The Shadow Wife (28 page)

“What’s that?” Delora lifted an empty fork to her mouth,
having missed the salad altogether this time, and Carlynn’s heart broke a little for this poor woman who was aging before her time.

“Here, Mom.” Alan moved the salad plate closer to his mother-in-law and guided her hand toward it. “Your salad’s right here.”

“Thank you, dear,” Delora said. “Now, what is this plan the two of you have up your sleeves?”

“Well,” Carlynn began, “you know how it’s always troubled me that people doubt my ability to heal, and that even I don’t know exactly how I do it?”

“It hasn’t troubled me,” Delora said, smiling with pride. “You are very special, and some people are too foolish to see that.”

“Thank you,” Carlynn said. “Well, we’ve come up with an idea that’s very exciting, I think. We’d like to start a research center. An institute of sorts, to look into the phenomenon of healing. I’d still be able to see patients, but we’d focus more on research.”

“We’d like to see if we can validate some of Carlynn’s healing methods,” Alan said, “and then train other physicians in the skills she has.”

“She has a gift not a skill,” Delora corrected him, but she wore a thoughtful look. “This is an interesting idea, though. Tell me more.”

Alan described the potential research in more detail, and Carlynn was amazed to see exactly how much thinking he had already done on the subject. He was hungry to do this, she thought. He’d always had a fascination with alternative methods of healing. A research center would be his as much as it would be hers, and she thought she was very lucky to have a husband with whom she could share her dream.

“You need money to get this off the ground, don’t you?” Delora was smiling again.

“Yes, Mom,” Carlynn said. “We were wondering if there was a chance you’d like to put up the seed money for it.”

“We can work out a way that you could become an investor so that you could get something back for your money,” Alan said.

“We’re not sure how much we’re talking about,” Carlynn added. “The idea’s in its infancy. But we thought we’d run it by you to see if you were interested.”

“
Very
interested,” Delora said. She was looking out to sea, although Carlynn imagined the world in front of her eyes was little more than a blur. “And will you research things such as why you can’t heal my vision? I mean—” she tried to find Carlynn’s hand on the table, and Carlynn quickly placed it under her mother’s fingers “—that came out wrong, dear. I mean, will you look into why you are successful with some conditions and not with others?”

“Yes,” she said. “We’d look at all of that. Doesn’t it sound exciting?”

“It does,” Delora agreed. “Would you have other doctors working there?”

“Not right away,” Alan said. He glanced at Carlynn with trepidation, but his voice was casual as he finished his thought. “We would probably start with just the four of us. Carlynn and myself doing the clinical work and research design, and Lisbeth, who would run the center, and her husband, Gabriel, who has loads of experience applying for grants.”

Biting her lip, Carlynn looked anxiously at her husband while they waited for her mother’s response.

Delora’s smile disappeared, and it was a moment before she spoke again.

“Yes, I will give you whatever money you need to get this center started,” she said finally. “But there is a condition that comes with my money.”

“What is it, Mother?” Carlynn asked.

“That your sister and her husband have nothing whatsoever to do with it,” Delora said.

Carlynn glanced at Alan.

“Mother,” Alan said gently, “Lisbeth and Gabriel both have excellent skills we can use. They’d be perfect for the job, and they’re excited about it.”

“The whole idea was really Gabriel’s,” Carlynn added.

“Well, bully for him,” Delora said. “Let’s write him a thank-you note.” She started to push her chair back from the table, but Carlynn grabbed her hand.

“Mother,” Carlynn said, “you’re cutting yourself off from two really fine people. Lisbeth is your daughter. She still loves you. She always encourages me to come here and look in on you. And she adores Cypress Point. You’ve hurt her so badly by—”

“I will help you get this research center started,” Delora interrupted her. “But only if you honor my conditions, Carlynn.”

Carlynn shook her head. “I don’t think we can do that,” she said, aware of how strange it felt to stand up to her mother.

“Then you know my answer,” Delora said.

There was no more discussion of the research center for the rest of the afternoon, and Carlynn and Alan spent the time helping Delora sort through the books in the mansion’s library. They had gotten out of order, she said, and she needed them shelved alphabetically so they would be easier to find. Although Carlynn could not understand how her mother could read the books whether they were alphabetical or not, she and Alan did as they were told. Her mother was full of household projects she wanted done these days, and at least it gave Carlynn the feeling that she was helping.

Once she and Alan were back in the car and on the Seventeen Mile Drive, Carlynn turned to her husband.

“We’re hiring Gabriel and Lisbeth,” she said.

Alan glanced at her. “You know that’s what I want, Carly,” he said, “but I think your mother’s serious. She won’t give us the money if we hire them. You heard her.”

