The Shadow Wife (21 page)

It wasn’t until she was on the operating table, the IV in her vein, a sedative fog washing over her, that she suddenly remembered walking out of the room of her patient. She tried to sit up. “I need to—”

“Lie down, Joelle,” someone said.

“But the patient I was seeing. Someone needs to see her. I ran—”

“We’ll take care of it,” someone else said.

They wouldn’t know what the problem was. She had to tell them. But she felt herself sinking, floating away.

“Girl baby,” she said slowly. “She had a little girl.”

L
IAM ENTERED THE SOCIAL WORK OFFICE TO FIND
M
AGGIE SITTING
on the edge of her desk, her legs dangling over the side. She was engaged in excited conversation with Paul, who was standing at the watercooler.

“Did you hear?” Paul asked him as soon as he’d set foot in the room.

“Hear what?” He reached toward his overflowing mailbox on the wall.

“Joelle’s in surgery,” Maggie said.

Liam’s hand froze in the air, and his heart made an unexpected leap into his throat.
“Why?”
he asked, lowering his arm to his side.

“Appendix, they think,” Paul said. “But she’s also—get this—
pregnant.
Do you believe it?”

“Pregnant?” he asked, feeling stupid. “She’s not even involved with anyone.”

“I know,” said Maggie, “and it’s pretty amazing after all her hassles with fertility. But maybe she had one of her eggs fertilized in a test tube by a sperm donor or something, and then had
it implanted. You know how much she wanted a baby, and she knows all the right doctors to do something like that.”

He shook his head. “She wanted a baby when she was
married,
” he said. “But not now.” Could Maggie be right? Might Joelle have taken extraordinary measures to have a child? It didn’t sound like the Joelle he knew, but then he hadn’t been close to her the past few months. Still, he hoped against hope that was the answer, because the only other possibility was one he didn’t want to think about. “How far along is she?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Paul said.

“I heard someone in the maternity unit say she was four months,” Maggie said. “I
thought
she was putting on weight.”

Four months?
Liam’s mind raced. Sam was sixteen months old. So, his birthday would have been—

“Excuse me?” The three of them turned to see a small, thin woman leaning on her cane in the doorway. She looked vaguely familiar, and Liam guessed she was the wife of one of the patients he’d worked with in the cardiac unit.

“Can I help you?” Maggie scooted off the desk, smoothing her skirt and attempting to look professional.

“I’m looking for Joelle D’Angelo,” the woman said. “We have a lunch date.”

Carlynn Shire.
He recognized her now as the woman he’d discovered in Mara’s room with Joelle a couple of weeks earlier.

“Dr. Shire.” He held out his hand to her. “We met at my wife’s nursing home. I’m Liam Sommers.”

“Yes, Mr. Sommers.” She smiled and held his hand for a moment before letting go. “And you were not at all pleased to see me there.”

Liam looked at Paul and Maggie, who were staring at him with frank curiosity. Paul probably recognized the Shire name from the Mind and Body Center, but Maggie wouldn’t have a clue.

“Listen,” he said to the healer, taking her elbow. “Why don’t you and I go into the conference room for a minute? I’ll tell
you what’s going on with Joelle.” He led her through the short, narrow hallway leading into the conference room and closed the door behind them.

The woman sat down at the long table and looked up at him with concern. “Is Joelle all right?” she asked.

“She’s in surgery for appendicitis,” he said, taking a seat across the table from her.

“Oh, my goodness.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Has it ruptured? That could be terribly dangerous in her—” She stopped herself from saying more.

“In her condition,” Liam finished the sentence for her. “You know that she’s pregnant?”

“Yes, I know,” she said, and she was eyeing him so intently that he was afraid to ask her his next question.

“Do you know if it…if the baby…”

“It’s yours,” she said bluntly.

He looked away from her, shaking his head. “Man, oh, man,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Well, I think she had a few very good reasons,” she said. “At least, they seemed good to her. One, she knew you’ve been overwhelmed dealing with your wife and son. And two, you haven’t…been inviting her to share much with you lately, have you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He looked across the table at the diminutive, gray-haired woman, trying not to turn away from her penetrating blue eyes.

“You’ve been pushing her away,” Carlynn said.

“I haven’t been pushing her away,” he said, but he knew she was right. He sank lower into the chair. “Maybe I have. I’m angry at both of us for what happened. We can’t let it happen again.”

“It happened. Guilt does no one any good.”

He studied her for a moment. “Is Joelle losing her mind?” he asked. “What on earth can she possibly think you can do for my wife?”

“Mara belongs to Joelle as well as to you, Liam,” Carlynn said. “They were extremely close friends, and Joelle suffered a loss as great as your own. She needs to grieve in her own way. If bringing me in helps her, I don’t understand why you should object.”

