The Shadow Wife

“Wiggle your toes when you’re getting it,” she said.

“Wiggle my toes?” There was the hint of a smile on his face.

“Yes, absolutely.” She nodded. “Now, it’s hard to wiggle your toes when you have your shoes on, so tell Dr. Peterson you have to take your shoes off first, okay?”

“Does it really work?” He looked so hopeful, Lisbeth wanted to reach across the counter to hold his little face in her hands and give him a kiss on the forehead.

“I promise,” she said. “But you have to wiggle them hard.”

“Okay.” He nodded conspiratorially, then trotted back to the seat next to his mother. The wiggling would work, she knew as she returned to her filing. The children focused so hard on moving their toes that the shot was given before they even realized what was happening. Dr. Peterson thought she was a genius for coming up with the technique.

The real medical genius in the Kling family, though, was Carlynn. She was in her fourth year of medical school at the University of California, spending almost all her time this year at San Francisco General Hospital, a few blocks from Dr. Peterson’s office. Lisbeth had wanted to go to medical school—or at least to nursing school—herself, but she’d panicked at the thought of college, fearful that she would not get in, or once in, that she would not be able to keep up. She felt angry at herself for not working harder throughout her school years, and she was angry at her parents for providing her with what she had long ago realized was the lesser education. Sometimes she was angry at Carlynn, as well, although she knew the situation was not truly her twin’s fault.

So, she’d opted for secretarial school instead, hoping to work in a medical setting. She did not regret her choice; there was no one better at whipping an office into shape, and for the first time in her life she felt valuable. She was full of innovative ideas to make Dr. Peterson’s office run smoothly, and was often asked by other physicians to train their secretaries and receptionists in some of the methods she used.

She had followed Carlynn to San Francisco, although not without her sister’s encouragement. Carlynn may have been smarter, more beautiful and better educated, but she was still Lisbeth’s twin, and the love between the two of them, though sometimes tinged with resentment or annoyance, was strong. They met at least once a week for lunch, and occasionally saw each other on the weekends, although this year Carlynn’s free time outside the hospital was quite limited.

Carlynn had told her she’d have time for lunch today, though, and Lisbeth was supposed to meet her at noon at a delicatessen halfway between the hospital and Dr. Peterson’s office. It was now eleven, and although she was looking forward to the time with her sister, she wished Gabriel would hurry up and call. What if he called at ten to twelve? Then she’d only have a minute to talk to him before turning the call over to Dr. Peterson.

Gabriel Johnson was Dr. Peterson’s tennis partner. He usually called Dr. Peterson on Tuesdays and Thursdays to make sure their schedules would allow them to meet on the doctor’s private tennis court for a game after work. Of course, Lisbeth was always the one to answer the phone, and lately, Gabriel had been keeping her on the phone for a while. One time, for thirty minutes! He asked her questions about herself and seemed genuinely interested in her answers. He told her he’d heard about her reputation as an “office manager,” and she’d loved that he used that term instead of “secretary.” She was so much more than a secretary, and he seemed to know that. Although she’d never met him, sometime in the last few months she’d started fantasizing about him, wondering what he looked like. She pictured him looking like Rock Hudson, although his voice was deeper. Or maybe he was blond, like James Dean, his hair sun-streaked from the tennis courts.

The last time he called, Gabriel had asked her if she played tennis.

She’d looked down at her lap, where her white uniform stretched across her soft thighs. “No,” she’d said. “I did when I was a child, but not in years.”

“I’ll have to get you out there someday,” he said. That was the closest he’d come to actually suggesting a date between the two of them, and it both elated and troubled her. How could she ever let him see her?

“Maybe,” she’d said.

“What do you like to do for fun?” he asked.

I eat. That would be the honest answer.

“Oh, I like the water,” she said. “I used to like to sail.” She hadn’t sailed since that fateful day with her father, but it was something she missed.

“Aha!” Gabriel said. “Did Lloyd mention that I have a sailboat?”

She was embarrassed. She did recall Dr. Peterson mentioning that fact, perhaps as long as a year ago. Would Gabriel think she was hinting at a commonality between them? She would never know, because right at that moment Dr. Peterson had walked into her office, and she’d had no choice but to turn Gabriel over to him, saving her answer to his question for the next time he called.

Now Dr. Peterson stepped into her office again and picked up Richie Hesky’s chart.

“Let him take off his shoes,” Lisbeth whispered to him, and Lloyd Peterson smiled his understanding at her. “Are you playing tennis tonight?” she asked, trying to sound casual, hoping it was not obvious to him that she was yearning for Gabriel to call.

“Not tonight,” he said, leafing through Richie’s chart. “Gabe’s tied up in meetings.” He poked his head around the corner of her office into the waiting room.

“Richard? Come with me, son.”

Well, darn. No chance to talk to Gabriel today. She was being ridiculous, anyway; she was hardly in his league. Gabriel was the chief accountant at San Francisco General. He was certainly older than she was, maybe by many years. And the truth was, if she had an opportunity to meet the man, she would turn it down. That meeting, she knew, would put an end to their long phone conversations.

At twenty-six years of age, Lisbeth weighed two hundred pounds. Although she had a few girlfriends who worked for other doctors in the area, she still found most of her solace in food. She’d given up trying to emulate Carlynn’s style of dress, and she wore her short blond hair in petal curls she set with bobby pins every night before going to bed.

Carlynn, on the other hand, was the same one hundred and fifteen pounds she’d been when she graduated from high school, and just last week she’d started wearing her long hair in a new do called a French twist, which she said kept it out of her way when she was working. She looked, Lisbeth thought, sophisticated and beautiful, and there were times, mostly in private, when Lisbeth had difficulty keeping her jealousy of her sister in check.

At eleven forty-five, Lisbeth left the office and walked the few blocks to the deli where she was to meet Carlynn. She was first to arrive, as usual, and as she carried two ham and cheese sandwiches from the deli counter to one of the small tables by the window, she hoped her sister would show up. Carlynn’s hospital schedule was not often predictable, and on a couple of occasions Lisbeth had watched the hands on the clock above the deli counter tick by as she gave up on her sister and ate lunch alone.

Today, though, Carlynn arrived at ten after twelve, and she was breathless, probably having run from the hospital.

She kissed Lisbeth’s cheek, then took a seat across the table from her.

“I talked to Mother last night,” Carlynn said, pulling one of the sandwiches to her side of the table.

“Is her eyesight any better?” Lisbeth asked.

“She said it’s still fuzzy. I gave her the name of a doctor to see in Monterey. I wish I could be there to go with her, but I really can’t get away.”

Delora had been complaining about problems with her vision, asking Carlynn to come home and “heal” her. Carlynn didn’t have time to breathe, much less make the trip to Cypress Point, but Lisbeth supposed it was only a matter of time before her twin would go, and she would have to decide if she wanted to accompany her or not.

Lisbeth always had mixed feelings about going home and rarely dared to go alone, needing Carlynn to serve as a buffer between Delora and herself. Delora would always shake her head in disgust as soon as Lisbeth walked in the front door of the mansion, and she’d badger her constantly about her weight, insulting her in front of the servants and anyone else who happened to be present. Lisbeth usually brought hidden food home with her because she didn’t dare eat as much as she wanted to at mealtimes, when Delora watched her every mouthful from across the table.

Yet there was nowhere in the world that stirred Lisbeth’s heart more than the setting of her childhood home. In spite of the strong pickle-and-coleslaw smell of the delicatessen, it took her only a second to conjure up the scent of the sea and the cypress trees and the way the air felt when a blanket of fog rolled over the house. Cypress Point was as familiar to her as her own face—and far better loved. She knew she would accompany Carlynn if she decided to go home. Spending a few days at Cypress Point was worth any humiliation her mother might dish out.

“So.” Carlynn swallowed a bite of her sandwich and smiled at her. “How are you? You’re hair looks pretty.”

“Thanks,” Lisbeth said, touching the waves, wondering if they looked any different today to elicit Carlynn’s comment, but guessing that her sister was just being nice. “I’m fine. I’m reading Peyton Place. Have you read it?”

Carlynn shook her head. “I wish I had time to read something other than medical journals,” she said. “I’m swamped. Penny Everett was in town the other day and I couldn’t even make time to see her.”

“What’s she doing these days?” Lisbeth remembered Penny primarily from the night ten years ago, when she’d fallen off the terrace at Cypress Point while necking with her boyfriend. Carlynn, though, had kept in touch with her old friend.

“She’s living in Chicago, singing with a choral group that does classical music. Oh!” She interrupted herself, setting her sandwich on the plate and picking up her purse. “Before I forget,” she said, drawing her wallet from the purse. “Let me pay you for my sandwich. I got a check from Mother, so I can give you some money.”

Delora sent regular checks to Carlynn, but none to Lisbeth, saying that Lisbeth was on her own since she had elected not to go to college. She had paid for Lisbeth’s secretarial school, but the money for her had stopped the moment she’d graduated. Delora, however, still sent Carlynn far more than she needed for her school and living expenses, and Carlynn insisted on giving her a portion of it. Lisbeth had long ago stopped arguing about it. She needed the money and figured she deserved it just as much as Carlynn did.

“Thank you.” She accepted the bills from Carlynn and slipped them into her own purse.

“Did the man call today?” Carlynn asked. “Dr. Peterson’s tennis partner?”

Lisbeth shook her head, her cheeks turning pink. She’d told Carlynn about Gabriel’s phone calls, nearly every word of them. But she had not told her his name or that he worked at SF General. Carlynn might try to get a look at him then, and Lisbeth didn’t want to hear that he chewed his nails at his desk or was only five feet tall. She preferred her fantasies to reality.

“No, he didn’t,” she said with a scowl. “They’re not playing tonight, so I probably won’t get to talk to him until Tuesday.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Carlynn said. Despite her beauty, Carlynn had no more dates than Lisbeth, and she didn’t even have the time for fantasies. She was married to medical school.

Lisbeth would have liked to talk more about Gabriel, but Carlynn suddenly set down her sandwich and turned to look out the window, letting out a great sigh.

“I don’t think I can eat,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” Lisbeth asked.

Carlynn returned her gaze to her sister, the gleam of tears in her eyes. “Oh, this little girl at the hospital.”

Lisbeth could have guessed. Carlynn was way too soft. “Carly, honey, you’re not going to survive being a doctor if every patient upsets you so much,” she said.

“I know, I know. And it’s getting harder every day.” She leaned across the table as though someone might overhear her. “The more I get to actually work with patients, the harder it is for me not to…you know…help them in my own way.”

Lisbeth knew her sister had been careful to keep her gift under wraps at the hospital. She didn’t want to be seen as different or better than the other students, and she certainly didn’t want to be thought of as crazy.

“What’s wrong with the little girl?” Lisbeth asked.

“She has a very serious case of pneumonia, probably fatal because it’s complicated by a congenital deformity of her lungs.” Carlynn looked down at her sandwich, her nose wrinkled. “She’s eight, and she’s dying. We visit her on rounds every day, and one or two of us listen to her lungs and talk about her as though she wasn’t there, and just watch her die.” Carlynn looked pained, and Lisbeth wondered, as she had a number of times before, if being a doctor was going to take too much out of her sister.

“And you think you can help?” Lisbeth asked.

“I think I should at least try. But I don’t dare. I’ve thought of sneaking into her room at night, but if I got caught I’d have a hard time explaining what I was doing there. She’s still conscious and able to talk. She’d tell someone I’d been there.”

Lisbeth knew that Carlynn had, on a few occasions, been able to spend enough time with a patient to touch him, or, as she would say, to “send her energy coursing through his body,” but she’d done it quietly, surreptitiously, and only with unconscious patients. She’d told Lisbeth about overhearing a few of her fellow students talk about how strange she was, and Lisbeth knew she was terrified of fueling that assessment of her.

“You have to find a way,” Lisbeth said. She knew her sister would never be able to live with herself unless she did.

“How?” Carlynn wrapped up her sandwich, probably saving it for later. Lisbeth’s was already gone.

“What about during those rounds you were talking about?” Lisbeth asked. “Can you get near her?”

“Only if the teaching physician chooses me to listen to her lungs. But that would only take a few seconds.”

“Not if you can’t seem to hear well. Maybe your stethoscope is broken, or for some other reason you need to listen harder and longer than the other students.”

Carlynn rolled her eyes. “They’ll kick me out of med school,” she said. “They already think I’m weird.”

“Let’s see.” Lisbeth lifted her hands, palms up, in the air. “On the one hand, you’ll be seen as weird, but the girl might live. On the other hand, you’ll be seen as a good and normal doctor, but the girl will probably die.”

“Ugh.” Carlynn wrinkled her nose again. “Don’t say it that way.”

“I’m sorry.” Lisbeth felt contrite, but only to a degree. “I don’t mean to put more pressure on you, honey,” she said, “but you went into medicine because you wanted to use your gift. Medical school has been relatively easy for you. You whizzed through all the chemistry and biology courses and whatnot. The hard part for you will be finding a way to combine all that training with what you have naturally. What you never had to go to school to learn.”

Carlynn stared at her a moment, then let out her breath.

“You’re right,” she said. “You’re the only person who really understands me, Lizzie, do you know that?”

Carlynn and her fellow medical students, all of them men, made their rounds with Dr. Alan Shire, the teaching physician on the pediatric floor, that afternoon. Although there were a couple of other female medical students in Carlynn’s year, the group doing their pediatric rotation was, except for her, composed entirely of men, and that was enough in itself to set her apart from them.

The flock of students moved from patient to patient, and Carlynn grew increasingly anxious as they neared Betsy’s room. Although she was still not certain what she would do when they got there, she knew Lisbeth was right: She had to at least make an effort to help the little girl in a way none of the other physicians would even know to try.

Carlynn did not for a moment believe she was any smarter than her twin, but Lisbeth’s intelligence was far more down to earth, more in the realm of common sense, than her own, and sometimes she actually envied that. Carlynn could solve complicated mathematical equations, but when it came to the simpler matters in life, she was often stymied. She wondered if her sister knew how much she depended on her counsel, on the wisdom Lisbeth barely knew she possessed.

Working for Lloyd Peterson had been wonderful for Lisbeth, and Carlynn had loved watching her sister’s confidence grow over the past few years. If only her body had not grown with it. Her obesity—for that was, she had to admit, the word for Lisbeth’s weight problem—had become an armor around her, protecting her from…Carlynn wasn’t sure. Rejection? Love? Even Carlynn’s psychiatric rotation had not given her answers to Lisbeth’s situation. Whatever the problem, Carlynn had never spoken to Lisbeth about it. Lisbeth got enough negative feedback from their mother and the rest of the world. Carlynn wanted to be her one safe harbor, and she prayed she was not actually doing her sister a disservice by ignoring the problem.

Finally, Carlynn, her fellow students and Dr. Shire reached Betsy’s room, but they did not go inside right away. Dr. Shire turned to the group outside Betsy’s door.

“This eight-year-old female’s condition has deteriorated markedly since our rounds this morning,” he said. He discussed the little girl’s most recent vital signs and lab results, none of which held out much hope for her recovery. Carlynn did not ordinarily find this particular doctor heartless, but she thought he seemed pleased to have such a serious case to show them. She appreciated the fact, though, that Dr. Shire discussed the child’s condition with the students outside the patient’s room. So many of the doctors spoke in front of the patients, as though they were deaf as well as sick. As though they were not human beings with feelings. She liked Dr. Shire’s respect for his patients and the way he treated her like any other student, instead of someone who was less than competent by virtue of being a female. Frankly, she liked everything she knew about Dr. Shire, and she was hoping he would invite one of the students to listen to Betsy’s lungs and heart. She was counting on it, and she planned to be the first to volunteer.

Inside Betsy’s room Carlynn stood with her fellow students in a semicircle around the child’s bed as Dr. Shire listened to the little girl’s lungs. She was ready to raise her hand the moment he asked for a volunteer, but she could feel the perspiration forming in her armpits. Did she dare do something in front of Alan Shire and the other students? She knew the male med students already found her a bit peculiar, and not just for being a woman in a man’s profession. They would chat among themselves about a particular patient, sharing their uncertainties—and, in some cases, their arrogance—but Carlynn always stood apart from them, both literally and figuratively, as she tried to think of a way to heal. Would it work if she simply poured healing thoughts into a patient as she stood in the room? she’d wonder. She’d experiment often with her gift, and she was doing so right now as she stood at the foot of Betsy’s bed.

