The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel Read Free Page B

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. "Without hope, you have nothing, Rachel, nothing but the life you have right now, and I don't think that's enough for you."
    "No. It isn't." But she'd hoped for so long. She'd prayed, and it didn't seem as if anyone were listening. "I've been patient. I've waited so long."
    "The good Lord doesn't work on your timetable. He has one that's all His own. You shouldn't forget that. Shouldn't try to rush Him, either."
    "I want to believe. It's just so hard," she complained. "I feel like one of those little blow-up punch-toys we had when we were kids, with the clown faces. You hit it, and it bounces right back up. I feel like I've been bouncing back forever, and there's just no more bounce left in me."
    "Then you know what?" Miriam asked. "You get to lay there on the floor, Rachel. Are you ready to just lay there on the floor forever?"
    Rachel smiled a bit. "Tough love, huh?"
    Miriam nodded. "I think I like it. People aren't going to mess with me anymore."

Chapter 2

    Sam would not be happy.