The Shadow Wife
Liam breathed in the scent of Sam’s hair again. He should get up and carry him into the nursery, but he felt weighted down on the bed, and he remembered the case in the E.R. What would he have said to that devastated man if Joelle had not rescued him? At least your wife died. That’s what he would have liked to say, and the thought made him feel instantly guilty. It was true, though. At least that man would have a fresh start. He had the hope of happiness. Liam would have explained to him that the baby would become his world. His reminder of his wife, his source of laughter and hope. But he knew those words would not have been helpful. Mara used to say she thought therapists who had “been there,” who had experienced the issues their clients were struggling with, were rarely as helpful as those who had not. They’d argued about that. An intellectual argument, the sort that was frequent between two bright and opinionated people. Now, though, he understood what Mara had meant. When he visited her earlier that evening, he even told her she’d been right, but her vacuous smile let him know she didn’t understand his words, much less the meaning behind them. He told her he would have been of absolutely no help to that man. He might even have done some harm, if not to the widower, then to himself, by trying to handle that family’s crisis. Thank you, Jo.
Joelle had been so wise to know how that case would have affected him, and so truly loving to come down to the E.R. to save him from it.
He wouldn’t have survived this past year without Joelle. Their relationship had been one of respectful co-workers and good friends before Mara’s aneurysm, but Joelle quickly became his main source of support afterward. She shared his grief. She could get inside it with him because she loved Mara, too. She understood the reality of what was happening. She knew what the future held for Mara, as well as for him, and she let him talk about it, opening the door to his fury, and sometimes his tears. Not like Sheila, who never, not once during the past fourteen months, acknowledged Liam’s dilemma of having a wife, yet having no wife.
“Because she’s Mara’s mom, Liam,” Joelle had said to him. “She’s too busy seeing what’s happening to her daughter. She can’t see how it’s affecting you. Give her time.”
But he feared Sheila would never understand, no matter how much time passed. She had cared for her cancer-ridden husband for five years at home before his death, sacrificing her needs to take care of his, and Liam knew Sheila expected nothing less of him.
Liam and Joelle had never directly addressed what was happening to their relationship, but they grew closer over the months, stopping in each other’s offices at work for a bit of conversation and talking on the phone every night. Most of the time, he would call her. Other times, it would be the reverse. Either way, those calls became a routine, and if for some reason he wasn’t able to talk to her before going to bed, he would lie awake for hours before he could fall asleep.
They taught each other to smile and laugh again. To a grieving person, nothing was more seductive than laughter. Then there were the hugs, of course, the comforting embraces between good friends. At some point, though, those hugs became longer, tighter, followed by lingering touches. Her fingers would slide over his shoulder or wrist, his hand would brush an eyelash from her cheek.
He missed her. He missed talking to her every night. There was a vacuum around him at night now, after Sam fell asleep and he was alone with his thoughts.
He looked over at the phone on the night table, then shook his head. If only he hadn’t allowed things to get out of hand, he could still have that friendship with her, that wonderful relief of confiding in someone and being heard. But there was no going back. He knew better than that. Just eating lunch across the table from her in the cafeteria set up a guilty longing in him. He loved Mara deeply, but sometimes what he felt for Joelle went even deeper, and that scared him.
Reaching behind him to the bookshelf, his fingers found the book of meditations she’d given him. He leafed through it, Sam still asleep on his chest, looking not for a particular meditation, but for the picture he kept tucked between the pages. The photograph made him smile when he found it. He and Joelle had taken Sam to the Dennis the Menace Playground, more for their entertainment than Sam’s, because he was far too young to make good use of the park. Most of the photos from that day were of Joelle and Sam together, but in this one, Joelle was alone. She sat cross-legged on the ground near the playground’s giant black locomotive, grinning, her chin raised in a way that gave her a teasing, insolent look. Like Mara, she was dark-haired and dark-eyed, but that was where the comparison ended. Joelle looked like a kid. She’d worn her thick dark hair in braids that day, and her grin in the picture was wide and uninhibited. She was not a kid, though, but a flesh-and-blood woman, with a woman’s body and a woman’s heart.
Liam glanced at the phone again. What would it hurt if he called her to thank her for coming to the E.R.?
No, no, no.