“How are you feeling this afternoon, Betsy?” Dr. Shire inquired, but the little girl did not respond or even look in his direction. Her gaze was fastened to some point in space, and she was as pale as her pillowcase. Carlynn could hear the rasp of her breathing. She was definitely worse than she had been that morning.

Dr. Shire took Betsy’s blood pressure and reported the numbers to the group. Then he straightened up to his full, lanky height and motioned toward the door of the room.

“All right,” he said, “let’s move on. We’re running late today.”

Carlynn froze. They couldn’t leave. Not yet.

“Dr. Shire?” she asked as the students began to walk past her. “May I listen to her lungs for a moment?”

He hesitated, and the other students waited for him to say they didn’t have time, but the doctor studied her, an odd, inquisitive expression in his eyes, and she did not turn away.

“Yes, Miss Kling, you may.”

There was a groan from some of the students, but Dr. Shire moved close to the patient again as Carlynn approached the head of Betsy’s bed. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. What mattered right now was the life of this little girl.

Carlynn smiled at the youngster, hungry to touch her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she reached for the girl’s hands instead of for her own stethoscope.

“Hi, Betsy,” she said. “I’m going to listen to your heart and your lungs, but first I wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

Oh, it was hard to send her energy when she was so aware of the men behind her! Each of those young men would have simply moved toward Betsy, stethoscope in hand, leaning over the child without making eye contact with her, concentrating on the bruits and rubs they would hear through the cold metal disk. If she had her own way, if she could design her intervention any way she liked, she would spend a long time talking with a patient, then a long time touching them. But with Dr. Shire and the students at her back, she did not have the luxury of time. So she struggled to do both: talk and heal.

Betsy was with her, though. Everyone else in the room might have been a million miles away, but Betsy was right there. Her gaze, previously vacuous, now locked onto Carlynn’s eyes, and her delicate damp hands relaxed in her gentle grasp.

“What do you want to talk about?” Betsy asked in a small, hoarse voice.

“About how strong you are.” Carlynn expected to hear Dr. Shire interrupt her at any moment, but she continued, smiling at the girl. “You’re very strong. Even though you are quite sick, you still have the strength to ask me what I want to talk about. You’re an amazing and very brave girl.” She kept her eyes glued to Betsy’s, glad the students and Dr. Shire could not see the intensity of the shared gaze. She didn’t want to let go of the child’s clammy little hands. Any minute Dr. Shire would tell her she was wasting time, but she tried not to think about that.

“You have warm and pretty hands,” she said. She heard the students stir behind her and imagined they, too, were waiting, hoping, Dr. Shire would interrupt her so they could get on their way. “I’d like to listen to your lungs now,” Carlynn said. “Would that be all right with you?”

Betsy nodded and, with some effort, rolled onto her side, accustomed to the drill. Carlynn rested her stethoscope against the child’s back, but it was merely for show. She placed her hand flat over the disk, her other hand on the girl’s rib cage, just above her stomach. Closing her eyes, she breathed, imagining every molecule of her breath flowing through her hands and into the child. She held the position as long as she could without attracting any more attention than she already had from those behind her. As soon as she stood up, she almost keeled over from a sudden weakness in her own body, and she could not help but smile. The weakness was telltale: she had made a difference in this little girl’s condition.

“Feel better, sweetheart,” she said, resting her hand lightly on Betsy’s head. Then she turned away, ignoring the looks from her fellow students.

Dr. Shire cleared his throat. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s move on.”

Carlynn was last to leave the room. She looked back at Betsy, whose eyes were still on her, and smiled at the little girl, as though they shared a secret. In a way, they did.

Later that afternoon, Dr. Shire paged her over the hospital intercom. It was the first time she had heard herself paged, and it took her a minute to realize that it was her name ringing out through the corridors of SF General.

“Miss Kling,” Dr. Shire said when she called him on the phone in response to the page. “Do you have a moment to meet me in the cafeteria for a cup of coffee?”

It was an odd invitation, and she swallowed hard, wondering what sort of reprimand he would give her for her behavior in Betsy’s room earlier. “Yes,” she said. “I can be there in a few minutes.”

He was waiting for her in the corner of the doctors’ cafeteria, two cups of coffee on the table in front of him.

“Cream or sugar?” he asked, rising as she approached the table. He was being remarkably kind for someone about to chew her out.

“Black,” she said, although she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker. She knew this meeting was not about coffee, anyway.

Dr. Shire smiled at her, and she began to relax. “The patient we saw on rounds this morning, the little girl, Betsy, appears to be recovering,” he said.

“How wonderful,” Carlynn said.

“Yes,” he said as he stirred his coffee, “how wonderful…and how strange. I listened to her lungs while we were on rounds, as you know, and they were crackling and wheezing and generally—” he looked perplexed “—the lungs of a dying child. I just listened to them a few minutes ago, and they are now very nearly clear.”

“That’s amazing,” she said. “The antibiotic must have—”

“She’s been on an antibiotic since the beginning,” Dr. Shire interrupted her. He looked down at his cup of coffee. “Miss Kling…Carlynn,” he said, “I’ve been observing you. I know that you are not the…usual medical student, and not just because you are a woman. You are very bright and very knowledgeable, that’s for certain, as are most of your fellow UC students. But you deal with the patients in a much more personal way than most of them do. Than most doctors do, don’t you?”

“I think it helps to view a patient as a human being rather than merely as a diagnosis. We should treat them the way we would want to be treated.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He waved his hand through the air. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” He tilted his head, his eyes on hers as he waited for her answer.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You have some sort of…for want of a better word…gift, don’t you?”

It was Carlynn’s turn to stare into her coffee cup. “I’m still not sure what you—”

“I think you understand me,” he said. “You weren’t just listening to Betsy’s lungs this afternoon, were you? As a matter of fact, I’m not sure you listened at all.”

She felt herself color. “Of course I listened,” she said, uncertain if she was being chastised.

“Carlynn…please be honest with me.” He leaned forward. His blue eyes were clear and lovely, his long face handsome. “If you’re doing nothing special, at least nothing that you know of, just tell me and I’ll drop it. But the truth is, I have a great deal of interest in other ways of treating patients. Other than the usual, that is. I’ve studied Edgar Cayce and other purported healers, and I’ve come to believe there’s something to it. But if I’m wrong about you, I apologize and—”

“You’re not wrong,” she said. Her hands began to tremble, and she lowered them from her coffee cup to her lap. Not since those long-ago days when her mother had dragged her from soldier to soldier in Letterman Hospital had she let the outside world in on her secret.

He looked excited. “Then Betsy, and Mr…. I don’t remember his name…the man with nephritis, and that woman with what we thought was a brain tumor…they all got better unexpectedly. Did you have a hand in that?”

“I may have,” she said. “I never really know. Sometimes I’m able to do something, and sometimes I’m not.”

“Tell me everything,” he said, shoving his coffee cup away from him with disinterest. “Tell me how you do it. What you’re feeling. Is religion involved in some way? Are you praying?”

His sudden enthusiasm freed her tongue. Suddenly she was the teacher and he the student. “I don’t know how I do it, and no, religion is not involved, at least not religion as we usually think of it.”

“Do you feel it happening?” he asked.

“I’m still not certain what the it is, but yes, I do feel something happening. A surge of some sort. And I feel…” This was hard to explain. “I feel as though something’s been taken out of me and given to them.”

“You nearly fainted after you examined Betsy this morning, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I felt weak. I don’t know if I was going to faint, though. I never have.” She launched into the explanation of how she treated a person, an explanation she had given only a few others over the years. She felt not only safe with Dr. Shire, but thrilled that he might give her the opportunity to work in her own way with the patients she saw.

It grew dark outside the cafeteria windows as she told him about her childhood and how she first became aware of her gift, and about how she had determined she should keep quiet about it once she was in medical school, so as not to be seen as a kook.

“You were wise to do that, Carlynn,” he said soberly. “I’ve kept my own interest to myself, and I have to admit, I am incredibly thrilled to discover someone I can talk to about it.”

“Dr. Shire—”

“Alan. Call me Alan.”

She smiled at him. “Alan. Is there a way…I mean, if I see a patient whom I think I might be able to help…can you arrange it so that I can have more time with them? I’ve had to do this so surreptitiously.”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll work it out. But we have to be cautious. You must know that the other students and some of the staff talk about you. They know you’re different. They just don’t understand in what way yet.”

“I know.”

“Right now they think it’s because you’re a woman and you have this nurturing side to you that can’t resist sitting and chatting with patients.” He grinned at her, his teeth straight and white. “We’ll let them think that for now.”

“One thing about…what I do…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why does it work sometimes and not others?”

“I don’t have the answer, but I’d be happy to share some of the books I’m reading with you. I have a library on the subject.”

“Oh, I’d love to see it!” she said.

“Then you will. It’s at my house, though. Do you mind that you’ll have to come over and—”

“No. Of course not.”

“We’ll have to keep that quiet, as well, you understand. A female medical student and a physician… People would really talk then.”

She suddenly had a thought. “Do you have this…this gift, too, Dr. Shire? Alan?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t, but I wish I did. I’ve wondered if any ordinary person could develop it, but I’ve come to think not.” He ran a hand through his light brown hair and shook his head. “I just have a deep belief that we’re missing the boat somehow in medicine, Carlynn.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “I’d love for you and me to be partners in trying to find it.”

13

SAM RAN INTO LIAM’S ARMS ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE THE nursing home, and Liam lifted the little boy up and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Leaning back in his arms, Sam placed his two small palms on Liam’s cheeks.

“I love you, Dada,” he said, clear as day. They were his new words, and he used them frequently, but always appropriately. Delighted, Liam hugged him tighter. At fifteen months, Sam was either getting bigger, or Liam was getting weaker, because he could really feel the weight of his son in his arms now. Before, carrying Sam had been like holding a pillow filled with feathers.

“I love you, too,” Liam said, but before he had a chance to truly savor the moment, Sam began wriggling to be let down again. Reluctantly, Liam lowered him to the ground and took a seat on the bench next to Sheila.

“How are you, Sheila?” he asked, his eyes still on his son.

Sam began running in circles around the white wishing well, which stood on the lawn near the sidewalk. He could actually run now, not very steadily, but with some genuine speed, and Liam grinned as he watched him chase his invisible prey.

“Oh, I’m all right.” Sheila sounded tired. She rubbed her hand on the back of her neck and rolled her head on her shoulders. “Sam and I had a bit of a rough day,” she added. “He had his first spanking. At least, his first from me.”

“What?” Liam turned to look at her, unable to hide the shock in his face. Sheila didn’t seem to notice, though.

“He threw a tantrum in the grocery store.” Her eyes looked tired as she watched Sam lift himself awkwardly to his tiptoes as he tried to peer over the edge of the well. “He’s advanced for his age, I guess.” She chuckled. “Moving into the terrible twos at fifteen months.”

Liam tried to stay calm, afraid that if he let her see the anger building inside him, she wouldn’t tell him the truth about what happened.

“What do you mean by tantrum?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. The usual.” She glanced at him. “Or maybe you don’t know, not having had a child before. He was grabbing things he thought he wanted from the shelves, yelling his head off when I took them away from him. He sat down on the floor in the middle of the aisle and wouldn’t stop screaming.”

“He probably just needed a nap.” Liam watched Sam drop into a sitting position and begin slapping his hands against the stucco of the wishing well. He tried to picture Sheila hitting the little boy in the middle of the grocery store. Hitting him. For being a normal fifteen-month-old boy. Liam clenched his fists in his lap.

“He’d already had a nap,” Sheila countered. “He was just being a bad boy. I told him if he didn’t settle down, he’d get a spanking. And he kept right on screaming. So, when we got home I turned him over my knee.”

Liam practically jumped from the bench, turning to face Sheila with his hands held in front of him, fingers spread as though he was trying to keep himself from strangling her.

“Not okay!” He said the only two words he seemed able to force from his mouth. “That’s not okay, Sheila! I don’t want anyone hitting my son. Ever.”

“Oh, Liam, I didn’t hit him. I didn’t leave a mark on him.” She put one hand over her eyes to block out the sun as she looked up at him. “I spanked him. Parents have been spanking their kids since Adam and Eve. Weren’t you ever spanked?”

“No. I wasn’t.” His voice was growing louder, and a woman walking up the path to the nursing home glanced at him as she passed by. He didn’t care who heard him. “Not ever,” he said. “It’s barbaric. It teaches children that violence is a solution. How could you do that to him? How could you hurt him? You, who made me baby-proof every inch of my house? He—”

“Liam, you’re really being silly.” Sheila wore a patronizing smile he wanted to wipe from her face. “I gave him a few gentle swats on his bottom while he was turned over my knee. How else can you teach a fifteen-month-old right from wrong? You can’t explain it to him.”

“Do you honestly think he had a clue why he was being punished?” Liam asked. He paced three feet in one direction and three feet back, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand. “He misbehaved in the grocery store for whatever reason. For a reason our grown-up minds can’t fathom. For reasons that had meaning to him. Then you warn him you’ll spank him, when he hasn’t ever heard the word before. And then you do it when you get home. How is he supposed to make a connection? I mean, even if it could possibly be considered an appropriate form of punishment?”

“Well, he knows the word now.” Sheila pursed her lips. “He’ll know what I mean the next time I say it.”

“There won’t be a next time, Sheila.” Liam stopped pacing to look at her. “I mean it. This is absolutely nonnegotiable. No one is hitting Sam.”

“When they’re too young to reason with, there’s no other way to—”

“I turned out all right,” he said. “My parents somehow managed to teach me right from wrong without resorting to…the humiliation…the physical violation of smacking the crap out of me. And Mara would never approve.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sheila said. “You’re overreacting, Liam. I didn’t smack the crap out of him, and you know it. And, as for Mara, she was spanked any number of times.”

She was? He hadn’t known that. They had never gotten around to discussing how they would discipline their child.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I still don’t think she would approve.”

Sam suddenly ran over to him and wrapped his arms around Liam’s leg, clinging, obviously aware that something was wrong between his father and his grandmother. Liam rested one hand on top of Sam’s head.

“Look,” he said to Sheila, attempting to lower the angry pitch of his voice, “I appreciate all you’ve done for Sam. But please, just promise me you won’t hit him again.”

“I can’t promise that, Liam,” she said. “I think you’re being absolutely ridiculous.”

“I don’t want you hitting him!”

Sam let out a wail and clung harder.

“Then I just won’t take care of him anymore,” Sheila said, standing up. “You can find someone else to do it. And you can pay for it yourself.”

Liam closed his eyes in frustration. “That’s not what I want,” he said. Bending over, he lifted Sam into his arms again, and this time the little boy buried his face against Liam’s neck.

“Then I’ll spank him when he needs it.” Sheila folded her arms across her chest.

Liam couldn’t respond. He felt helpless and realized that, if he tried to say something, anything, more to Sheila, his voice would break. He pressed his cheek against Sam’s head.

“When Mara is well enough,” Sheila said, “she’ll agree with me. I can assure you of—”

“She’s never going to get well, Sheila!” he said angrily, eliciting another cry from his son, but he couldn’t stop himself from spitting the words at her. “Don’t you understand that?” he asked. “Never. She is in this nursing home for the rest of her life. She’s never going to understand that Sam is her son. She doesn’t even know you’re her mother.”

Sheila’s face was red, her cheeks puffed out as though they might explode. Turning on her heel, she walked back down the pathway toward the parking lot.

Liam sat on the bench, his body shaking, and watched her go.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he whispered, and the little boy relaxed against his neck once more. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Although he couldn’t see the parking lot because of the landscaping, he heard Sheila’s car door slam and the engine turn over, and he felt pleased that she was leaving. He would have to find a way to repair the damage he’d just done to his relationship with her, but he didn’t want Sheila in Mara’s room with him and Sam today.

“I’m sorry you had a rough day, Sam,” he said, rocking the boy a little. “I’m so sorry.”

Damn, this was hard! There was so much he wanted to talk to Mara about, so much he needed to talk to her about. He wanted to tell her what Sheila had done to Sam, to ask if, perhaps, Mara did approve. How did she feel about it? Maybe he had projected his values about parenting onto Mara, since she could no longer speak for herself.