“Then we’ll get the money elsewhere,” Carlynn said. “I’m
through letting her run my life. I want my sister and brother-in-law working with us.”

“So do I,” Alan agreed. “Gabe will probably have some ideas on how to get funding.”

Carlynn smiled at him. “You know what I feel like?” she asked him.

“What’s that?”

“I feel like I’m giving birth to something,” she said happily. “I feel like I’m finally getting my baby.”

Alan eased his foot onto the brake pedal, pulling the car over to the side of the narrow road.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He stopped the car and turned the key in the ignition, then pulled her into his arms. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that, Carlynn,” he said, and he held her close to him until a driver pulled up behind them began to press his horn.

It took two full years of planning, but the Carlynn Shire Medical Center opened its doors during the summer of 1966, when flower children wandered the streets of San Francisco, Vietnam became the subject of protests, and Gabriel started referring to himself and other Negroes as “black.”

Carlynn and Alan rented the entire first floor of their Sutter Street medical building and transformed the new space into a bevy of treatment rooms, meeting rooms and offices, using the seed money from a small grant Gabriel had managed to secure.

Lisbeth handled all the office-management duties and secretarial work. As they grew, her hope was to hire someone to help her with the more mundane tasks of operating the center, but for now she was delighted to be the person in charge of getting the place up and running.

Money was an ongoing problem, though. Gabriel wrote grant proposals in his limited free time; they had no funds to bring him on board as a paid employee yet, and he continued to work in the business office at SF General. A bigger problem, though,
was dealing with the multitude of patients arriving from all over the country who wanted to be treated at the center or to volunteer to participate in research. It was Alan who screened the patients, deciding which of them should be allowed to see Carlynn, because her medical practice was to be only part of her work. Yet, despite Alan’s careful screening and Lisbeth’s explanation to callers that they must speak to Alan Shire first, there were often people waiting on the building’s doorstep when they arrived in the morning. Carlynn was not good at turning them away, and Alan finally suggested she come in the rear door of the building and leave the appointment seekers to him.

It was important that Carlynn see only a few patients each week. The rest of her time was needed for the interviews Lisbeth set up for her with newspapers and magazines, and for speaking engagements with organizations that might be interested in funding her research. Alan spent most of his days with his nose buried in books and journals as he toyed with various study designs.

Ever since the four of them had made the firm decision to create the center, Carlynn’s dark mood had lifted. Her life had a meaning and purpose she’d been missing before. She might not ever be able to have children, but she was creating something that gave her equal satisfaction. She was touching lives, the way she’d always wanted to, and she hoped the work of the center would give her the chance to touch many, many more.

S
AM WAS IN BED, AND
L
IAM WAS SITTING ON THE SOFA IN THE
living room playing his guitar. He’d sorted through all the old music he’d stored in the spare room after Mara became ill. He’d bought new strings, a couple of new pieces of music, and now he couldn’t stop playing. He thought about the guitar all day at work, jotting down lyrics and chords for new songs. At night, music had taken the place of the internet, where he used to search for the miracle for Mara, and he felt a little guilty about that. But he consoled himself that he had the great Carlynn Shire herself working with his wife. What more could anyone want?

He’d brought the guitar to two of those meetings with the healer at the nursing home now, and the last time, Carlynn had Mara sit up in her wheelchair. Carlynn was still touching her, holding her hand in both of hers, but the four of them were in a circle of sorts, and if it had felt strange to be singing while Mara lay in her bed, this was even stranger. Mara had stared at his fingers. What was she thinking? Did she remember playing the guitar herself? Did she feel a longing for the music? For him?
If you could speak, Mara, what would you say?

If anyone were to observe him and Joelle on those occasions,
they would probably think of them as comfortable old friends who could chat easily and regularly with one another, but that was not the case. The safety he felt in that room evaporated the moment he was alone with Joelle or talking to her on the phone. Then he was back to the superficial, businesslike conversations he’d gotten accustomed to having with her over the past few months.
How are you? Fine. How was your day? Good.
Her belly was growing and he rarely said a word about it. Did she think he had no feelings about the situation? Did she think he didn’t care that he would soon have a daughter and didn’t know what the hell he should do about it?

At twenty-five weeks pregnant, Joelle was like a walking billboard for his infidelity. And no one knew. No one even guessed. No one would ever think such a thing of Liam Sommers and Joelle D’Angelo.

He was pulling a piece of old music from one of the boxes on the sofa when he noticed the flash of headlights shoot across the walls of the living room. A car was pulling into his driveway. Standing up, he walked over to the window and peered outside. Sheila’s car was parked near the carport, and he could see the interior lights come on as she opened her door. What was she doing here at ten-thirty at night?