Lifting Sam into his arms, he headed toward the nursery. He would have to take something to help him sleep tonight. Otherwise, chances were good he would do something else he’d regret.
9
Cypress Point, 1946
CARLYNN KLING HAD A GIFT, THERE WAS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. By the time she was fifteen, nearly everyone on the Monterey Peninsula had heard of her. Some believed in her unique abilities; some didn’t. But believers or not, everyone knew that Carlynn Kling was not your average fifteen-year-old girl. In addition to her gift of healing, she was a stunning beauty, slender and very blond, who turned the heads of everyone who saw her.
Lisbeth Kling, on the other hand, seemed nearly invisible in her averageness. By fifteen, she was old enough to pick her own style of dress and hairdo. She chose to wear her hair exactly as Carlynn did—in the style of Veronica Lake, parted on the side, with long, flowing blond waves that partially blocked the vision of one eye. But Lisbeth had gained weight since becoming a teenager, and although she emulated Carlynn’s style of dress and hair, she did not project the same attractive and confident image. She envied Carlynn, a jealousy that might have turned ugly and set sister against sister, had the love between them not been so strong.
Every weekend, Delora drove Carlynn to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, where the teenager made her “rounds.” They visited the patients, some of whom had lost limbs, some of whom were dying, and some who would make a full recovery in time. Carlynn touched them and talked to them, amazing even her mother with her composure and poise in the midst of such a horrific setting. Often, Carlynn eased the men’s pain, and sometimes she caused their wounds to heal faster. She seemed fascinated by the medical history of each man, and she questioned any nurse willing to talk with her to glean more information about the soldiers. She’d want to know the extent of their injuries and what sort of treatment they’d been given, and she’d listen closely, asking intelligent and appropriate questions. Soon, she had the nurses, themselves, requesting that she see specific patients.
Of course, none of the physicians had any faith in Carlynn’s gift, and she made her rounds not in any formal capacity, but merely as a visitor. The soldiers knew that when she touched them, though, something happened. There was magic in her touch, they said, and in her words. Her voice was soft and even, and occasionally it rang out with laughter. The anguish that the soldiers’ war experiences had left inside them seemed to dissipate during Carlynn’s visits. The doctors, though, joked that any girl as beautiful as Carlynn was sure to have a healing effect on young men deprived of women’s company for so long.
Lisbeth knew, probably better than anyone, that it was truly Carlynn’s touch that made the difference to those men. She possessed the same voice as her sister, and except for her weight, a very similar beauty, yet she knew that if she were to walk through the VA hospital, enter those rooms, touch those men, she would not have the same impact on them. She would be useless. That was how she felt much of the time. Useless. Invisible. At least, in everyone’s eyes save her father’s.
Franklin did not like Delora drawing so much public attention to Carlynn’s gift. He knew his daughter’s healing ability was real; he had seen too many examples of it to deny it. She had once cured an excruciating case of shingles that had cropped up on his back. He would never allow her to heal his colds or headaches because it seemed wrong to him to accept the gift from his own daughter. But the shingles had made him desperate, unable to sleep or even sit in a chair without gritting his teeth against the pain, and he would have done anything to end that anguish.
But Franklin worried the outside world would see Carlynn as mentally ill or, worse, as a charlatan, and he was also concerned that Lisbeth suffered from spending so much time in her sister’s shadow. The girls still attended separate schools with qualitatively different activities and benefits, and he sometimes worried that the way he and Delora were raising them was akin to an experiment: take two identical twins and treat them differently, giving them different life experiences and different schooling, to see what would happen. What had happened was that Carlynn was confident, outgoing, and an outstanding student, while Lisbeth was quiet, unsure of herself and barely scraping by in school. She was not fat, exactly, but pudgy in all the wrong places, and he knew that she ate when she was sad, which was much of the time. It tortured Franklin that he had allowed this to happen to the daughter who had been the one he had named, bottle-fed, bathed and cuddled.
The twins were planning their sixteenth birthday party, to be held in the mansion, with different levels of enthusiasm. Carlynn was excited; Lisbeth, apprehensive. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, one of their housekeepers teased them several days before the party. The adage held true for Lisbeth, but not for Carlynn, who had written her boyfriend’s name at the top of the guest list, hoping that she’d be able to drag him into the cypress trees for more of those delicious kisses.