He wished he could tell Mara that her mother was stuck in denial. That he was, too, at times. It was so comfortable there, in that imaginary place where there was always hope. Hope was both friend and enemy, he knew: it kept him going, but it also prevented him from planning realistically for the future. And in his darkest moments, he was certain Mara’s future was in that bed in the nursing home. He honestly didn’t know how to plan his life around that indisputable fact.

When he and Sam arrived home after their visit with Mara, they played with blocks and read books. All the while, Liam had only one thing on his mind: he wanted to talk to Joelle. He told himself it would be a mistake, but the thought would not leave his head.

He managed to avoid calling her until after he’d gone to bed that night, when the image of his confused baby son being turned over Sheila’s knee filled his mind. Without stopping to think, he lifted the receiver from the night table and dialed Joelle’s number.

“Hello?” Her voice was thick, and he knew she’d been sleeping.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he said. “I just have a quick question.”

“What is it?” She sounded instantly awake. He pictured her sitting up in bed, her long, dark hair messy from sleep and her heart beating quickly as she realized it was him on the phone.

“Do you know how Mara felt about spanking?” he asked.

There was a beat of silence on Joelle’s end of the line. “I…I don’t know specifically,” she said, “but my guess is she wouldn’t want to handle discipline that way. Are you having some trouble with Sam?”

He laughed, the sound almost alien to his ears. It had been a long time since he’d laughed about anything with Joelle, but he quickly sobered. “No,” he said. “I’m having trouble with Sheila. She spanked Sam today.”

“What happened?”

“He was screaming in the grocery store,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter what happened. He’s a baby. He can’t do anything bad enough to merit a spanking.”

“You sound so upset.” The tenderness in her voice made the muscles in his chest contract. “I am upset,” he said. “But then I realized I had no idea how Mara would feel about it. About spanking.”

Another beat of silence. “Hon,” Joelle said. “It doesn’t really matter how Mara would feel about it. What matters is how you feel.”

“I can’t stand the thought of anyone hurting him,” he said.

“Then don’t let them,” she said. “He’s your son. You make the rules.”

“I…” If he said another word, he’d lose his resolve. “Thanks,” he said quickly. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at work.” He hung up abruptly. He pictured her staring at her phone with a puzzled look on her face, wondering if she’d said something to make him hang up like that. He’d wanted to ask her more questions. How did he stop Sheila from hitting Sam, for example, when he was completely dependent on her in so many ways? But he’d been afraid that any more conversation on the subject, any more words of loving comfort from Joelle would put an end to his carefully maintained defenses. It had happened before, and he feared it could happen again, because what he really wanted was to have her here in bed with him, holding her close, his hands tangled in her hair, one of her legs nestled between his, all night long.

14

IT WAS OBVIOUS TO JOELLE THAT LIAM WAS AVOIDING HER THE following day. He’d not been in his office when she arrived at work, and he skipped out early from the peer supervision meeting he, Joelle and Paul held each week in the conference room. But Joelle had even bigger things on her mind than Liam’s phone call of the night before.

As of today, she was twelve weeks pregnant, and she was finally going to say those words out loud to someone other than herself. She found it difficult to concentrate on the patients she saw in the maternity unit that morning, because she was on the lookout for Rebecca Reed, who never seemed to be in the corridor or at the nurses’ station the same time she was. In the afternoon, Rebecca would be seeing patients in her office, and although that office was in the maternity unit, she would be too busy to take time out for Joelle.

Her pregnancy was still quite easy to hide. She definitely had a rounded belly, and she’d bought a few loose-fitting dresses and tops to wear, so that when she truly had to wear baggier clothing, the change in style wouldn’t be so obvious to her co-workers. She no longer needed to use the bathroom every few minutes, but she was beginning to get a strange achy feeling in her groin that made her glad she was finally going to see a doctor. She had to know her baby was all right.

She didn’t spot Rebecca until nearly noon. The doctor was talking with Serena Marquez at the nurses’ station, a stack of patient charts in her arms. Joelle greeted the two women briefly, not wanting to interrupt their conversation. Taking a seat at the counter, she hoped Serena would leave the station before Rebecca did, and she was in luck. One of the nurses asked Serena to check on a patient, leaving Rebecca and Joelle alone at the counter.

Rebecca sat down, opened one of the charts she’d been carrying and began to write. Almost immediately, Joelle moved to the seat next to her, and Rebecca looked over at her with a quick smile before returning to her notes.

“Sorry to interrupt, Rebecca,” Joelle said, “but would you have some time today to talk with me? Maybe after you’re done seeing your patients this afternoon?”

“Do you have a problem patient?” Rebecca asked without taking her eyes or her hand from the chart.

“Yes,” Joelle said. “Me.”

Rebecca stopped writing. She looked at Joelle, her eyebrows raised and frank curiosity in her face. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be done around five. Can you come to my office then?”

“Thanks,” Joelle said. “I’ll be there.” She stood up and started walking toward the cafeteria, thinking she would go to Rebecca’s office a bit after five in the hope that the doctor’s staff would have left by then. The fewer people who saw her there, the better.

She spotted Liam sitting alone at their usual table near the cafeteria window and took a seat across from him, glad he had not skipped lunch in an effort to avoid her.

“Where’s Paul?” she asked as she opened her napkin and rested it on her lap.

“He’s swamped,” Liam said. “He’ll be late.”

He’d sounded so miserable on the phone the night before, so distressed at the thought of Sam being hurt. He had to have been in a deep, dark crater to have called her. Awkward though it had been, she’d been thrilled he’d turned to her the way he used to.

“How are you?” she asked him as she raised her glass of milk to her lips.

“I’m all right.” He looked directly at her. “Sorry I bothered you last night,” he said.

“It was no bother,” she said. “Did you decide how you’re going to handle the situation with Sheila?”

“I’ve got it covered, thanks.” He tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee, a barely perceptible tremor in his hand. Like hell he had it covered, she thought.

“Oh.” She leaned toward him, wishing she could touch that trembling hand. “Let me help you. You don’t need to—”

“Hi, Paul,” Liam interrupted her, looking above her head, and she turned to see Paul about to set his tray on the table.

“Will this day never end?” Paul said as he lowered himself into the chair.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked with sudden enthusiasm, as though he wanted nothing more than to talk with Paul about his cases.

“Three new AIDS admissions, one of them a fourteen-year-old girl,” Paul said. “Two child abuse cases. One little boy about to die. You know, the usual.”

“I might be able to help you out later,” Joelle said to Paul. Her load today was comparatively light.

Liam began questioning Paul about the details of his cases, exhibiting insatiable curiosity that Joelle knew was born of his desire to avoid talking about his own problems, and she grew quiet. As soon as she had finished eating, she excused herself and went up to the general surgery floor to see if she was needed there. It was too hard to be around Liam when he was shutting her out, cutting himself off from the friendship she still longed to give him.

That afternoon, she whisked through her referrals, then helped Paul with his cases, not allowing herself any free time. She didn’t want that much time to think. At five o’clock, someone else would finally know what was happening to her body. The contents of her mind and heart, though, would have to remain hidden.

At quarter after five, she sat down in the chair across the desk from Rebecca Reed and offered the doctor a weak smile.

“Thanks for seeing me,” she said.

Rebecca shoved aside a stack of charts to give Joelle her full attention. “So,” she said, “what’s up with you?” Even at the end of a long day, the doctor’s blond hair was still neatly, sleekly, pulled back into a clasp at the nape of her neck, and her face looked freshly scrubbed, her skin smooth and glowing.

Joelle had spoken about her personal problems once before with Rebecca, many years earlier, when she and Rusty had been unable to conceive. Rebecca had been her usual cool and clinical self, giving Joelle the names of several fertility specialists, spelling out their credentials and offering her own opinion of each of them, but she’d offered Joelle no words of sympathy, no hand-holding, and Joelle had not expected any. That was not Rebecca’s style. She didn’t expect any sympathy now, either. What she needed was excellent clinical skills embodied in a woman who was certain not to either meddle or gossip.

“I have to ask for complete confidentiality,” Joelle began, and Rebecca smiled.

“Is there any other kind?” she asked.

Joelle could not smile back. “Right. I guess not,” she said. She looked squarely at Rebecca and took in a breath. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

Rebecca raised her eyebrows and for a moment seemed speechless. “Wow,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Wow.”

“Lousy timing, isn’t it?” Joelle asked.

Rebecca folded her arms across her chest and shook her head in what Joelle thought was wonder. “Well, there was a time when I would have congratulated you on this news and broken out the Perrier,” Rebecca said, “but I’m not quite sure what to say right now. Is this good news for you or not? Or would you prefer not to discuss it?”

“It’s a…mixed blessing, I guess.” Joelle ran her fingertips over the smooth edge of Rebecca’s desk. “It wasn’t planned. I’m not married, of course, and I have no plans to be. But still—” she looked at Rebecca “—you know how much I wanted a baby.”

“When was the first day of your last period?” Rebecca asked.

“My periods are so irregular,” Joelle said. “I couldn’t begin to tell you. But I do know that I’m exactly twelve weeks pregnant as of today.”

“You know the moment of conception, then, huh?” Rebecca smiled, almost warmly.

“Yes.”

Leaning forward, Rebecca rested her elbows on her desk. “If conception actually occurred twelve weeks ago, that would probably make you around fourteen weeks pregnant.”

“Fourteen weeks? What do you mean?” Joelle asked.

“We count from the first day of your last period. Usually, that’s a couple of weeks prior to the actual date of conception.”

“I never knew that,” Joelle said, bewildered to suddenly find herself two weeks further along than she’d thought she was. “I’ve worked in the maternity unit all these years and never knew that.”

“Well, it’s the ultrasound that will give us the most accurate reading on how far along you are.” Rebecca cocked her head to one side. “I just need to make sure you know you can still have an abortion at fourteen weeks.”

Joelle shook her head. “How could I do that after trying for so long to get pregnant?”

“Yes, of course,” Rebecca said. “I just want to be sure you know your options.”

“I do,” Joelle said. She glanced at the wall of framed diplomas near the window of the office. “I wanted to ask if you would be my obstetrician,” she said.

Rebecca nodded. “Of course.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “How about we start right now. Do you have time for your first prenatal exam?”

Joelle was relieved. That was the invitation she’d been hoping for. She needed to know the baby she’d been neglecting, at least from the perspective of prenatal care, was healthy. “I haven’t felt any movement,” she said, getting to her feet. “If I’m fourteen weeks, shouldn’t I be feeling something?”

“Not yet, but you will soon enough.” Rebecca guided Joelle toward one of the small examination rooms. “Let’s see what the sonogram tells us.”

Rebecca left her alone in the room, where Joelle undressed, put on a blue gown and climbed onto the table.

In a moment, Rebecca returned to the room. After a gentle examination, she began to squeeze warm gel on her stomach.

“I’ve been having some pain down here.” Joelle moved her hands along either side of her groin. “A pulling sort of feeling.”

Rebecca nodded. “Ligament pain,” she said. “That’s normal.” She began sliding the transducer back and forth over Joelle’s belly as an image formed on the monitor.

Joelle had never been able to make out those blurry fetal pictures, but Rebecca was an excellent interpreter.

“This is the head,” she said, pointing to the image in the center of the screen. “These little buds will become his or her arms and legs. Look, you can see one of the hands already. And most importantly, here’s the heart.”

“Oh!” Joelle lifted her head to get a better look at the pulsing speck of life on the monitor. “How beautiful! How big is it?” she asked. “The baby? The fetus?”

“About three and a half inches long,” Rebecca said. “And you are most definitely fourteen weeks, Joelle.”

“Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the small, flat pillow. “I feel so guilty for waiting this long to see you. To get prenatal care. Fourteen weeks!”

“Would you like a due date?” Rebecca did not seem to be listening to her ruminations. Instead, she was fiddling with a chart on the counter.

“I figured it would be in mid-January,” Joelle said.

“How about January first?” Rebecca said. “A New Year’s baby.”

A New Year’s baby. It would be just her luck to make the papers as having the first baby of the new year.

“You won’t be able to keep this a secret too much longer,” Rebecca said.

Joelle looked at her. “I plan to move before it becomes that apparent,” she said, then added quickly, “Please keep that between you and me, Rebecca. No one knows. I haven’t turned in my resignation or mentioned it to anyone yet.”

Rebecca frowned as she slipped the transducer back in its holder. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You can’t leave. You’re an institution in the Women’s Wing.”

“Thanks,” Joelle said, staring at the ceiling, “but I want to go.”

Rebecca wiped the gel from her stomach with a towel. “You don’t need to name names,” she said, “but could you please tell me if the baby’s father will be involved during this pregnancy? Will you have support from him? Does he live somewhere else? Is that why you’ll be moving, to be closer to him?”

Joelle shook her head. “No,” she said. “The father won’t be involved.”

He’s married, she wanted to say. He’s overwhelmed by life already. I can’t burden him with one more thing. He can barely look me in the eye, much less be a father to my child.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked as she helped Joelle to sit up.

“I don’t know yet,” Joelle said, turning to dangle her legs over the side of the table. “Someplace I can start fresh with this baby.”

“Are you running away from something?” Rebecca probed.

“I don’t know.” Joelle shrugged. “No. Yes. Maybe.” She smiled an apology at the doctor for being so evasive. “The important thing is, can you be my obstetrician until I leave, Rebecca? I mean, without telling anyone? Or will that put you in too much of a bind?”

“I’ll be your doctor,” Rebecca said. “But people love you here, Joelle.” It seemed odd to hear the word love come from those ordinarily cool and dispassionate lips. “I hope you have a very good reason for going.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

As she was unlocking the outside door to her condo that evening, Tony, one-half of the gay couple who lived downstairs, poked his head out his front door.

“Joelle!” he said. “Come join us for dinner. We made stuffed portobello mushrooms and we got carried away. There’s more than we can eat.”

“Oh, thanks, Tony.” She smiled at him with a shake of her head. “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Well, we’ll save you some, then,” Tony said, disappearing inside his condo again.

She walked up the stairs and into her own condo, remembering the last time she’d eaten with her neighbors. She’d made a huge pot of fish stew and invited Tony and Gary over to help her eat it. The three of them had stayed up half the night, drinking a little too much and singing oldies off-key. She liked those guys. They were by no means her closest friends, but they had potential. If she were staying in the area, maybe they would have liked being honorary daddies. Maybe even her labor coaches.

You’ve been watching too many sitcoms on TV, she told herself as she lifted the telephone receiver to check her voice mail. She had one message, the mechanical voice told her, and she pressed her code to hear it.

“Hello, Joelle, a.k.a. Shanti Joy,” a woman’s voice said.

Joelle frowned. Carlynn Shire?

“This is Carlynn Shire,” the woman said, answering her question. “I’ve been thinking about you, and was wondering why I haven’t heard from you. How is your friend doing? Would you still like me to see her? If you would, give me a call.” She left her number, and Joelle wrote it down on the cover of a catalog resting on the kitchen counter.

How strange, she thought with a bit of annoyance. Apparently Alan Shire had neglected to tell Carlynn he had asked Joelle not to call her. Yet, she was pleased to hear the older woman’s message.

Setting down her purse and appointment book, she dialed the number.

“Shire residence.” It was a man’s voice. For a moment she was afraid it might belong to Alan Shire, but then she remembered the man who had called to set up her first meeting with Carlynn. This was most certainly his voice.

“This is Joelle D’Angelo,” she said. “May I speak with Carlynn Shire, please?”

“Please hold for a moment,” the man said, and several minutes passed before Carlynn came on the line.

“Hello, Joelle!” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m all right, Carlynn, but I have to say I was surprised to hear from you.”

“Why is that?”

Joelle sat on a stool at the counter. “Maybe you didn’t know this,” she said carefully, “but your husband contacted me. He told me you were retired and having some health problems and would rather not be seeing people. That’s why I didn’t call. I didn’t want to bother you again.”

There was a moment of silence on the line. “Alan called you?” Carlynn asked.

“No, he came to see me at the hospital where I work.”

“And he said…?”

“He said you’re retired and ill, that healing takes too much out of you, that—”

“Oh, horsefeathers,” Carlynn said. “He’s an old worrywart, isn’t he? He’s right that I’m retired, and he’s right that I’m ill, and there are few cases I’d be willing to take on these days, but you touched me with the story of your friend Mara. I would truly like to see her, Joelle.”

“Thank you,” she said, liking Carlynn a great deal for remembering Mara’s name. “But, Carlynn…” She hesitated, wondering if she should bring this up. “Another thing your husband said concerned me. He said that talking to me would remind you of… I know you lost your sister right around the time I was born.”