He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. “Sheila?” he called as she got out of her car. “Is everything all right?”

She walked from her car to his front porch without answering him. At the bottom of the porch steps, though, she looked up at him. “I need to talk to you,” she said. Her blond hair glittered in the light from the porch, and her eyes were cold. He shivered.

“Come in.” He stepped back into the house and held the door open for her, a little unnerved. “Has something happened with Mara?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know.” Sheila didn’t so much walk as plow into the room. She was boiling mad, and he felt his heart rate speed up.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What’s going on?” He moved a pile of music from the sofa. “Sit down.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to sit down.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “I just came from a psychic,” she said.

Liam laughed. “You
what?
” Between Joelle and her healer and Sheila and her psychic, he was feeling pretty darn conventional.

“I’ve been to her before. She’s very good. She can always tell me things that have happened in my life that there’s no way anyone would know.”

“Okay,” Liam said slowly. “And what did she tell you this time.”

“That you’re the father of Joelle’s baby.”

Shit.
Liam laughed uncomfortably. “I thought the psychic knew things about
you,
” he said. “How can she know anything about Joelle, when she hasn’t even—”

“Shut up, Liam!”

“Look, you’re upset over nothing, Sheila,” he said, moving toward the sofa again. “Please sit down and let’s talk—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you are not the father of Joelle’s baby,” Sheila demanded.

He tried. He truly did. But he couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a second, nor could he make the words come out of his mouth. “You
bastard!
” Sheila began hitting him with her huge, heavy white leather purse. He held up his hands, trying to protect his face from her assault.

“Bastard! Bastard!” Sheila smashed the purse into his side. “Son of a bitch! Prick!”

“Sheila!” He grabbed her wrist and managed to wrench the purse from her hand, but she still pummeled him with her fist. “Sheila, stop it!” he yelled. “Stop.
Stop.
You’re going to wake Sam.”

That seemed to do it. She lowered her arms to her sides. Mas
cara ran down her cheeks, and her blond hair fell in thin strands around her red face.

“How could you do that to my little girl?” she asked, her voice suddenly small and broken, and he surprised himself by taking her in his arms.

“Because,” he said quietly into her hair. “Because I’m human, and I’m…much to my regret, flawed.”

Sheila sniffled. “I’m human and I’m flawed, too,” she said, “but I didn’t sleep with anyone else while Michael was sick.”

“I know,” Liam said. “You were incredibly strong. But…and forgive me for this, Sheila. You weren’t thirty-four years old, and you weren’t grieving every day, every minute, with a member of the opposite sex who also happened to love your spouse as much as you did.”

Sheila pulled away from him and sat down on the couch. “How long has it been going on?” she asked, wiping a hand over her wet cheek.

“There isn’t anything going on,” he said, moving his guitar from the sofa so he could sit next to her. “It happened one time. Then we cooled our relationship. Even you noticed it—that we were not as close.”

She nodded. “I noticed when you were getting too close, too,” she said.

“Sheila.” Liam shook his head. “I love Mara. I feel terrible about this. I feel as though I betrayed her.”

“You
did,
” she said. “Does everyone know?”

“No one knows. Just you, Joelle and myself.” And Carlynn Shire.

“What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Joelle and I haven’t really talked about it. I feel a responsibility to provide for the baby in some way. She and I will need to work that out.”

Sheila made her hands into fists, balling them up on her knees. “Every time I think about you and her—”

“Don’t think about it then, Sheila,” he said quickly. “I don’t.”

Sheila rested her head back on the sofa, shutting her eyes. It was another minute before she spoke. “Mara’s starting to use her arm more,” she said.

“I know.”

“Someday, maybe she’ll be able to hold Sam.”

He nodded, unwilling to tackle her denial tonight.

Sheila got to her feet and picked up her purse from the floor. Liam stood, as well, walking her to the door.

“Goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow when you bring Sam over.”

“All right.” He opened the door for her and watched her walk out onto the porch and down the steps. “Sheila?” he called to her as she crossed the yard, walking toward the carport. “Did a psychic really tell you this?”

“Yes,” she said, “but to be honest, I already knew.”

He walked back into the living room and sat down again on the sofa, but he didn’t bother to pick up his guitar. Resting his head against the back of the couch, he stared up at the ceiling, then closed his eyes.

He’d told Sheila the truth, but he’d also told her a lie. He’d told her he didn’t think about that night when he and Joelle made love. Lately, he thought about it all the time. He thought about how much he wanted to be with her at night. It didn’t have anything to do with sex. Not really. He just wanted to hold her in bed and to feel his child through the skin of her belly. The longing burned inside him and, at times, he wished she
had
moved away and kept her secret from him forever. It would have made it so much easier.