Carlynn’s guest list had twenty names on it, all of them friends from her posh high school, but Lisbeth had added only four names to the list, four quiet wallflowers, much like herself.
The night of the party, the living room and dining room of the mansion were decorated with reams of colored crepe paper and helium balloons, and popular music played on the phonograph.
Carlynn introduced her friends to Lisbeth, one by one. How obvious it was that Lisbeth hated introductions! She wore a frozen smile on her face as Carlynn’s friends marveled over the duplicate of their classmate, though they quickly saw the differences in their personalities. They were nice to Lisbeth after their initial stunned surprise, asking her questions about being a twin, but when the questions stopped, Carlynn could see Lisbeth had no idea how to prolong the conversation. She grew quiet and uncomfortable and eventually she and her four girlfriends drifted into one corner of the living room, where they could listen to the records and watch the world go by.
Carlynn’s boyfriend, Charlie, was there, and at first Carlynn could not take her eyes off him. She thought he looked like a rugged Gregory Peck, with dark hair and tanned, smooth skin, and when Nat King Cole started singing “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons,” Charlie held her very close as they danced in the living room. Carlynn, though, was no longer thinking only of going off into the cypress trees with him, because her eyes and her thoughts were on her sister. Lisbeth’s lack of poise in social situations was both annoying and embarrassing, but Carlynn could not help feeling sorry for her. She wished shyness were something she had the ability to heal.
They were dancing to Perry Como’s “Prisoner of Love” when a scream came through the open French doors leading from the living room to the terrace. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look in the direction of the sound.
Suddenly, Jinks Galloway appeared on the terrace. His shirt was partially unbuttoned, a smear of dirt across the white fabric, and his blond hair hung damply over his eyes.
“Penny’s hurt!” he said. “She fell.”
Everyone rushed toward the moonlit terrace, Carlynn in the lead. Reaching the edge of the terrace, she carefully peered over the side. Penny Everett, Carlynn’s closest friend from school, was about ten feet below, lying precariously on the broad crown of a Monterey cypress. She was awake and alert, but grimacing with pain. Her blouse was entirely unbuttoned, her bra almost luminescent in the moonlight, and her blond hair was spread around her head like the arms of an octopus.
“What’s going on?” Franklin, who had been kindly staying out of the way of the party, must have heard Penny’s scream and was now walking onto the terrace.
Carlynn leaned far over the edge. “Button your blouse, Pen,” she whispered, and Penny managed to get one button through its buttonhole before Franklin got a look at her.
“How’d you get down there, Penny?” he asked, then turned to Carlynn. “No one’s drinking here, are they?” he asked.
That had been part of the agreement, and Carlynn quickly shook her head, although she wouldn’t have put it past Jinks to have smuggled in his own bottle in his jacket pocket.
“All right, Penny,” Franklin called down to her. “Hold still. I’ll come around the house and see if I can get you from below.”
Penny nodded. “My leg …” she said.
Her leg was twisted into an awkward and unnatural angle against the nearly black branches of the cypress. Probably broken, Carlynn thought.
Jinks and Charlie accompanied Franklin around the outside of the house until they reached the area where Penny was stranded. The tree on which she’d fallen was low to the ground, and after a few minutes they were able to jostle her free, although not without eliciting cries of pain from her. Gently, they rested her in the small clearing near the house. By that time, nearly all the guests were in the yard observing the scene, and Carlynn rushed toward her friend, dropping to her knees at her side.
“Penny,” she said, taking her friend’s hand, “does anything hurt besides your leg?”
Penny shook her head. Her blouse was still only partially buttoned, and Carlynn was certain her father had figured out that Penny and Jinks had been petting at the time of the fall. She was relieved to see, though, that Penny’s leg now lay flat and straight against the ground.
“Where does it hurt?” Carlynn asked, trying to button Penny’s blouse with her free hand. Penny was shivering, and Carlynn motioned to Charlie to take off his jacket.
“Above my knee,” Penny said. “I think it’s broken. Is the bone sticking out?”