“That was a very long time ago, Joelle.” Carlynn sounded completely unconcerned. “It overjoys me to see that a life I touched back then has flourished in spite of what I lost. So put that right out of your mind.”

“All right, I will,” Joelle said, thinking that Carlynn seemed quite capable of making her own decisions, despite her husband’s concerns.

“Okay, then,” Carlynn said. “So, dear, when shall we see your friend?”

15

CARLYNN FOUND ALAN SITTING AT THE TABLE ON THE TERRACE, his feet up on one of the other chairs, a book in his lap, although he was not reading. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the gardeners working in the side yard.

She sat down on the other side of the table, and Alan glanced at her, then nodded in the direction of the yard.

“Crazy old man,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “Who?”

“Quinn,” he said.

She followed his gaze to one of the taller cypress trees, and saw the elderly man standing on a ladder, his head buried somewhere beneath the branches of the tree. She could see his weathered dark hands working the pruning shears. She shook her head.

“He can’t hold still, can he?” she said with a smile. “Quinn!” she called. “Come down from there. You’re going to kill yourself.”

He didn’t respond, and she knew that he had either not heard her or was going to pretend that he had not. She knew Quinn would rather die by falling out of a tree than by the slow, miserable route she seemed compelled to endure.

“I need to talk with you, Alan,” she said, shifting her gaze back to the terrace.

“Should you be out here in the sun?” Alan turned to ask her, his eyes masked behind his sunglasses.

“I don’t plan to be out here long,” she said. “I just wanted to understand why you would talk to Joelle D’Angelo behind my back.”

“Who?”

“You know who. The social worker who wanted me to see her friend. Why are you interfering in my business?”

“I think it’s my business, too, don’t you?” he asked. The sunlight on his head made the thick shock of his hair even whiter.

“Not really,” she said.

“Well.” He closed his book and set it down on the table. “I went to see her because A) you’re not well, and B) you’re not thinking straight.”

“I know I’m not well,” she said, “but there’s nothing wrong with my thinking.”

“There has to be if you’re willing to take on a healing,” he said. “For the last ten years I haven’t had to worry about you. I don’t want to start that up all over again.”

“You’re operating out of fear, Alan,” she said. He always had. “I know your intentions are good and that you’re trying to protect me. To protect all we’ve built together. But this girl— Joelle—needs me.”

“And without you, what will happen to her? Will she explode? Die? What? You’re not going to heal her friend. There’s nothing in the universe that can be done to help a woman that brain-damaged. You’re just giving Joelle false hope.”

“It’s not her friend I’m interested in.” She looked down at her hands. They were not so yellow today, or perhaps it was the sun that made them look a bit less like the hands of a woman dying from hepatitis. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my sister lately,” she said. “I may be going to see her soon.” She smiled, knowing she would irk Alan with that sort of talk. She’d always liked the open-ended nature of spiritual questions, while Alan, ever the physician, had no patience for them.

“Well,” Alan said, “if you see her, send her my regards.”

Carlynn leaned toward him across the table. “I’m not particularly proud of the life I’ve led, Alan,” she said. “I need to find a way to set it right.”

“And this is it?” he asked. “Helping the social worker’s friend?”

“Yes,” she said, rising to her feet. She rested one hand on his shoulder and bent low to buss his temple. “Please don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be very careful. I promise.”

16

JOELLE SLOWED HER CAR TO SKIRT A GOLF CART PARKED AT THE side of the road. She and Carlynn were driving north along the Seventeen Mile Drive, heading toward Pacific Grove and the nursing home. “Was Alan upset about you coming with me today?” she asked as they passed the pricey and beautiful Inn at Spanish Bay.

“You have to forgive Alan,” Carlynn said, without answering the question directly. “He’s very overprotective of me.”

“Has he always been that way?” Joelle took her eyes from the road to glance at the older woman.

“Not in the beginning,” Carlynn said. “But once people began going to great lengths to try to see me, hoping I could heal them, he really worried that I was either overdoing it, or that some loony person might try to kidnap me or heaven knows what.”

Joelle smiled to herself. It was funny to hear someone who claimed to be a healer refer to anyone other than herself as loony.

“Are you…forgive me for prying,” Joelle said. “Is your illness very serious?”

Carlynn nodded. “I have hepatitis C,” she said. “Apparently I contracted it thirty-four years ago, when I was hospitalized after the accident and needed a transfusion. But it was silent until a couple of years ago.”

Joelle remembered that hepatitis C was serious, but knew little more than that. “What about treatment?” she asked.

“I’m done with that,” Carlynn said. “I had a couple of rounds of the best drugs medicine has to offer, but the side effects were horrendous and the treatment simply didn’t work for me. I could go through it again, but frankly, I’d rather live a comfortable six months or so than a miserable year or two.”

“I’m sorry,” Joelle said. “It sounds as though it’s been pretty frustrating for you.”

“Well, I feel fairly good these days,” Carlynn said with a nod. “So much better than I did when I was taking those drugs. Then I could barely get out of bed.”

“Seeing Mara might tire you out terribly, though.” Joelle suddenly wondered if she should have paid more attention to Alan Shire’s concerns.

“I’d like to do some good before I die,” Carlynn said.

“You’ve already done a great deal of good, though,” Joelle said.

Carlynn smiled and turned to look at her. “I want to see Mara, Joelle,” she said firmly but kindly. “And that’s the final word.”

She obviously didn’t want sympathy, so Joelle changed the subject.

“How long have you and Alan been married?” she asked. They were nearing the Pacific Grove gate, and Carlynn waved at the toll taker as they passed by.

“Forty-three years. We met when I was in medical school. I was keeping my abilities to myself back then, but he sensed there was something different about me.”

Joelle glanced at her again and saw that she was smiling, perhaps at the memory. Today, Carlynn wore a yellow T-shirt beneath denim overalls, a blue-and-yellow-striped scarf tied at her neck, tennis shoes and small, round sunglasses. She looked very thin, yes, and her skin was probably more yellow than it should be, but otherwise it would be hard to guess that this was a woman with a terminal illness.

“I envy you for being married so long to someone who cares enough to protect you,” Joelle said as she turned in the direction of the nursing home.

That coy little smile again. “Yes, I’ve been lucky. And I’m sorry about your divorce. It must have been difficult for you.”

“Yes, it was,” she said. “I think I told you that we were unable to have children. So, my husband found someone he could have children with.”

“Oh, my, I am sorry.” Carlynn shook her head. “Alan and I could have no children, either, so I know how you must have felt.”

“But Alan didn’t leave.” Joelle turned the corner into the parking lot of the nursing home.

“No, I think our generation was quite different from yours. And Alan and I were bound together by so much… So very much.” Carlynn looked lost in her own thoughts for a moment, then she suddenly sat up straight in the seat. “Is this the nursing home? Let me shift my mental gears, then,” she said, taking off her sunglasses and folding them in her lap. “Let me sit quietly. I want to get ready to meet your Mara.”

Joelle parked the car and turned off the ignition. “Shall I leave you alone?” she asked.

“Just for a few minutes,” Carlynn said. “I’ll open my door so I don’t suffocate.” She giggled like a little girl as she opened the passenger-side door.

“There’s a bench by the front door of the building,” Joelle said. “I’ll meet you there, all right?”

“Fine.” Carlynn leaned her head against the headrest, folded her hands around her sunglasses in her lap, and closed her eyes.

Joelle walked slowly up the path to the bench near the front door of the nursing home. This whole situation was starting to feel a bit hokey to her now. The so-called shifting of mental gears, the sitting quietly to prepare herself for meeting Mara. The healer herself dying of hepatitis. Maybe Alan Shire had been trying to protect Joelle from being suckered. Whatever. It was too late now to change her mind.

She hoped she had timed the visit accurately. It was nearly five. She knew Liam would be visiting Mara alone today, without Sam and Sheila, and even if she and Carlynn spent a full hour with Mara, they would still have time to get out of the nursing home before he arrived. As long as Liam was not early, they would be all right.

Joelle didn’t understand why, but Sheila had turned cold to her recently. She and Sheila and Liam had been a real team after Mara became ill, working together to get her the best care possible. Sheila would often call Joelle for her opinion of a particular doctor’s suggested treatment or of a nursing home’s skill level, and sometimes she’d simply call for consolation or to chat. Joelle had felt like a true member of the family. Although she couldn’t pinpoint the moment she’d noticed a change, Joelle no longer received phone calls from Sheila. As a matter of fact, Sheila barely even spoke to her when they bumped into one another, not even offering her a smile. Joelle had called her once a couple of months ago to ask if she had done something to offend her, and Sheila pretended she had no idea what she was talking about. That left very little room for resolving the situation, and Joelle had given up.

Carlynn walked up the path toward her, using her cane, with only a hint of a limp in her gait. Joelle drew in a deep breath. Sorry if I’m making a big mistake, Mara. She stood up and led the older woman into the home.

Mara’s bed had been cranked up into a sitting position, and she looked exactly the way Joelle hated to see her look. She was asleep, her face slack, aging her fifteen years. Her mouth hung open a little, a rivulet of saliva trickling down her chin, and her short hair, which Joelle cut herself once a month, was disheveled from the pillow.

Joelle took Carlynn’s arm at the door of Mara’s room. “She’ll smile when she wakes up,” she whispered. “She’ll look as though she knows who I am, but I don’t believe she does.”

Carlynn nodded and followed Joelle into the room.

Joelle sat on the edge of Mara’s bed, while Carlynn stood off to one side.

“Mara.” Joelle touched the pale hand where it rested on the covers. “Mara? It’s Joelle, sweetie.”

Mara’s long, dark lashes fluttered open, and she smiled the instant she saw Joelle.

Joelle took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and wiped Mara’s chin with it. “Mara,” she said, “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Carlynn Shire.”

Mara didn’t shift her gaze from Joelle until Carlynn moved closer to the bed, stepping into her field of vision. She looked at Carlynn, that vacuous but eternally happy expression on her face. Carlynn had to be taken in by her beauty, Joelle thought, by the remarkable change in Mara’s face once she was awake and alert, if alert was the right word to use. Her black eyes were extraordinary, and even the messy haircut looked stylish on her.

“Hello, Mara.” Carlynn gently lifted one of Mara’s hands.

“Would you rather she be in her wheelchair?” Joelle asked, standing up from the edge of the bed.

“No,” Carlynn spoke to Mara, “let’s leave you in bed, where you’re probably more comfortable.”

Joelle sat in the chair near the night table, while Carlynn rested her cane against the table and took her place on the edge of Mara’s bed.

“My, you’re very beautiful,” Carlynn said. “I’ve spoken with Joelle, and she told me all about you. How deep your friendship is with her. How much she loves you. You are a much-loved person.”

Mara merely blinked her eyes. Joelle was certain she had no understanding of Carlynn’s words.

“Would you like to have a gentle massage of your hands?” Carlynn asked, but Mara’s expression didn’t change.

“I think she would,” Joelle said. “I’ve done that for her sometimes.” She realized as she spoke that it had been a long time since she’d given Mara a massage. She used to rub her all over with moisturizing lotion, and it had made her feel as though she was at least trying to help her friend. Sometime in the past year, she’d given up. Did Liam still do that, massage Mara, touch her that way, with gentleness? She hoped so.

Carlynn reached into her large handbag and brought out a bottle of lotion. Joelle craned her neck to see the label, expecting the lotion to contain special herbal ingredients or at least something out of the ordinary, but it was a plain pink bottle of baby lotion.

Carlynn poured some of the lotion onto her own palm, then gently lifted one of Mara’s limp hands and began a slow, tender massage. Joelle remained quiet, not even watching the two women after a while, just listening as Carlynn spoke to Mara in an even, almost hypnotic, tone.

“This feels so good, doesn’t it, Mara?” Carlynn asked. “Yes, you like the way it feels. You like to be touched with caring, I think. You can tell the difference if someone cares or not. You are very wise that way.”

After a while, Carlynn stopped talking and Joelle looked up to see Mara’s gaze fastened on the older woman. There wasn’t a sound in the room, and Joelle looked at their hands. One of Mara’s hands lay limp in Carlynn’s, but the fingers of her right hand, her so-called “good” hand, were moving against Carlynn’s palm. She was massaging her! Could it possibly be? She didn’t dare stand up to see, but something was happening between Mara and the healer. Something Joelle was not a part of.

Mara’s eyes gradually fell shut and her breathing grew even, but Joelle felt certain that her face lacked the flaccid, droopy look of her usual sleep. Her facial muscles looked merely relaxed rather than limp and wasted.

Carlynn turned to smile at Joelle, then silently replaced the cap on the baby lotion. She was getting up from the bed when Liam walked into the room.

“Joelle!” he said, stopping short. He looked at Carlynn, then back at Joelle. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Of course he hadn’t. She had told him she was leaving work early to go to a doctor’s appointment.

“Liam, this is Carlynn Shire,” she said, motioning toward the older woman, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her name.

“Hello, Carlynn.” He reached out to shake her hand, then frowned. “Are you the Carlynn Shire of the Shire Mind and Body Center?” he asked.

“Yes.” Carlynn smiled warmly at him, reaching for her cane. “Although I’m retired now.”

Joelle saw his jaw muscles tighten beneath the skin of his cheeks and knew he was angry. He controlled himself, though, as he turned toward her.

“How is she today?” he asked, but there were a dozen other questions in his eyes.

“I think she’s doing very well,” Joelle said, wanting to get Carlynn and herself out of the room as quickly as she could. “Carlynn gave her a hand massage, and now we’re on our way out.”

Mara opened her eyes again, and when she saw Liam she let out the little squeal of childish joy that she seemed to save only for him. She raised her one good arm an inch or so off the bed, and he moved toward her, leaning over to kiss her unresponsive lips. Then he lifted one of her soft, baby-lotioned hands and held it tightly against his hip as he turned to Joelle.

“Could I speak with you a moment before you go?” he asked.

Damn. “Sure,” she said. “Carlynn, would you mind waiting in the hall for me?”

Liam waited until Carlynn had left the room.

“What the hell’s going on?” Liam asked, the words coming out slowly and deliberately as he worked to keep his voice calm. Joelle knew he wouldn’t raise his voice around Mara.

“I…could we talk about this later?” she asked.

“You bet we can,” he said. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“All right.” She picked up her purse and left the room. She’d wanted to hear those words from him for over three months now. I’ll call you. This was one call, though, she wasn’t looking forward to.

Both she and Carlynn were quiet for the first mile or so of the drive back to the mansion, and Joelle was barely aware of the older woman’s presence. Liam was furious with her, and rightly so. She should not have brought Carlynn to see Mara without his permission. She’d crossed some ethical boundary, perhaps, one she couldn’t identify but knew was there. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have hidden the visit from him.

Until Mara’s aneurysm, she had rarely, if ever, seen Liam angry. She’d certainly witnessed his frustration over some of the cases in the hospital, when he was helpless in the face of whatever fate had planned for a particular patient, or when he felt he could help someone but the policies of the hospital or some other bureaucracy got in his way. He felt the plight of his patients deeply, much as she did. They had learned together over the years how to walk the line between distance and overinvolvement with their patients, how to maintain enough objectivity to be able to help, without losing their humanity in the process. It was something they used to talk about often—the broad philosophical aspects of their work. She’d loved those talks, and their relationship had been strong enough to allow them to disagree with one another without breaking down. That, she knew, was no longer true.

They reached the Pacific Grove gate to the Seventeen Mile Drive. The man at the tollbooth waved them through, and once on the Drive, Carlynn finally spoke.

“I think I can help Mara,” she said. “There is still a great deal of energy and grace left in your friend. I think I can tap into that, but it will take time.”

Joelle thought back to what she had witnessed in the nursing home. “She was massaging your hand, wasn’t she?” she asked.

“It seemed that way to me.” Carlynn smiled.

Joelle knew she would never be able to bring Carlynn back to the nursing home now that Liam had seen her there and had reacted the way he did. But she didn’t want to address that with Carlynn just then.

“I honestly thought she looked better by the time we were ready to leave,” Joelle said.

“Well, of course, we’d both like to think that. Only time will tell if we’re fooling ourselves or not. It doesn’t always work, Joelle. You must understand that.”

Joelle laughed. “It’s harder for me to accept that it sometimes does work,” she said. She glanced at Carlynn. “Do I pay you per visit or…?”