“Because I don’t believe there’s anything you can do to help my wife,” he said, biting off the words. “I think…what you’re all about is a…a crock of bull. Sorry. But that’s what I think.”

She looked unoffended by his words. “I’m not a quack, Liam,” she said. “Not a charlatan. The truth is, sometimes I can help, and sometimes I can’t. Often, the help doesn’t come in the form we expect it to.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, that sometimes getting well,
physically
well, is not the true goal of healing.”

“Then what the hell is the point of it?”

Carlynn Shire stood up and rested her hands on the table, leaning toward him. “Do you love Joelle, Liam?”

He felt his jaw tighten at the intrusiveness of the question. “That really isn’t any of your business.”

She didn’t respond, but didn’t let him loose of her gaze, either.

“It doesn’t matter if I do,” he said.

“Do me a favor, Liam,” she said, sitting down again. “Describe Joelle to me.”

“You already seem to know her very well,” he said.

“I want to hear
your
description of her, though,” she pressed him. “I want to see her through your eyes.”

He sighed. Why was he giving this woman so much control over him?

“She’s very capable,” he said. “Compassionate. Caring. Ethical.”

“Moral?”

“Yes, absolutely. And so am I,” he insisted. “We didn’t plan
this to happen, Mrs…. Dr…. Shire. We didn’t mean it to happen.” God, that sounded trite.

“I know,” she said. “Go on.”

He sighed again, giving in. “She’s nurturing.” He could see Joelle, back in the days when their friendship had been close and warm, sitting across the cafeteria table from him. She’d looked girlish, with that long thick dark hair and heavy bangs above her brown eyes. “Very cute,” he said. “And open.
Extremely
open, especially with me.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to understand how she could have kept this from me. She tells me everything.”

“
Used
to tell you everything,” Carlynn Shire corrected him. “She didn’t ever want you to know about the baby. She planned to leave before you found out.”

“Leave?” He frowned. “You mean, leave Silas Memorial?”

“No, leave Monterey,” she said. “Leave her life here. Have the baby someplace else so you would never have to be burdened by it.”

He frowned. “I can’t believe she would leave without telling me about…”

“I believe,” she said gently, “that you’ve treated her like an evil person. Like someone you need to avoid.”

He started to object, but she was right, wasn’t she? If he avoided Joelle, he could avoid temptation and never have to face his own weakness.

“Do you have any idea how much she loves you?” Carlynn asked him.

He stared at her, uncomfortable with her questions and with how much she seemed to know about his relationship with Joelle.

“She loves you so much that she came to me, hoping that, somehow, she could give you your wife back. Despite how desperately she wants you for herself. Despite the fact that she’s pregnant with your child.”

His throat tightened, and he stood up quickly to rid himself of
the emotion. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the wall.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “
Yes,
I love her. But I’m married to a woman I also love, who will never be able to love me back, but who still needs me. Who still lights up when I come into her room. Who, if she were still…whole…would trust me to be faithful to her, to take care of her forever. Do you blame me for pushing Joelle away? For trying to avoid the one person who can turn me into someone I’d have no respect for?”

“You’re alive, dear.” There was sympathy in Carlynn’s eyes as she rose to her feet. “You’re alive, and Joelle is alive.”

“And so is Mara. So is my son!”

“What pain you carry.” Carlynn Shire shook her head sadly as she moved past him to open the conference-room door. “Think about something, Liam,” she said before stepping into the hallway. “Think about how much harder it is to carry that pain alone than it was when you shared it with Joelle.”

J
OELLE OPENED HER EYES, THEN SHUT THEM AGAIN.
H
ER EYELIDS
were too heavy, the lights too glaring. The surgery was over and she was in the recovery room; she remembered that much. Rebecca had told her that a few minutes ago. Or maybe a few hours. She wasn’t sure. Her baby was all right, Rebecca had said, also telling her that she had an incision in her right side, but Joelle was unaware of any pain. Just a dragging tiredness and some nausea that made her want to lie very, very still.

Rebecca had said something about monitoring the baby’s heart rate with a Doppler, making sure she didn’t have contractions brought on by the surgery. She remembered the doctor standing next to the bed, delivering all this information to her. But something was different now, and it took her a minute to realize that the curtains were pulled around her bed, and that she wasn’t alone. Slowly, she turned her head to the left to see Liam sitting next to her, his face solemn.

“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice quiet. His arms were folded on top of the bed rail, his head resting on his hands.

She swallowed. “Okay.” It hurt to open her eyes wide enough
to look at him, but she could see him press his lips together. He looked away from her, then back again.

“When exactly did you plan on telling me?” he asked.

“Never,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, her throat dry.

“Jo.”
He reached over to smooth her hair back from her face, and she closed her eyes to savor the touch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This must have been a terrible few months for you.”