Carlynn rested Charlie’s jacket over Penny’s chest and arms, then carefully raised her friend’s skirt a few inches above her knee. She was relieved to see there was no blood or protrusion of bone beneath her stocking. She looked up at her father. “Get the boys to leave,” she said, pointing behind her. “Or at least get them far enough back that they can’t see.”
“We need to get some ice on her leg.” Jinks looked pale and anxious in the moonlight. “Maybe take her to the hospital.”
“Not right now,” her father said, and Carlynn was grateful that he understood what she’d meant and what she was intending to do. “Come on, fellas, let’s give Carlynn some room.”
Penny understood, too. On one occasion, she had accompanied Carlynn and Delora to Letterman Hospital and had seen with her own eyes the marvels Carlynn could achieve.
As the boys moved back to join the others, Carlynn slipped her hands beneath Penny’s skirt, unhooked her stocking from the garter belt and pulled it from her leg, while Penny winced with pain. Resting her hands on the skin above Penny’s knee, Carlynn looked into her eyes.
“Is this where it hurts?” she asked.
Penny nodded. “Yes, but a little more to the side.”
Carlynn shifted her hands slightly, and Penny nodded. “That’s it,” she said. “I think I heard it crack when I fell, Carly. Ugh.”
“Does it hurt a great deal?” Carlynn could already feel the area beneath her hands growing warm from her touch, and she knew that was a good sign.
“It’s horrid,” Penny said.
“And just what were you and Jinks doing on the terrace?” Carlynn asked with a grin.
“You mean—” Penny managed a smile “—this is God punishing me?”
“You never know,” Carlynn said. “You are the rowdiest of my friends—do you know that, Pen?” “But you love me anyway.”
“Yes, I do. Very much.” She looked earnestly into Penny’s eyes. “Even though you’ve probably gotten me into big trouble with my father.”
“Sorry.” Penny giggled, the lightness of the sound encouraging to Carlynn’s ears.
She continued talking with her friend, keeping her hands on her leg, for another fifteen minutes. Finally, Penny said, “This is so strange. It’s not hurting. At least not while I’m lying still.”
“Move it then, with my hands still on it. Slowly. See if you can bend your knee.”
Penny bent her leg. “My God, Carlynn, it doesn’t hurt. Just feels a little stiff.”
“Do you think you can stand on it?”
She helped Penny to her feet and accepted the grateful hug she offered. The guests cheered from behind them, as though they were witnessing an injured player rise from the ground on a football field.
“Can you walk?” Carlynn asked. Penny began to carefully move toward the house, leaning against Carlynn, just in case. “Now,” Carlynn said as they neared the rear door, “we really should get some ice on it. No point in getting too cocky about all this.”
After the party, Carlynn and Lisbeth sat on the edge of the cold stone terrace, their legs dangling over the side, bundled up in jackets against the chill. Behind them, in the house, they could hear the tinkle of glasses and clatter of plates as Rosa and the other servants cleaned up. Fog was rolling in over the Pacific, but they could still see the lights of a boat that must have been quite close to shore.
“We shouldn’t be out here,” Carlynn said. “We’re both going to get sick, sitting on the terrace in the cold.”
“You can heal us, then,” Lisbeth said, and Carlynn looked at her quizzically.
“That sounded snide,” she said. “Did you mean it that way, Lizzie?”
It was a moment before Lisbeth answered. “Sorry,” she said. “I just … it still amazes me, that’s all. How do you do it?” She turned to her sister. “How did you fix Penny’s leg?”
It was not the first time Lisbeth had asked Carlynn about her healing skills, but this time the tone of her voice was marked more by envy than curiosity.
“I don’t understand any more than you do, Lizzie,” Carlynn said. “Maybe Penny’s leg wasn’t really broken. Maybe she just scared herself when she fell.”
“I saw it. It was twisted up.”
Carlynn gently let one of her feet touch one of Lisbeth’s. “I have to be touching the person,” she said. “At least I know that much. But other than that, what I do doesn’t seem like anything special. I’m not a magician. It’s just that when I’m touching a person, I think only about him or her. I try to send them all my love, everything good that’s inside me. I concentrate really hard.”
“It’s amazing,” Lisbeth said, shaking her head in quiet wonder.
“Do you remember Presto?” Carlynn asked. “The night before he was going to be put to sleep?”