“You don’t pay me at all,” she said. “I’m retired. I only work when I truly want to. And from what you’ve told me, Mara is worth my time and energy.”

“Thank you,” Joelle said.

They fell silent again as they drove past the entrance to the Spyglass Hill Golf Course. After another minute or two, Joelle pulled into the driveway of the Kling Mansion and started to press the buzzer on the stone pillar.

“3273,” Carlynn said.

“What?” Joelle asked.

“That’s the code. Just press 3273.”

Joelle did so, and the gate slid open. She pulled all the way up the driveway and stopped the car near the house.

Carlynn made no move to get out of the car. Instead, she looked at Joelle. She was no longer wearing her sunglasses, and her gaze was steady and, somehow, disquieting. “There’s much you haven’t told me, isn’t there?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Joelle put the car in park and took her foot off the brake pedal.

“I mean, with Liam. With you and Liam, perhaps?”

Joelle thought back to the scene in Mara’s room, wondering what Carlynn had gathered in those few awkward moments. She was about to tell the older woman she was imagining things, but found herself nodding, instead.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come in.” Carlynn nodded toward the house. “Turn off your car, come inside, and let’s talk.”

Obediently, Joelle turned off the ignition, stepped out of the car and walked with Carlynn up to the front door of the mansion.

Mrs. McGowan, the housekeeper with the Irish accent, greeted them at the door and took Carlynn’s handbag from her.

“Have you two met?” Carlynn looked from the housekeeper to Joelle.

“Yes, indeed.” The housekeeper smiled. “She thought I was you at first.”

Carlynn laughed at that, and Joelle blushed.

“We’re going in the library for a little chat,” Carlynn said to Mrs. McGowan. “Please let Alan know we’d rather not be disturbed.”

“Would you like something to nibble while you’re there?” the housekeeper offered.

“Please, dear.” Carlynn then took Joelle’s elbow and walked slowly with her through the living room and into the library. A large room, though not nearly as big as the living room, the library had one wall of windows looking out on the sea and cypress, and three walls covered from floor to ceiling with books.

Joelle sat at one end of the leather sofa, while Carlynn sat at the other, turning to face her. Behind Carlynn’s head, Joelle could see the evening fog rolling in, pink-tinged from the falling sun.

“So, tell me,” Carlynn said, folding her hands in her lap once again. “Tell me what made you freeze up when Liam walked into the room.”

“Did I freeze up?” Joelle asked.

“You did, indeed.” Carlynn wore a small frown.

“I hadn’t told him I’d contacted you to see Mara,” Joelle said. “He’s even more skeptical about healers than I am, so I hadn’t really wanted him to know.”

Carlynn tipped her head to the side. “And what else?”

“What else is that…I’m in love with him.” She blurted out the words, but Carlynn did not look the least bit surprised.

“Yes,” the older woman said gently. “I know.”

“How could you possibly know?”

“Because it was written all over your face when he walked in and when you watched him kiss his wife,” she said. “I didn’t need to possess any special gift to see that.”

Joelle shut her eyes and covered one side of her face with her hand. She felt exposed. “It’s so complicated,” she said.

“Tell me.”

Lowering her hand from her face, Joelle leaned back against the cool leather of the sofa, letting out a sigh. “Well,” she said slowly, “I told you how I fixed them up, right?”

Carlynn nodded.

“At that time, I just liked Liam a great deal, and I loved Mara.”

“Yes, she was your closest friend,” Carlynn said. “Your confidante. A sister you never had.” It had been weeks since she’d last spoken to Carlynn about this, but the woman seemed to remember their conversation well.

“Right.” Joelle nodded. “And they were so very wonderful together. They were perfect. I had no bad feelings about it at all…well, except a bit of envy because I knew how good their marriage was and how lousy mine was. My ex-husband and I would go out with them from time to time, but Rusty, my ex, just didn’t fit in. He was very quiet. Into computers. Into working with machines instead of working with people, the way Liam, Mara and I were. After Rusty and I divorced, Mara and Liam were very good to me. They always included me in parties they had, and they asked me out with them now and then, even though I was single.” Other couples with whom she and Rusty had been friends had faded away, but not Mara and Liam. “Mara and I still had lunch together once a week or so, and we’d go hiking every once in a while. She never let her marriage cut into our…girl-time.” Joelle shook her head. “I miss her so much,” she said.

“I’m sure you do,” Carlynn said, and it suddenly occurred to Joelle that Carlynn had lost a flesh-and-blood sister, a twin. She probably understood completely what Joelle’s life was like now that Mara was no longer an active, contributing part of it.

There was a knock on the library door.

“Come in,” Carlynn said, looking past Joelle to the door.

The elderly man Joelle had previously seen working in the garden entered the room, bearing a tray of sandwiches and iced tea. He lowered it to the coffee table in front of them.

“Thanks, Quinn,” Carlynn said. “This is Joelle, by the way, a new friend of mine.” She motioned toward Joelle. “Joelle, this is Quinn.”

“Hello, Quinn.” Joelle nodded a greeting at the man.

“How do you do,” he said, then turned to Carlynn. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Carlynn said. “You’re a love.”

Quinn turned and started for the door, smiling at Joelle as he passed her, and she thought, although she was not certain, that he winked at her before shuffling away.

God, he seemed far too old to be working! And Mrs. McGowan had to be near seventy. Joelle doubted there would be many people willing to hire such old-timers. It was kind of Carlynn to keep them on.

Carlynn picked up one of the small plates with its crustless white-bread sandwich and handed it to Joelle, who took it, although she was not hungry. The filling was chicken salad. She could smell it as she rested the plate in her lap.

“You were telling me about your relationship with Liam and Mara,” Carlynn prompted, handing her a glass of iced tea.

Joelle set the tea on top of a wooden coaster on the coffee table and looked out the window. “After Sam was born,” she said, “and Mara had the aneurysm, it was Liam and I who stayed by her bedside in the hospital. She was in a coma for a couple of weeks, and we sang to her. At least Liam did.” She remembered him bringing his guitar into his wife’s hospital room, singing some of the songs he and Mara had often performed together, while Joelle stroked her arm or combed her hair. “I read to her, or just talked to her. We took turns being with her, along with Mara’s mother, Sheila, and Liam and I really started leaning on each other. He included me in all the decisions he needed to make about her. Her rehab. What nursing home to put her in. I felt like I was part of the family.”

“You were,” Carlynn said, swallowing a bite of her sandwich.

“I helped him with Sam.” She broke into a smile at the thought of the little boy. “He’s a treasure, Carlynn. You’ve never seen a cuter child. I love him to pieces, and I don’t know what Liam would do without him.” She bit a small corner from her sandwich, then swallowed it before continuing. “I tried to help Liam deal with all the mixed emotions he was having. He’d essentially lost a wife and gained a son. But he’d been the one who’d wanted the son in the first place, not Mara, so of course he felt terribly guilty.” She lifted her sandwich toward her mouth again, then set it down without taking a bite. “Liam and I talked every single night on the phone. Every night.”

“You’re using the past tense.”

Joelle nodded, sighing. “About three or four months ago, Sam had his first birthday. And, of course, that was also the one-year anniversary of Mara’s aneurysm. I helped Liam and Sheila celebrate Sam’s birthday, then afterward I was alone with Liam at his house, Sam was in bed, and we were both so upset. We’d been getting closer and closer all year. We loved each other.” She was confident of that fact. Confident that Liam had loved her as much as she did him. “And that night, it just…got out of hand.”

“You made love,” Carlynn said, and Joelle nodded. She stood up, struggling against the memory and unable to look at Carlynn at that moment. She walked over to the window to see that the fog had obliterated the view of the ocean and was now teasing the branches of the cypress trees behind the mansion.

“I went home afterward,” Joelle said, still facing the window. “I couldn’t get Mara’s face out of my head. I knew how she felt about fidelity. My God, we’d talked about that sort of thing so often. We both felt so strongly about it, about the sanctity of marriage and wedding vows. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I was like a teenager who didn’t know any better. Who didn’t know that A would lead to B and on and on and on.”

She walked back to the sofa and sat down again, looking at the magazines arrayed neatly on the coffee table without really seeing them. “The next day,” she said, “he called me and said he felt worse than ever, that we never should have done that, that he was sorry, that we had to stop spending so much time together, that he still had a wife he loved. Etcetera.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Joelle. How painful for you.”

“I knew he was right. And yet…to just cut off our relationship like that. It was all I had left.”

“And all he had left, too.”

“He has Sam,” she said, and started to cry. “And now I’m cut off from both of them.”

“But you work together, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Every single day. And we have meetings together, and help each other out on cases, and eat lunch together with Paul, the other social worker, and we don’t ever really look each other in the eye. It’s torture.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“And there’s more,” Joelle said.

“Yes.” Carlynn wore a sympathetic smile.

“I’m pregnant.”

Carlynn nodded. “I know.”

“How could you have known that?” Joelle’s hands flew to her belly. She’d thought she had hidden her pregnancy well.

“I’m a good guesser.”

Joelle thought something other than guessing was at work here, but she continued. “Fifteen weeks pregnant. I thought about an abortion, but I’ve wanted a baby so long.”

“And Liam doesn’t know?”

“He has no idea.”

“When will you tell him?”

“I don’t plan to,” she said. “I’m going to leave before my pregnancy becomes too obvious. I’ll move away. I’m not sure where I’ll go yet. Maybe to Berkeley where my parents live.”

“Isn’t it unfair of you not to let Liam know?” Carlynn leaned toward her on the sofa.

Joelle shook her head. “There’s nothing he can do about my being pregnant except feel worse than he already does, Carlynn,” she said. “He can’t marry me.”

“Do you really want to leave Monterey?” Carlynn asked her.

Joelle hesitated a moment before answering. “Honestly, no. I love it here. But maybe I can come back someday.” She let out her breath, looking up at the ceiling. “This doesn’t have to be forever.”

“Does Liam still perform his music?” Carlynn asked the question seemingly out of the blue.

Joelle shook her head. “No. I don’t think he’s picked up his guitar since Mara went into the nursing home.”

“Well.” Carlynn set her sandwich plate on the coffee table. “There is one thing I know for absolute certain about you, Joelle.” There were tears in Carlynn’s eyes as she moved closer to Joelle, wrapping her thin hand around Joelle’s where it rested on her knees. “You are a tremendously noble human being.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Look at what you’re doing, honey. You love this man so deeply that you want to find a way to heal his wife, to return his wife to him, because you know that’s what will make him truly happy. Even though you love him. Even though you’re carrying his child. You’ve placed his happiness above your own. Few people would do that.”

A bit embarrassed, Joelle looked at her uneaten sandwich resting on the coffee table. “It feels good to love someone that much,” she said, her voice a near whisper. “It’s the only thing that feels good about this whole situation.”

“The next time I visit Mara,” Carlynn said, “I’d like Liam to be there, as well. Can you arrange that?”

Joelle grimaced. “I’m not even sure how he’s going to react to your being there today, Carlynn,” she said. “But I’ll ask him.”

“Good.” Carlynn patted her hand and stood up. “Now you’d better get out of here before the fog socks you in.”

Joelle nodded, although she was thinking it might not be that bad to be stuck in the mansion with Carlynn.

At the front door, she kissed Carlynn’s cheek.

“Thanks so much,” she said, opening the door and walking outside. The world was filled with translucent gray air, but all Joelle could think about was that she had a new confidante. An unexpected confidante.

Although she was not very far from Carmel, the fog obscured parts of the road, and she had to drive slowly. She felt trapped inside her car with nothing but the memory of that night with Liam.

She and Liam had sat with Sam on Liam’s bed, looking through a picture book with the little boy and singing him silly songs, like “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and “Pat-a-Cake,” and Sam didn’t care a bit that Joelle couldn’t carry a tune. He giggled and let her nibble his fingers while he cuddled with her and his dad. When Sam grew tired, Liam carried him into the nursery and tucked him into his crib, but Joelle stayed where she was on Liam’s bed. She was looking forward to talking with Liam about the day, and if she realized the sofa in the living room would be a more appropriate place for such conversation, she didn’t let herself think about it.

Liam came back into the room and fell forward onto the bed, his head resting on his folded arms. His face was turned toward her, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he seemed to be staring into space. The light on the night table caught the pale blue of his eyes, and she wanted to touch his cheek, the place where the long, sexy dimple formed when he smiled, but she kept her hands to herself instead.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked him.

He licked his lips. “About you, actually,” he said. “About how great you’ve been this year. How I couldn’t have made it without you. How good you are with Sam. How much I need those late-night phone conversations with you. How incredible you’ve been at helping me deal with all the nuts-and-bolts issues around Mara—the nursing home, dealing with her doctors, the whole gamut. You took so much of the pressure off me by being there.”

“I’m glad,” she said, touched.

With a sigh, Liam rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “We’ve been grappling with this mess for a year,” he said. “One long fucking year. My beautiful wife is a… She’s just gone. I don’t know who that person is inside that screwed-up body, but Mara’s not in there anymore.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Why didn’t I listen to her, Jo?” he asked, turning his head to look at her. “Why did I talk her into having a baby? If I’d only listened…really let myself hear…how afraid she was. How much she didn’t want to have a baby. She knew it was the wrong thing for her.”

“She made the choice, Liam. She—”

“It was my choice,” he said. “You know it and I know it. She did it for me. She had a selfish side to her, I know that, but she would have done anything for me. I begged her to do something she knew was wrong. She had a gut feeling about it, Jo.”

“I know,” she said. “But—”

“I destroyed her.” He began crying, like a child might cry, with rivers of tears and shaking shoulders, and Joelle wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, as though trying to keep the parts of him together. “I killed her, Jo,” he said.

“Liam, no,” she said, her own tears beginning to mix with his because she knew his words were, if only in his own heart and head, the truth.

He opened his eyes to look at her. Really look. She felt him explore her face as he lifted a long, thick strand of her hair from where it lay against her breast and draped it over her shoulder. “Thank you for being with me,” he said. “I love you.”

“And I love you.” She stared into his eyes for a moment before leaning forward to kiss him, and she wasn’t surprised when he met her halfway. The kiss was long and deep and started a hunger in her body she hadn’t felt for years. He leaned away from her, only to return for another kiss a second later, and when she slipped her tongue between his teeth, he groaned.

She was wearing a long, loose skirt, and as he rolled on top of her, he carved a place between her legs with his own, until she could feel his erection press against her through their clothes.

Slowly, Liam raised himself to his knees above her. Taking her hand, he pressed it to the bulge of his penis beneath his slacks, which were still zipped, still belted. He looked at her with the eyes of a man who had not known physical love in a year.

“Please,” he said.

There was no way she could deny him. It would have been like denying herself.

Lying next to him afterward, exhausted and chilled, she pressed her lips to his shoulder. “I love you,” she said, but there was no reply.

She didn’t feel it yet herself, but she knew it was coming. The guilt. She feared, though, that it had already found Liam. Without a word, he slipped out of the bed, leaving her skin cool where his body had been touching hers. He reached for the afghan that lay across the end of the bed and covered her with it, tucking it all around her as though he truly cared that she be comfortable and warm. He leaned over, and she felt him brush her hair from her forehead with his hand, then kiss her lightly on the temple. She heard him walk into the bathroom, then into the guest room, closing the door behind him. And she knew that she had both found and lost something, all in the same moment.

17

LIAM WONDERED IF JOELLE WAS SIMPLY IGNORING HIS CALLS. HE’D been trying to reach her since seven, when he’d arrived home from his visit to Mara. He left her one more message, calling her from the phone in his bedroom.

“Call me no matter what time it is when you get home,” he said.

There was no point in going to bed yet because he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d spoken to her, so he walked into the den and sat down at the computer desk. Once online, he navigated to the website that contained the essays—sometimes uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking—about aneurysm survivors. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth all evening, and he tried to relax as he looked through the website, but within moments he’d realize his jaw was clamped tight again.

There were no new essays on the site, even though he hadn’t visited it in a few days. He tried to read some of the older stories, but it was a struggle to find one that could still hold his interest. Those stories had offered him such hope in the beginning. They were written not only by the families of patients, but often by the patients themselves after they’d come back from the brink. In the beginning, he’d imagined Mara one day adding her own essay to the site, but that fantasy had evaporated along with his dreams for their future together.