She turned her head away from him as her tears started.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been cold,” he said, the backs of his fingers brushing a tear from her cheek. “If you’ve felt as though I was pushing you away.”

“No one knows, do they?” She turned toward him, wondering if, while she had been in surgery, the truth might have somehow come out.

“Just you, me and Carlynn Shire.”

How did he know she’d confided in Carlynn? She looked at him quizzically.

“She came up to the office looking for you.”

“Oh, our lunch date.”

“I told her you were in surgery, and we had a talk.”

“A good one?” she asked.

“Depends on your definition of good,” he said dryly. “She told me you were planning to move away.”

She nodded, and he looked incredulous.

“How could you even think of doing that, Joelle?” he asked. “You love it here. This is your home.”

“I wanted to avoid what I knew would happen if I stayed,” she said. “What is happening right now—you having one more gigantic problem to deal with.”

“I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“I know you can,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to have to. Not when I had the power to do something about it.”

“Did you consider abortion?” he asked, then quickly shook his head and placed the tips of his fingers on her lips before she could
respond. “I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t, and I understand that, Jo. I do. I’m sorry.”

He was so contrite that she felt sympathy for him.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Listen, I don’t want you to move away on my account, all right? Please. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll help you however I can, short of…”

“Short of admitting that it’s yours?” she asked.

“Let me think about it, please. I can’t make a decision about that right now.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I didn’t plan on letting anyone know, either. I’m just as much in the wrong as you are, you know, and I don’t want people watching us, judging us.”

“I’m afraid you’re already being judged,” he said.

“But people know I wanted a baby,” she reasoned, “and that I might have gone to extraordinary lengths to have one.”

He nodded. “We’ll talk more about it later, when you’re not groggy from anesthetic. And I’m not still in shock. Okay?” He took her hand. “When you’re up to it, and if you still want to,” he said, “you’re welcome to bring Carlynn Shire back to see Mara. Not that I believe for a minute she can heal her, but it’s not fair for me to stop you. Mara was your best friend, too.”

“Thank you. And will you be there?”

“If you insist.” He smiled at her, but there was a deep sadness in his eyes. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it. “I care about you, Jo,” he said. “You know that. But I’m married, and as long as Mara is alive, I’m her husband. I love her.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“I’ll be there for you in whatever way I can. But…we can’t get that close again.”

“I know.” She nodded.

“I’ll help you support the baby financially, of course.”

“You’re having a hard enough time with money as it is,” she said. “I don’t expect Sheila to pay child support for my baby.”

He said nothing, and she knew she had bruised his ego. She
said the word, “Sorry,” but it came out as a whisper, and she wasn’t certain if he’d heard her or not.

“Do your parents know?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. They don’t know I’ve had surgery, either.”

“Would you like me to call them for you?”

“Would you, please? But don’t tell them about the pregnancy, okay? I’d rather do that myself. Tell them I’m fine, not to come down, not to worry, not to—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

He bent over to kiss her on the forehead, and the gesture reminded her of all the times she’d seen him bend over to kiss Mara in her bed at the nursing home. Mara, though, he would have kissed on the lips.

Liam called her parents from his office. He knew John and Ellen, having spent time with them over the years, when they came down to visit Joelle. They had even come to his wedding, the only guests who took to heart his and Mara’s request for no gifts.

It was John who answered the phone, and Liam told him about the appendectomy, feeling as though he was lying because of what he was omitting from the story.

“We’re on our way,” Joelle’s father said after Liam had delivered the news.

“No, don’t come,” Liam said. “She asked me specifically to tell you not to come. Right now she’s well taken care of. Everyone here knows her and will keep an eye on her.” He recalled one of the nurses telling him that Joelle might be out of work for six weeks. “I’m not sure what her recovery will be like, though,” he said to John. “She’ll probably need some help when she gets home. That might be a better time to come down.”

“Will you keep us posted?” John asked.

“Yes, and she should have a phone in her room later,” Liam said. “I’ll call you when I get the number.”

That seemed to satisfy her father. Liam hung up the phone and sat staring at his blank computer screen.

Why hadn’t they used a condom? Two social workers, two intelligent people in their thirties. Two idiots. Yet, she had been so famously infertile, and they both knew the other was disease-free. A condom, had they stopped to think about using one, would have seemed superfluous. But if they
had
stopped to think, it wouldn’t have happened at all. And he knew they had both carefully, intentionally, not stopped to think.

He’d needed Joelle so badly that night. He’d needed to know he was still a man, just like that sixty-year-old man he’d seen who had the wife with Alzheimer’s.

He would visit Mara that afternoon. She would make her puppy-dog squeals when he walked into the room, and he knew exactly what she would be saying with those sounds.
I remember you,
she would say.
You’re the one who loves me. You’re the one I can trust, no matter what. You’re my husband, in sickness and in health.