“Of course.” Lisbeth nodded. Presto had lived for three more years after that night.
“All night long I lay next to him with my arms around him, and I prayed. I just kept hoping and praying he would get well.”
“Is it praying, then?” Lisbeth asked. “Is that what you’re doing?”
“Not always. I’ve sort of experimented with it,” Carlynn admitted. “Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I just think as hard as I can about the person I’m touching. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do. The only thing I know for sure is that, afterward, I’m more tired than you can imagine.”
Lisbeth knew this. She had seen her sister after her visits to Letterman Hospital. It was all Carlynn could do to drag herself upstairs to bed, and she would sleep so deeply that nothing could wake her for hours.
“You must be tired now,” she said.
Carlynn nodded, then rested her head on Lisbeth’s shoulder.
“I wish you could talk more easily to people, Lizzie,” she said. “They won’t bite.”
“Well, I can’t,” Lisbeth said a bit defensively. Then she sighed. “It’s just one more thing you can do better than I can.”
The following day was a glorious clear Sunday, and Franklin invited his daughters to go sailing with him. Only Lisbeth accepted, just as he’d expected. As he’d hoped. He’d observed his less popular daughter at the party the night before and wanted some time alone with her.
They set sail on the bay in his small sloop, and he allowed Lisbeth to take over once they’d motored away from the pier. The sea was calm, a sheet of pale aquamarine glass, but there was a good headwind, and Lisbeth showed real skill as she tacked far out into the open bay.
“You’re getting very good at this, Lisbeth,” Franklin said.
“Not very hard today,” she said. “The water’s so smooth.” But she was smiling at the compliment all the same. She leaned back on her hands, eyes closed, her pretty face turned up to the sunlight.
“Did you enjoy the party last night?” Franklin asked.
“Yes,” she said without opening her eyes.
“What did you like about it?”
She shrugged. “The music, I guess.”
Franklin licked his lips, letting a silence form between them as he tried to think of what he could say next.
“I have the feeling it was not much fun for you, honey,” he said finally, and then quickly added, “And that’s all right. I never much enjoyed parties either when I was your age.”
She opened her eyes to look at him. “You didn’t?” she asked.
He smiled. “I was actually a lot like you, Lizzie. My brother—your uncle Steve—was always the popular one, the one who commanded attention. He was more intelligent than I was, better-looking and far more interesting to the girls. I was the shy one, always afraid to say anything in case I sounded stupid.”
She looked surprised. “But you’re much smarter and nicer than Uncle Steve,” she said, then added, “No offense. I know he’s your brother.”
He laughed. “That’s my point, sweetheart. As I grew up, I got more confident. What I was like when I was sixteen didn’t matter anymore.”
Lisbeth looked out to the vast Pacific, where the air was growing hazy with fog, a crease between her eyebrows.
“You’ll blossom, Lizzie. Someday. It can’t be rushed, and you’ll need to be patient. But you have a lot of happiness ahead of you, and you’ll probably appreciate it more than Carlynn, because she’s known nothing else.”
Lisbeth smoothed her hand across the gunwale. “I don’t really want Carlynn to be unhappy, though.” She looked past the sails at her father.
“It’s not an either-or thing, honey,” he said. “You can both be happy. There’s not a finite amount of happiness to be divided between the two of you, where if you get more, she gets less.” He leaned toward her. “You and Carlynn are so lucky to have each other,” he said. “Other friends will come and go, for both of you, but you’ll always be there for each other.”
“She’s so pretty,” Lisbeth said, fishing, he thought, for a compliment.
“She could use a few more pounds, if you ask me,” Franklin said, taking her bait, and Lisbeth smiled at him.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said and leaned back on her arms to face the sun again.
Lisbeth felt the slight sting of a sunburn on her face as she helped her father moor the boat to the pier. She’d hated to come in, hated to put an end to her time with the one person who seemed to value her more than Carlynn, but the fog was getting closer, and both she and her father knew how quickly it could surround them out on the bay. She walked ahead of him as they made their way over the dunes to the car. A couple of young boys were playing on the dunes, running and jumping and shrieking, and when she heard the thud behind her, she guessed it was just one of the boys leaping from the dune, so she didn’t bother turning around.