He knew the essays by heart, and he had analyzed them. They fell into two broad categories: Either the patient had died within a few days, or they had begun their recovery. Sometimes that recovery was rapid, sometimes it was slow and involved many steps backward, but it always headed in the direction of rediscovered health. None described the limbo that had become Mara’s existence. He’d longed to find a story like Mara’s: a young woman, alive but not truly living, who’d left her husband with a small child and no promise of a future. If he found such a story, he would have written to that husband to ask him how he was handling it. How did he get up and keep going every day? How did he face his own future? How did he feel in the middle of the night when he woke up and reached for his wife, his lover, only to remember that she was lying in a nursing home and could offer him nothing more than a vacant smile?

How did other men in his position manage this? At the age of thirty-five, was he to have only his fantasies—and his own hand in the dark—as his wife and lover for the rest of his life? Would this man Liam searched for, but could not find, give in to temptation the way he had with Joelle?

In those moments when he could step away from the pain and the loss, he would ask himself if there might be a reason for what had happened to his family. What was he to learn from this? But he could see no lesson here. Just a cruel joke by a cruel god.

He recalled working with the husband of an Alzheimer’s patient a couple of years ago. The man had been in his sixties, and he’d slept with an acquaintance, a one-night stand. “I needed to know I was still a man,” he’d said.

Liam had maintained his professional composure, remaining nonjudgmental as he helped the man talk through his feelings of loss and grief. Personally, though, he had recoiled from the man’s words: “I needed to know I was still a man.” To himself, he’d thought, Selfish bastard. Whatever happened to your vow of “in sickness and in health”?

When he thought of that man now, he knew he’d been of little help to him. He hadn’t understood what it was like to lose that part of oneself. Not just sex, but the intimacy that accompanied it, the waking up together with stale breath and bad hair, and feeling love in spite of it all.

His head began to ache as his thinking turned in circles. If he hadn’t pushed Mara to have a child, she would be well. She’d still be that healthy, vibrant, bright, talented woman with whom he’d fallen in love. But then he would look at Sam and wonder how he had ever existed before having this child. Sam was a miracle wrapped up in flesh and blood, and the thought that he and Mara might never have created him was unthinkable. And yet, if Sam did not exist, Mara would be well. He could get lost in those thoughts, spinning in a circle that had no end.

He’d picked up Sam at Sheila’s that evening after visiting Mara. Once or twice a week, he wanted to visit his wife alone, so Sheila would keep Sam longer. Thank God, he’d been able to work things out with his mother-in-law. They’d had a long lunchtime meeting the day after the spanking incident, when their heads had been cooler and their hearts more in sync, and they’d worked out a compromise: Sheila would not, under any circumstances, spank Sam. Instead, she’d call Liam when she had a disciplinary problem, and they would think of a solution together. He’d asked Sheila to reward Sam’s good behavior and not focus too much on the bad. Although she’d looked annoyed at taking parenting advice from him, the plan seemed to be working. He hadn’t heard from Sheila again about the matter in the two weeks since their conversation.

His phone rang, and he quickly logged off the internet and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” It was Joelle’s voice, and he felt the return of anger in a rush.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“I spoke with Carlynn Shire about Mara, and—”

“Why? You’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of Carlynn Shire,” he said, truly bewildered by Joelle’s behavior. “Your parents—”

“I can’t explain it,” Joelle interrupted him. “I just wanted to talk with her about the situation, and when I did, she thought she might be able to help. I didn’t think it would hurt to at least let her meet Mara.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re the one who’s always saying she’s probably a quack, that she didn’t really save your life.”

“I know. But what if I was wrong?” Joelle asked. “Mara believed so strongly in the power of the mind to heal the body. You know that. Don’t you think she would have wanted us to try everything we could?”

“Mara has no mind,” Liam said, and then winced. That was not true. At least, he didn’t want it to be true. “I think it’s abusive,” he said. “You subjected Mara to something she didn’t ask for. I don’t like the idea of some stranger coming in there and—”

“Mara hasn’t asked for any of the treatment she’s received,” Joelle reasoned. “She’s dependent on those people who love her to make treatment choices for her.”

She was right, of course, but that didn’t stop him.

“I don’t want you bringing anyone to see Mara without my permission,” he said.

“Didn’t you notice Mara seemed a bit more alert when you were there?” Joelle asked.

He scowled into the phone. “No, I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I think she was completely worn out from her visit with you and Carlynn Shire. She didn’t touch her, did she?”

“She massaged her hands with baby lotion.”

Why that seemed like such an invasion, he couldn’t say. He felt as he had when Sheila told him she’d spanked Sam. Mara was as trusting and vulnerable as a little child, ignorant of everything going on around her, and she would smile through any assault.

“She thinks she can help, Liam.”

“That’s totally ridiculous.”

“You may be right, but she’s a nice woman and maybe she can do something we don’t understand. What would it hurt to let her try? She wants to see Mara again. And she asked that you be there, as well.”

“The answer is no, Joelle,” he said. “No, I won’t be there, and no, you may not bring her to see Mara. Don’t ask me again. I have enough to deal with right now.” He hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

He walked from the den to the bedroom, still angry, and with an added sense of having escaped from a great threat. If he yelled at Joelle, he was safe. That aching longing he had for her, the love and admiration, didn’t exist when he was chewing her out. And he thought now that he would be able to sleep tonight.

Around three in the morning, though, he woke up with a start, feeling much as he had the night after they’d made love, when he’d turned away from her with the hope of saving himself.

18

San Francisco, 1956

LISBETH WAS TERRIFIED. DR. PETERSON HAD BORROWED GABRIEL Johnson’s tennis racket the day before and now wanted her to return it to him at San Francisco General. That was why she was locked in the stall in one of the first-floor ladies’ rooms at the hospital during her lunch break. The tennis racket rested against the tiled wall while Lisbeth stared at herself in the mirror, trying to get her breathing under control.

What would she say to him? She’d never had a problem talking to him over the phone, and lately their conversations had grown even longer. But over the phone her voice did not give away her size.

She thought about Gabriel often when she was in bed at night, and she talked to him in her head all the time when she was alone. She told him everything about herself, which made it hard for her to remember that he did not actually know her as well as she felt he did.

A few weeks ago, he’d suggested she call him Gabriel instead of Mr. Johnson.

“I’d feel strange calling you by your first name,” she’d said.

“I want you to,” he’d answered in that deep voice that she loved. He had this way of making her feel like his equal, as though that was very important to him. As though the chief accountant of a big hospital and a medical secretary were on the same level.

“Okay, Gabriel.” She’d smiled, relieved, actually, since she called him that in her imagination all the time and was always afraid she’d slip while talking to him on the phone.

Her fantasies of Gabriel had become so intense, such a glorious part of her quiet existence, and she feared they would come to an end once he saw her. Touching up her makeup in the ladies’-room mirror, she pressed powder to her forehead and nose and rubbed a circle of rouge onto her cheeks. She didn’t want to look as though she’d made herself up especially for this meeting, so she skipped a fresh application of lipstick. She patted her petal curls into place. It was a stylish haircut, but what did it matter when the face that it framed was as round as a bowling ball? In her fantasies, she would meet Gabriel Johnson after losing sixty or seventy pounds. When, exactly, that would be she didn’t know. In the past six months, she’d added another ten pounds to her two hundred, and she was beginning to have difficulty finding a uniform for the doctor’s office that fit her.

She thought of simply leaving the racket with someone at the hospital’s reception desk, but as much as she didn’t want to be seen by Gabriel, she was longing to see him, to see the man who had facelessly filled her fantasies and her dreams for the past year and a half.

The woman at the information desk was an elderly volunteer, and the name tag attached to her collar read Madge.

Lisbeth smiled at her. “I’m looking for Gabriel Johnson’s office,” she said.

“Is he the bookkeeper?” the woman asked.

“The chief accountant. Yes.”

“That’s the business office.” The woman pointed a misshapen finger toward the bank of elevators in the corridor. “Second floor. Take the elevator and turn right, and his office is there on the corner.”

Lisbeth felt nauseous in the elevator, and she knew the perspiration was returning to her nose and forehead. By the time she turned the knob of the door to the business office, her hand was shaking.

There was no one sitting at the reception desk when she walked into the business office. She stood, waiting, for an uncomfortable moment, the racket at her side, before spotting an open door halfway down a narrow hallway.

“Hello?” she called, hoping the person in that office would hear her, but there was no response.

She walked down the hall and knocked on the open door, peering inside the room at the same time. A colored man sat at a desk, and he looked up at the sound of her knock.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Gabriel Johnson.”

The man had been writing something, but now he set down his pen.

“I’m Gabriel Johnson,” he said.

“No—” She stopped herself. She wanted to tell him that he couldn’t possibly be Gabriel. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, or to ask him if he was playing some sort of trick on her. But that voice. She recognized it, the depth and gentleness of it. She was stunned beyond speech, though. Gabriel—her Gabriel—was colored?

“Ah, I see you have my racket,” he said, standing up. “You must be Lisbeth.”

“Yes.” She tried to smile, holding the racket toward him. Her fantasy instantly evaporated, leaving a huge empty space inside her chest. She refused to think of herself as a bigot, but a romance with a colored man was out of the question. Her knees were full of jelly, and she was glad when he motioned toward the chair opposite his desk.

“Please, sit down, Lisbeth.”

She handed him the racket, then sank into the chair. Suddenly, she understood why Gabriel played tennis on Dr. Peterson’s private court. He would not be welcome at most of the courts around town.

Gabriel sat down again, resting his racket on the desk. He smiled at her, and she saw so much in that smile. She could see an apology there, and understanding, along with a deep well of sadness.

“I should have told you in our phone conversations that I was a Negro,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I should have told you that I was fat.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she laughed out loud at herself.

Gabriel laughed, too. In fact, he roared, then shook his head, taking off his horn-rimmed glasses to wipe his eyes. “I would say you are every bit as lovely as your voice,” he said.

What else could he say? she thought. He was trying to take the awkwardness out of the moment. She was certain, though, that he felt the same sting of disappointment at seeing her that she felt at seeing him.

“Hey,” he said suddenly. “I wanted to show this to you.” Lifting a framed photograph from his desk, he handed it to her. It was a picture of a sailboat, and it looked very much like the sloop her family had once owned. She looked from the picture back to him.

“Is this yours?” she asked. “The boat you told me about?”

He nodded. “What do you think?”

“It’s a beauty,” she said. “It reminds me of the boat my father used to take me out on.”

“I love it,” he said, taking the picture back from her and placing it again on his desk. “I feel so free out on the water.”

She remembered that feeling well, although she’d not experienced it in a long time. “Where did you learn to sail?” she asked.

“My father taught me, too,” he said. “On an estuary in Oakland.”

She remembered him telling her he was originally from Oakland, but now she pictured his childhood home in the section of that city where the colored people lived.

“Is that why you went in the navy?” she asked, recalling that he had told her he’d served in the war.

“Yes,” he said. “You have a good memory. And I recall that you grew up along the Seventeen Mile Drive. And you have a twin sister.”

“Right.”

“Identical or fraternal?”

“Identical,” she said, although it felt like a lie, since she was nearly twice her sister’s size.

“Amazing to think there are two of you.” He smiled. “Are you alike in other ways, as well?”

Lisbeth bit her lip. She did not want to talk about Carlynn. She did not want to draw attention to the twin who had always received it. Yet, she longed to pour her heart out to this man who seemed so interested in her. She drew in a breath.

“We are nothing alike,” she said. “Carlynn’s a doctor. She graduated from medical school last June, and now she’s an intern here at SF General.”

“So, you both have an interest in medicine.”

It seemed ridiculous that he was comparing Carlynn’s being a doctor to her being a secretary in a physician’s office, but he was actually right. She loved it when Dr. Peterson talked to her about his patients, especially when he spoke of those he seemed unable to help, and she often pressed him for the medical details of those cases. Sometimes, she wanted to ask Carlynn to come over and just sit with one of those patients in the waiting room, just touch his or her hand gently, to see if perhaps she could make a difference.

“Yes, we do,” Lisbeth said. “But I could never be a doctor.”

“Why not?” Gabriel asked.

“I’m just not…as smart as she is. I know that supposedly we have the same brain. But somehow…she’s just smarter than me, that’s all. We went to different schools.” She didn’t want to sound small and bitter. Besides, education was not the primary difference between herself and Carlynn. “And she has this…ability…” She spoke slowly, not certain how much to say. Carlynn was still very secretive about her gift. “She will be a gifted physician,” Lisbeth said simply.

“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” Gabriel said. “Whenever I talk to you, I’m struck by how concerned and well educated you are about Lloyd’s patients.”

“Thank you,” she said, touched by his kindness. Then, suddenly, she shook her head.

He leaned forward on his desk. “Why are you shaking your head?”

Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry in front of him.

“It’s just that—” She stopped herself short. Could she say this to him? She had little to lose at this point. “You’re so nice. And I…talking with you on the phone…I’ve allowed myself to imagine…well, we have common interests, and so I allowed myself to foolishly think we might…”

“Me, too.” His smile was warm, his teeth very white against his milk chocolate-colored skin, and he suddenly looked beautiful to her. “Though I guess I knew that when you met me, it would be over. I’m a Negro, to begin with. I’m what…ten years older than you?”

“I’m twenty-seven,” she said.

He groaned. “Eleven years older, then.”

And I’m fat, she wanted to add, but managed to stop herself.

“Is it impossible?” he asked.

She raised her eyes quickly to his. “You mean…?”

“Is it impossible for us to go out together?” He looked ill at ease for the first time, and she felt like hugging him to make him comfortable again. “I mean,” he continued, “how would you feel about that? Would it be awkward for you to be seen with me?”

She shook her head. “No.” She hoped she was being honest in her answer. “No. I wouldn’t care.”

“What about your family?”

Oh, God. “My sister wouldn’t care,” she said, hoping that was the truth, as well. “But my mother…” Her voice trailed off.

“Your mother?” he prompted.

“She thinks…well, she sees…” She started to say colored people, but he had referred to himself as a Negro, and she decided she should use his language. “She sees Negroes as servants or manual laborers.”

He nodded. “Not unusual,” he said, and she picked up a hint of some old, deep anger in his voice.

“But—” she shrugged with a laugh “—she already detests me, so I guess I shouldn’t worry about that.”

“Detests you? Why on earth?”

“I…oh, it’s a long story.”

He suddenly picked up his phone and pressed the intercom button.

“Nancy?” he said. “No interruptions.”

Hanging up the phone, he stood and closed his office door until it was almost completely shut, but not quite, and she was grateful for his sense of propriety. He sat down again.

“When is Lloyd expecting you back?” he asked.

She looked at her watch. “At around one,” she said.

Gabriel picked up his phone again, and with a jolt, Lisbeth noticed he was missing two fingers on his left hand, both the pinkie and ring fingers. They’d been sliced off right down to his hand, and she wondered what he had been through. Had he lost them as a child or an adult?

Gabriel dialed a number. “Lloyd? It’s Gabe,” he said. “Lisbeth Kling is here and she’ll be late getting back to you. Yes, it’s my fault. I need to keep her here a while longer. We have some things to discuss.” He smiled across the desk at her. “Sure, thanks.” He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

“Now we have time for your long story,” he said.

She told him everything, letting out the secrets and sadness of her childhood years. She spoke of her love for her sister despite her feelings of bitterness and resentment, emotions she usually tried hard to keep hidden. She cried, but only a little, when she spoke about how hard it was to go home these days. She needed to spend time at Cypress Point, she told him, the way someone else might need food or medicine, but she had not yet figured out a way to prevent her mother’s insults from ruining those visits for her.

Never before had she chronicled the hurt in her life in quite this way. She’d never allowed it to spill out to another soul. Gabriel’s face was full of sympathy and understanding, and she had the feeling he had experienced the same sort of ostracism she had. Not from a mother, perhaps, but from the world at large. Somehow, though, he had overcome it, and she wondered if he might be able to teach her how to do the same. His gentleness, his attentive listening, was seductive and comforting, and by the time she had finished her story she was in love—with Gabriel the man, not Gabriel the fantasy.

“Don’t answer now,” he said as he walked her to the door after their long conversation. “But I would love to go out with you. Sailing, or out to dinner, or just about anywhere. Do you have a phone?”

“I can only use my landlord’s phone in an emergency,” she said, thrilled, but by this point, not surprised, by his invitation. “I can call from Dr. Peterson’s office, though.”

