebration like this. It had awed him, thinking Rachel had come from this, something this strong and this enduring. All of this love.

She put her ornament on the tree, and he hung his next to hers.
Sam and Rachel.
And when he would have stepped back so the others could hang theirs, she held him there and took another ornament from Jo.

It said
Hope.

"You do it," she said, giving it carefully to him.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

They'd never hung this ornament before. He knew it existed at one time. Her grandfather had it ready for them the first Christmas after they lost her, and it had caused a horrible scene. Rachel had refused to put it on the tree, had run out of the room in tears. Sam had never seen the ornament again, but Rachel's grandfather must have saved it. Maybe he'd been trying to tell them even then that they had to deal with the loss, they had to remember her. Maybe he knew what it would cost them if they didn't.

Sam reached out and found a branch, a sturdy one, right below where his and Rachel's ornaments were hanging, and with a hand that positively shook, placed their baby's glittering star carefully on the tree.

He and Rachel stood there together, looking at the three ornaments rotating slowly and glittering in the light. Sam took a breath, a slow, deep one, and Rachel slipped an arm around his waist.

"No more tears," she said. "You made me promise. She'll always be a part of us, but no more tears."

Sam nodded. It was all he could do.

They went to step back once more and Jo said, "Wait. We have new people in the family. We can't forget them."

And then she held the box out to them, three ornaments left.

"Oh, Jo," Rachel said, taking the box, turning the ornaments over one by one so she could read the names.
Emma, Zach, Grace.

"I believe," Jo whispered.

"What's that?" Emma said tentatively, crowding in beside them and looking over the sides of the box to what was inside.

Rachel held it out to her.

"For me?" Her voice was filled with awe. Sam knew just how she felt. He remembered being awed himself the first time he'd taken part in this.

"Yes," Rachel said, and it looked as if all they'd said about tears was going down the drain right now.

"And me?" Zach asked, bouncing over to them.

"Careful," he and Rachel said together as Zach reached for his.

"Wow!" He held it up and let it spin on its string, and then he laughed. "It says Zach! Right there!" And it did, etched into one of the pieces and painted in gold.

"Let's get it on the tree, while it's still in one piece," Jo said, stepping in when he and Rachel seemed hardly able to move. She guided Zach and Emma to safe places on the tree, to sturdy branches, and then said, "One more."

Rachel's sister Gail had Grace, who came quite happily into Sam's arms. She was grinning at him and pressing her tiny hands against his cheeks, was about to start sucking on his nose when he sidetracked her and kissed her instead. She gave him a dazzling smile, and then her gaze caught on the ornament Rachel held up in front of her.

"See," Rachel said, "it says
Grace."

Grace reached for it, batted it just enough to send it spinning, too, and then she started babbling a mile a minute.

Rachel kissed her, too, and said, "I know. It's so special, isn't it? And it's just for you."

"I think she likes it," Emma said.

"Uh-huh," Zach said.

Rachel handed the ornament to Emma and said, "Why don't you put it on the tree."

She reached for one of the lower branches, near the right side, but Jo guided her to another spot, so that all of theirs ended up together. Sam, Rachel, Emma, Zach, Grace, and Hope.

There was absolute silence in the room when Emma was done. Sam didn't remember the house ever being quiet at Christmas.

Emma came to stand on Rachel's side, Sam on the other holding the baby, Zach in front of them, and for a moment all five of them just stood there, staring at the tree and all their names, sparkling and shining and so full of promise.

"There," Jo said finally. "It's done. Merry Christmas, everybody."

Chapter 17