Stepping back to his desk, Gabriel jotted down a phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

“I’m giving you an open invitation,” he said. “If you decide you want to go out with me, please call. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Dr. Kling. Call the front desk.” The voice came over the hospital loudspeaker, and Carlynn looked up from the chart on which she was writing. She was accustomed to being paged these days, now that she was an intern. The pages were often from Alan, of course, but he was good about using the paging system for business only, keeping their personal relationship out of the hospital. They had been dating for six months now, and after their initial conversation about her “gift,” Alan had found ways to bring her in on cases. A couple of times he’d even spirited her into patients’ rooms in the middle of the night so that she could sit with them while they slept, her hands on their bodies. She’d discovered, though, the mere touching of the patients alone did not seem nearly as effective as when she was able to look into their eyes and speak with them. She and Alan were both fascinated by trying to determine when her skills would work and when they wouldn’t. What made the difference? She truly could not say.

In front of others, they were Dr. Shire and Dr. Kling, but they often couldn’t wait until the end of the day, when they could discuss cases, pore over Alan’s books on the subject of healing, and sometimes, when the serious business of medicine was set aside, laugh together. Alan was fairly good-looking, but he was more scientist than Prince Charming, and she was no empty-headed fairy-tale damsel. Their brains and their passion for their work drew them together and solidified their relationship, so that when they finally did sleep together, it was almost as an afterthought. There was love between them, of that Carlynn had no doubt, but it was not a romantic love, and she told herself that was fine. Next to Lisbeth, Alan was her best friend, the person with whom she could be entirely honest about her gift. If they ever married, something they had spoken about a time or two, he would make a wonderful father, and she was longing to have children. She could ask for little more than that.

Quickly, she finished writing her note in the chart, then picked up the phone to dial the operator.

“This is Dr. Kling,” she said when the operator answered. She waited to hear her say that Dr. Shire was on the line for her, but the operator surprised her.

“Lisbeth Kling on the line for you,” the operator said.

“All right.” Carlynn frowned, a bit concerned. It was rare for Lisbeth to disturb her at the hospital. “Put her through, please.”

“Carly? I’m so sorry to bother you at work.”

“That’s all right. What is it? Are you okay?”

“I’m here in the hospital. I’m fine, though,” she added quickly. “I came here on business for Dr. Peterson, and I need your advice, Carly. Do you have some time?”

Carlynn looked at her watch. “I’ll meet you in the front lobby in five minutes,” she said, then hung up the phone.

The lobby was large, in need of new furniture and very crowded, but she quickly spotted her sister near the entrance and sat down next to her on one of the sofas. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I met him,” Lisbeth said. Her face glowed with excitement. “Dr. Peterson’s tennis partner.”

“You did?”

“Yes. But I need to talk to you about him.”

Carlynn glanced at her watch again. It would soon be time for afternoon rounds, but she would just have to be late. She moved closer to her sister.

“Talk to me, then,” she said.

“Oh, Carlynn,” Lisbeth grabbed her arm. “He’s wonderful.”

Despite her concerns, Carlynn couldn’t help but grin at the rare joy in her twin’s face. “Go on.”

“I had to bring his tennis racket to him. Dr. Peterson had borrowed it. I was so nervous!”

“And what happened?”

“He was absolutely the best, Carlynn. Just as nice as he’s been on the phone. I talked with him in his office for over an hour, and he asked me out.”

“Hurrah!” Carlynn clapped her hands together, but she felt fear mixed with her joy. Whoever he was, he’d better not hurt her sister. Lisbeth was not stupid, but she could be very vulnerable, a dreamer filled with longing. It was far too easy for her to be taken advantage of. “What’s his name?”

“Gabriel Johnson.” Lisbeth looked at her expectantly. “Do you recognize it?” she asked.

Carlynn frowned. “No. Should I?”

“He’s the chief accountant here.”

“Here?” Carlynn asked. “He works here? You’ve been talking to him on the phone for over a year. Why didn’t you ever tell me he works here?”

“Because I didn’t want you to go peek at him and tell me something about him that would wreck my…” She lowered her voice. “My idea of what he looked like.” She started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

Lisbeth shook her head, but she was still grinning. “Oh, Carlynn,” she said. “Here comes the problem.”

“What?”

“If you go stop by the business office, you’ll see.”

“Tell me!”

“He’s colored.”

Carlynn caught her breath. The first thought in her head was “You’re kidding,” but that was not what Lisbeth needed to hear. She wasn’t certain what she should say to her sister. She could think of no colored professionals working at the hospital, but then recalled noticing a nice-looking Negro in the corridor once or twice, a man obviously not a patient, carrying a briefcase. He was missing fingers on his left hand.

“Carlynn?” Lisbeth sounded worried.

Carlynn laughed. “You caught me off guard there,” she said. “I might know who he is. Is he tall and good-looking? Is he missing two—”

“That’s him!” Lisbeth nodded.

“I’ve never spoken to him, but he looks nice,” Carlynn said. “He’s a lot older than you, though, I think, but then Alan is ten years older than me, so I guess I can’t say anything about that.”

“But Alan isn’t colored.”

She knew Lisbeth was waiting for her opinion of her dating a Negro. “Does it matter to you that he’s colored?” she asked her.

“I really like him, Carly,” Lisbeth said.

“Then go out with him.” Carlynn was unsure if that was the right advice, but she’d never heard such joy in her sister’s voice before.

“What about Mother?” Lisbeth asked.

“What about her? Mother won’t like anybody we pick. She doesn’t even like Alan. No one’s good enough for me, in her eyes.”

“Well, maybe she’ll think a colored man would be just perfect for me, then,” Lisbeth said.

Carlynn laughed, but without much spirit. “Look,” she said, “it doesn’t matter what Mother or anyone else thinks. Not even me. None of that matters, Lisbeth, if you really like him. You can’t live your life trying to please everyone else.” Mother, she thought, must never know. Perhaps this man would just be the start of dating for Lisbeth. Perhaps Mother never would have to know that Lisbeth had seen him. “So, did you accept his invitation to go out?”

“I’m supposed to call him,” she said. “He left it up to me to decide if I wanted to or not. He understood that I might feel…uncomfortable.”

“Do you?”

“I think he’s the most. He sails, Carlynn. He has his own boat.”

This was one unusual Negro, Carlynn thought. She knew how much Lisbeth loved sailing. “Then call him,” she said. “Do you want Alan and me to go out with you the first time? A double date? As long as it’s not on a boat, that is.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Of course.” It was strange. She had been intimately involved with Alan for half a year, yet she had no idea how he would feel about a white woman dating a colored man. “How are things with you and Alan?” Lisbeth asked, as though she felt rude for having focused the conversation on herself.

“Great,” Carlynn said, and they were. But just then she wanted to feel some of the passion that Lisbeth clearly felt. She wanted a man whom she could be certain was in love with her, not just with her gift.

19

THERE WAS NO BETTER WAY TO LET YOU KNOW YOU HAD NO FRIENDS than spending a birthday alone, Joelle thought. It was early Saturday morning, July fourteenth, and she was seated in front of her computer checking housing prices on the internet. She had looked at Berkeley and Chicago and was now surfing through a real estate site for the third city she’d added to her list, San Diego, since a social worker she’d known from Silas Memorial was living there. It would be best if she could stay in California, she thought, so that she wouldn’t have to worry about getting a social work license in another state.

She’d decided she’d rent when she first moved, putting her condo on the market and using her savings for her expenses until it sold. At that point, she could decide if she wanted to buy something in her new town. Right now, though, she couldn’t imagine taking that permanent a step. It was hard for her to picture herself living anywhere but here.

She was sixteen weeks pregnant and still able to hide her belly, although that feat was getting more difficult by the day. If anyone wondered why she now wore loose dresses and tunic tops, no one said a word. At least, not to her. She would have to leave within a month, though, to be able to keep her secret, and she worried that waiting that long might be pushing her luck.

Happy birthday to me.

“Feeling a little sorry for ourselves, are we?” she said out loud as she clicked the “rentals” button on the real estate site. She was now officially thirty-five years old. She’d hear from her parents sometime during the day, of course, but knew she would receive no card from them and certainly no gift. She and Mara used to take each other out to dinner on their birthdays, just one of several rituals they’d had. No one at work had said a word to her about her birthday yesterday, but, of course, she hadn’t reminded anyone, either. The only people who were showing any serious intention of acknowledging the day were Tony and Gary, who had invited her for dinner, an invitation she’d accepted because she knew she would be depressed tonight if she didn’t have something to do. They would make a cake and fuss over her, and she would be eternally grateful for their kindness.

She planned to visit Carlynn that afternoon, and thought she might tell her that today was her birthday. It was possible Carlynn might even remember, since she’d actually been there at Joelle’s birth. That thought made her laugh out loud, but then she realized that the thirty-fifth anniversary of Carlynn’s sister’s death was also this week, so perhaps she would keep her mouth shut about her birthday, after all.

After her phone conversation the week before with Liam, Joelle had called Carlynn to tell her she’d been, essentially, forbidden to bring the healer to visit Mara again. She wanted to say to the older woman, “But I’d still like to see you sometimes. Can we be friends?” but she’d felt awkward making that statement. It was Carlynn who said it for her, as she seemed to read her thoughts. “Then you come see me,” Carlynn had said with certainty. “We never know how these things work. Perhaps Mara can get better through you, if you occasionally visit with me.”

The concept made even less sense than Carlynn being able to heal Mara by actually touching her, but Joelle was not about to argue. She visited the mansion the following day, and she and Carlynn walked around the grounds. Carlynn seemed in good shape and good spirits, and did some of the walking without her cane. Quinn, the elderly black man, was helping some strapping young men with the yard work, and Alan was not at home, a fact that secretly pleased Joelle. Although maybe he wouldn’t mind her being there now that she was not asking Carlynn to heal Mara.

Mrs. McGowan made them a picnic lunch, which they took to Fanshell Beach, practically next door to the mansion. They sat on rocks under the shade of a cypress, not too far from where the harbor seals basked in the sun, and ate little crustless sandwiches and talked and talked and talked. Carlynn described what it had been like growing up in the mansion. She spoke about her life as a twin and the close bond she’d had with her sister, as well as the guilt she felt over having been the beloved twin while her sister suffered neglect. She told Joelle about healing the family dog when she was a child, without even knowing what she was doing.

Carlynn wanted to know exactly what Liam had said to Joelle on the phone the night after her visit to Mara, and Joelle told her how furious he had been.

“He’s still angry with me,” she said, remembering how coolly he’d treated her at work this week. “He’s completely changed from someone who loved me—and I know he truly did—to someone who seems to despise me.”

“I doubt that,” Carlynn had said.

“You didn’t hear him on the phone,” she said simply.

It was nearly noon when she had finished searching the web, and she was about to get dressed for the visit with Carlynn when her phone rang. Checking the caller ID display, she recognized Liam’s number. She hesitated only a moment, then pressed the talk button on the receiver.

“Liam?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you on a Saturday,” he said. “I’m on call, and I just heard from the cardiac unit. One of my patients isn’t doing well, and they want me to come in to be with the family. Sheila had to go to Santa Cruz for the day. Her sister’s sick up there, so I have no one to leave Sam with. Is there a chance you could watch him?”

He had to feel like a heel asking her for a favor after the way he’d treated her this past week, but she wouldn’t rub his nose in it. This was a professional call, and although it would mean canceling with Carlynn at the last minute, there was no question that she would do as he asked. Besides, she could think of no better way to spend the afternoon than with Sam.

“I’ll be right over,” she said.

She called Carlynn from the cell phone in her car as she drove over to Liam’s.

“Ah,” Carlynn said, and she actually sounded a bit pleased. “I understand. No need to apologize. We’ll get together another day. And Joelle?”

“Yes?”

“Happy birthday, dear.”

Liam was waiting on his front porch with Sam in his arms, and when he handed the baby to her, she was surprised at how heavy Sam had become.

“Thanks,” Liam said. “I’ll call you when I know what time I’ll be back.”

“I’ll take my cell if we go out,” she said.

She and Sam stayed on the porch until Liam had pulled out of the driveway, and she was relieved that Sam didn’t seem distressed as he watched his father drive away. It had been a while since she’d spent much time with the little boy, and she hadn’t been sure how he’d react to being left alone with her.

Pulling open the screen door, she walked inside the house. Before she did anything else, she wanted to get her fill of just holding Sam in her arms, so she sat on the sofa with him and began nuzzling his delicate little neck.

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy!” she said, and he giggled, squirming as she tickled his neck with her lips. “What shall we do today, sweetie pie?”

The sun was shining outside the living-room windows, and the sky was a cloudless, vivid blue. “Let’s not waste our time inside,” she said. “Who wants to go tide pooling with me?”

“Me!” He wriggled from her arms to stand in front of her on the floor, his little hands on her knees. “Me, me, me!”

“Do you even know what a tide pool is?” she asked.

He nodded. “I go bool,” he said.

“Not a pool, silly. A tide pool.”

“Tybool.”

“Right! Let’s go.” She stood up and headed for the mudroom, where she knew she would find an extra car seat and where the cupboard above the laundry sink would hold some sunscreen. Sam followed close behind her, trying to grab her leg as she walked.

“We go tybool!” he said.

Once in the car, Joelle drove to a parking area along the coastal trail. She got Sam out of the car seat and watched with trepidation as he ran toward the rocky beach. Maybe this was not such a good idea. She hadn’t realized how mobile Sam was these days.

They spent an hour exploring the tide pools, and Joelle thought Sam enjoyed himself almost as much as she did, although she was certain he was tired of hearing her say, “Don’t touch,” by the time they were ready to leave.

Liam called her cell phone as she was driving back to his house.

“I’ll be another hour,” he said. “Is that all right?”

“No problem. We’re on our way back from the beach, and I think you-know-who is ready for a nap.”

“Okay,” Liam said. “I usually put him in his crib with a couple of books. He entertains himself until he falls asleep.”

“All right,” she said. “Thanks for the tip.”

She changed Sam’s diaper when they got back to the house, then laid him in his crib with a couple of picture books. She doubted the books were needed, though, because Sam was ready to crash. Standing over the crib for a moment, she stroked her fingertips over his blond curls. Mara, she thought, her eyes filling just a bit, I wish you could enjoy your beautiful baby boy.

In the kitchen, she poured herself a Coke, then noticed the yellow envelope propped against the phone on the counter. The envelope read Joelle in Liam’s handwriting. Picking it up, she tore open the flap. Inside was a card, the sort you would send to a child for her birthday, with a big-eyed puppy and kitten on the front. Below the animals were the words For A Special Girl. She opened it to find the verse, Says the Little Kitty, and Puppy, too, There’s no Other Girl as Nice as You! Happy Birthday! It was signed, Love, Liam and Sam, and simple and silly though it was, it put a grin on her face. She could picture Liam and Sam picking the card out together.

She wandered aimlessly around the house for a while, sipping her Coke, looking at the framed pictures of Mara that were scattered here and there, noticing the dust on the guitar case standing in the corner of the living room and the ever-growing pile of Sam’s toys in the den. Finally, she found herself in the doorway to Liam’s bedroom. She stared at the bed, trying both to remember and forget the night she had slept in this room. Liam had made the bed in a hurry this morning, the green-and-white-striped coverlet pulled up sloppily above the pillow. The blue afghan, which matched nothing else in the room, and which Liam had tucked around her nude body before moving to the guest room, hung over the footboard of the bed.

On the bookshelf behind the bed she spotted the book of meditations she’d given him. It was lying flat on the shelf, separate from the other books, as though Liam read from it often. She walked into the room and sat down on the bed, pulling the book from the shelf, remembering their Point Lobos hike and how close she’d felt to him as he’d read aloud from the book.

As she opened the book, a photograph fell from between the pages, and she felt a chill when she saw the picture of herself. She knew when it had been taken—the day she and Liam discovered Sam was far too young to appreciate the Dennis the Menace Playground. The photograph was no more than five or six months old, yet it looked worn, as though it had been handled a great deal, and Joelle bit her lip. She felt as though she was peering inside Liam’s soul, a place she had no permission to see.

Oh, Liam.

Closing the book, she returned it to the shelf behind his bed and stood up. That’s when she felt it. Not a fluttering, as she’d expected, but more like a bubble. She rested her hand on her stomach as the bubble moved again, and she smiled to herself.

She was not alone today, after all.

20

San Francisco, 1956

THE AIR WAS COOL AND DAMP ON FISHERMAN’S WHARF, BUT THE huge iron cauldrons offered bursts of crab-scented warmth as Carlynn and Alan walked toward the restaurant where they were to meet Lisbeth and her date. Although it was autumn and the sky was dark, the well-lit wharf was crammed with people, some of them eating shrimp and crabmeat from little paper trays as they strolled.

Carlynn spotted Lisbeth standing in front of Tarantino’s, and she took Alan’s arm and pointed.

“She’s here first,” she said with a grin. “Do you think she’s a little anxious?”

“Can’t blame her,” Alan said. “This is her first date in a while, isn’t it?”

“In her life,” Carlynn corrected, then more to herself than Alan, “My poor sweet sister.” She bit her lip as they neared Lisbeth, who looked beautiful in a blue coat that matched her eyes. Lisbeth was big, yes, but her legs were shapely, if not slender, and she was wearing adorable strappy black heels that must have been murder to walk in all the way from the cable car. Her blond hair, with its carefully constructed waves and curls, so perfectly framed her face that Carlynn thought she might have her own hair cut that way. No, she told herself. She should let that cute style be her sister’s.

Lisbeth waved as soon as she saw them.

“She’s terrified,” Carlynn whispered to Alan, waving back. “Look at her.” Lisbeth’s face wore a smile that was only skin deep; Carlynn could see the apprehension just below the surface.

“Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re here!” Lisbeth said, clutching her sister’s gloved hands in her own.

“You look beautiful,” Alan said, bussing Lisbeth’s cheek, and Carlynn loved him for his kindness.

“Thanks,” Lisbeth said. “What time is it, though? He’s not here yet.” She tried to peer through the throng of people.

“It’s just seven, honey,” Carlynn said. “Relax.”

“Boy, does that shrimp smell good.” Alan eyed one of the women walking by with a little tray of shrimp. “It’s making my mouth water.”

“Do you know him, Alan?” Lisbeth asked. “Gabriel? From the hospital?”

“I’ve seen him around, but no, I don’t know him personally,” Alan said. “I asked around a bit, though, did a bit of checking, and—”

“Alan, you didn’t!” Carlynn scolded him.

“Yes, I did,” he answered.

“What did you say to the people you asked?” Lisbeth looked worried. “Will it get back to him?”

“I was very discreet,” he said. “I just tried to find out what kind of fellow he is. Make sure he’s not a womanizer, that’s all.”

Carlynn knew Alan had worried, not so much that Gabriel might be a womanizer, but that he might want to be seen with a white woman to raise his status. “Lisbeth could be ruining her life if she goes out with him,” he’d told her. “White men might not want her if they find out.” Carlynn had to admit she’d had the same concern.

“Well, what did you learn?” Lisbeth asked.

“That he was married before.”

“He’s divorced?” Lisbeth looked brokenhearted.

“No, he’s widowed. He was married to a woman—a Negro woman, in case you’re wondering—and she died five years ago of breast cancer.”

“Oh!” Lisbeth’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, how sad. Poor Gabriel.”

“He apparently was very attentive to her and cared for her himself as much as he could. And he hasn’t dated since. At least not according to my source.”

“Who was your source?” Carlynn asked, curious.

“None of your business,” he answered, but he winked at her, and she was certain she knew. Alan was friends with Lloyd Peterson, Lisbeth’s boss and Gabriel Johnson’s friend and tennis partner.

“Poor Gabriel,” Lisbeth said again, her eyes full of sympathy.

Carlynn studied the faces of the tourists as they strolled past the restaurant eating cocktails, laughing and talking, and it was a moment before she became aware of the fact that every single face she could see in front of her—every one!—was white. Gabriel Johnson would feel out of place here, she thought. He managed at the hospital, though, and he was out of place there, as well. He was probably well accustomed to feeling that way.

Lisbeth spotted him first. “There he is,” she whispered, grabbing Carlynn’s arm again with quiet excitement.

Carlynn looked through the crowd to see Gabriel walking toward them, his dark face standing out from the pale faces of the tourists. When he saw Lisbeth, he broke into a grin and waved, and the color in Lisbeth’s cheeks grew brighter and her eyes glowed. Carlynn thought she had never looked prettier.

Gabriel took Lisbeth’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s so good to see you again,” he said.

“You, too.” She smiled. The two of them looked positively lost in one another.

“Yoo-hoo,” Carlynn said. “Remember us?”

Lisbeth laughed. “Gabriel, this is my sister, Carlynn, and her boyfriend, Alan Shire.”

“Drs. Shire and Kling,” Gabriel said, shaking Alan’s hand and nodding to Carlynn. “We’ve crossed paths in the hospital from time to time. Good to finally meet you both.”

“Please,” Alan said. “Call us Alan and Carlynn.”

Carlynn studied his face. She had honestly never thought before about colored men being handsome or ugly or anything in between, the way she did when she saw a white man. But looking at Gabriel through Lisbeth’s eyes, she could see how attractive he was. He wore his hair very short, close and tight to his scalp. His face was fairly long and thin, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses that made him look very serious, but that could not quite mask the sparkle in his dark eyes.

“Let’s eat,” Alan said, and he motioned toward the door of the restaurant.

The hostess led them to the upper story of the restaurant, to a table in the darkest corner, away from the windows and the other tables, and Carlynn couldn’t help but wonder if Gabriel’s presence had something to do with her choice.

“We’d prefer a table by the window,” Alan said, not moving to sit down.

“Certainly, sir,” the hostess said, as though she wondered why she hadn’t thought of that herself. She led them to an empty table next to a window. Alan thanked her, and the four of them sat down.

Carlynn felt her own anxiety mount as other diners glanced in their direction, but Lisbeth did not seem to care a bit. She and Gabriel were already chatting, their heads close together as they laughed about some subject that had meaning only to the two of them. Carlynn wondered if she and Alan were needed here at all.

Their table overlooked the harbor. It was dark outside, but they could see the wharf lights reflected off the boats lined up along the pier.

“Thanks for getting us this table, Alan,” Lisbeth said, straightening in her seat as though realizing she and Gabriel had been rude to ignore him and Carlynn. She giggled a little, still amused by her conversation with Gabriel, and Carlynn thought she had never heard that girlish sound from her sister, not even when they were children.

They ordered cioppino all around, and talked about the hospital. Alan and Gabriel had been at SF General for about the same length of time and knew many people in common, so Carlynn and Lisbeth listened as they asked each other about various incidents that had taken place at the hospital. Occasionally, the men included Carlynn or Lisbeth in their discussion, but only due to the demands of good etiquette. The women didn’t belong in this conversation, and that was all right. They smiled at each other as Gabriel and Alan exchanged stories and laughter. The bond between the two men could not have developed more quickly, Carlynn thought, if they had been locked together in a prison cell.

Once their huge bowls of cioppino arrived at the table, the men turned their attention to the food. Gabriel buttered a piece of sourdough bread, holding the slice in his right hand and using the knife with his left, deftly maneuvering it despite the missing fingers.

“You and Alan are both lefties,” Carlynn said.

“Well,” Gabriel smiled, “I was left-handed before this happened.” He nodded toward the injured hand. “I still use it when I can. I can write with it, but I can’t hold a racket. I had to learn to play tennis right-handed, which is still a challenge, as Lloyd Peterson can probably tell you.”

“What happened?” Lisbeth asked the question neither she nor Alan dared to.

“I was at Port Chicago,” Gabriel said.

“My God.” Alan, his spoon halfway to his mouth, sat back in his chair.

Carlynn exchanged an ignorant glance with her sister. She knew something big had happened during the war at Port Chicago, a town about fifty miles north of where they were now sitting, but she and Lisbeth had been young and well-protected teens at the time.

“What was it like?” Alan asked.

Gabriel worked a clam free of its shell. “It’s not the best dinner-table topic,” he said, looking apologetic.

“I want to hear,” Lisbeth insisted. “Unless…of course, if you’re uncomfortable talking about it.”

“Do you know what happened at Port Chicago?” he asked Lisbeth.

Something bad, Carlynn would have answered, but her sister surprised her.

“An explosion of some sort?” Lisbeth asked. “Some men were loading explosives onto a ship and something went wrong?”

Gabriel nodded. “Something went very wrong.” He sipped from his drink, then continued. “I joined the navy in 1943. They’d only opened their ranks to Negroes the year before, but I felt it was my duty to volunteer. I already had a degree from Berkeley, and I was married.” He looked at Lisbeth, touching the back of her hand gently with his fingertips, and said only to her, “Which is something I’ll tell you about later.” Lisbeth nodded.

“I loved to sail, and I wanted to go to sea,” Gabriel continued. “I went through boot camp and training school and then off to Port Chicago, where I expected to ship out. But when I got there, I found out the navy wasn’t letting Negroes into combat. Instead, they put us on the loading docks, loading munitions onto ships, with no special training whatsoever. We knew it was dangerous, but I don’t think we had any idea how much so.”

“All the men doing the loading were Negroes,” Alan added as he reached for another piece of bread. “And the guys supervising them were white, if I remember correctly.”

“That’s right,” Gabriel said. “And there was some wagering going on among the white officers as to whose division could load the most munitions in the least amount of time. So, as you can imagine, safety was sacrificed for speed.”

“Were you actually on the pier when it happened?” Alan asked.

“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I had been. I’d been working the night shift for months, and I don’t remember why, but I got moved over to days just the week before. Someone was watching out for me, though I sure don’t know why I was spared and three hundred other fellows weren’t.” He set down his spoon. “I was in the barracks, about a mile from the pier, and we heard a huge explosion and saw a white light through the windows. We started to run out, but a second explosion hit, this one even bigger, and the next thing I knew, my buddies and I were flying all over the place, the walls tumbling down on top of us. Outside, it was like firecrackers going off, and the sky was yellow. That’s the last thing I remember—that yellow sky. I woke up in the hospital like this.” He held up his hand. “And I knew I’d been very, very lucky.”

“You weren’t one of the men in the mutiny trial, were you?” Alan asked.

“What was the mutiny trial?” Carlynn asked as she slipped a clam from its shell.

“No, no,” Gabriel said. “I received a medical discharge, so I was spared that, too.” He turned to Carlynn. “The Negro seamen were sent right back to doing the same type of work, with no extra training, no counseling to help them deal with what they’d been through, and some of them refused to do it. The white officers testified against them, and they were convicted of mutiny.”

“Would you have been one of them if you hadn’t been discharged?” Lisbeth asked. Her bowl of cioppino was still full, and Carlynn wondered if she was too nervous to eat.

“I don’t know the answer to that one, Lisbeth,” he said. “I was angry. I had a degree from Berkeley, and I wasn’t the only one of those men who had tried to make something of himself and been treated more like an animal than a human being. I think if they’d made me go back, yes, I would have fought it. At least I hope I would have had the guts to stand up to the navy.”

It was hard for Carlynn to imagine life through his eyes. She’d known men in the service. They’d moved about freely, specializing in any area they chose for the most part. How humiliating it must have been for Gabriel, with his educational background, to be told he wasn’t the right color to fight for his country. She wanted to offer him sympathy, but he didn’t seem to need it. His left hand had been blown to bits, and he’d learned to use his right hand. He’d lost his wife, and he’d survived and moved on. She felt joy for her sister that she had found such a fine man.

Gabriel suddenly looked a bit uncomfortable at having consumed so much of the attention at the table. “Let’s move on to a more pleasant topic,” he said, looking directly at Carlynn. “You two truly do look alike,” he said, lifting a scallop from his bowl. “It’s hard to say which of you is more beautiful. Are you interested in sailing as much as Lisbeth is, Carlynn?”

“No,” Carlynn said with a shudder. “That was Lisbeth’s passion.”

“We went out with our father one time,” Lisbeth explained, “and capsized. Carlynn got stuck underneath the boat for a bit, and she decided sailing was not her cup of tea.”

Gabriel winced. “I don’t blame you for that,” he said to Carlynn.

“Lisbeth was a much better swimmer than I was,” Carlynn said.

“The same thing happened to my sister and myself when we were kids,” Gabriel said. “We were sailing on this estuary in Oakland when we capsized. She was stuck underneath for a couple of minutes. I dived under and got her, and she wasn’t breathing when I brought her to shore.”

“What happened?” Lisbeth asked.

“Well, she was essentially dead,” Gabriel said. “But my great-grandmother was there. We were having a picnic, and all the aunts and everyone were with us. Granny grew up in the South, in Alabama, and she was a healer.”

Lisbeth and Carlynn exchanged quick glances.

“One of my aunts did mouth-to-mouth on her, but it didn’t work. Then Granny came over and held on to my sister’s shoulders, and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, child, breathe!’”

His voice rose, and when a few of the diners turned to look at him, he grimaced. “Sorry,” he said to his tablemates with a laugh. “I got carried away. Anyhow,” he continued in a softer tone, “my sister started breathing. In a few minutes, she was good as new.”

The three of them stared at him in silence.

Gabriel looked at Lisbeth. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked. “I’m sorry I shouted.”

Lisbeth touched the back of his hand. “That’s not it,” she said. “You didn’t say anything wrong.”

Carlynn was ready to explode with questions, but Alan beat her to it. He leaned forward in his chair. “Tell us more about your granny,” he said.

Gabriel didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at them suspiciously, and Carlynn wondered what they were giving away on their faces.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Please,” Carlynn said. “Just tell us about Granny.”

“Well, she had a reputation,” he said slowly, leaning back in his chair, still obviously confused by whatever strange hunger he saw in their eyes. “She always fixed me up when I was a kid.”

“Do you mean she cleaned your cuts and put Band-Aids on them?” Alan asked.

“Or did she use herbs or her own special poultice?” Carlynn added.

Gabriel shook his head. “No. If I had a cut or hurt myself she would hold me, or put her hand on the place that had been injured, and she’d go into a trance of some sort and talk about God and Jesus, and I’d be better. Everyone in the family turned to her when they were sick. Even the neighbors. Even the white neighbors. I remember wishing she was still alive when I lost my fingers, although I’m not sure she could have done much about that.” He smiled.

“What was the most remarkable healing she ever performed?” Lisbeth asked.

“I think bringing my sister back from the dead was pretty remarkable,” Gabriel said. “But she also cured a neighbor boy’s polio.”

“Was this polio diagnosed by a physician?” Alan asked.

“Yes. And it was very obvious that he had it. He needed to use an iron lung sometimes. But Granny actually moved into his house, into the same room he lived in, and she’d pray with him and…I don’t know what-all she did, but that kid was cured in a month’s time.”

Alan turned to look at Carlynn, and she could see the question in his eyes. Can we tell him? he was asking her. They couldn’t keep hounding Gabriel with their own questions without telling him why they were filled with curiosity. She liked Gabriel, but she’d only known him for slightly more than an hour. And he worked at SF General, and he also liked to talk a lot. Who might he tell?

Lisbeth caught her eye, giving her the slightest of nods.

“All right, I’m beginning to feel left out here.” Gabriel set down his spoon, but the frustration in his voice had a playful edge to it. “You three are communicating with each other wordlessly, back and forth across this table, and I would love to know what the secret is.”

Carlynn took in a breath. “Can you keep this quiet?” she asked him.

“Of course.”

“I seem to be able to heal people sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how it happens, but that’s why we’re asking you questions about your great-grandmother. We’re all very interested in the phenomenon.”

“My.” Gabriel looked a bit stunned. “I wasn’t expecting that. Tell me more. How do you do it? Who have you healed?”

The three of them started talking at once, and the conversation lasted into dessert. They speculated about everything. Could his great-grandmother have cured the neighbor of polio without living in his room with him? And what did invoking the name of Jesus have to do with her healing?

“I think it’s all the same thing,” Alan said finally. “Whatever your great-grandmother did and what Carlynn does is connected. It’s not the religiosity involved. But maybe it does have to do with faith. I just don’t know.”

Gabriel looked at Lisbeth. “You must have this ability, too,” he said. “After all, you have the same genetic makeup as your sister. Have you ever tried?”

The color rose to Lisbeth’s cheeks. “I don’t have it,” she said with certainty. “There must be something more than genes at play.”

Gabriel covered her hand with his. “I guess one healer in a family is enough,” he said.

By the time they left the restaurant, Carlynn had the feeling she’d known Gabriel for years instead of hours. He fit in well with the three of them, and his adoration and admiration of Lisbeth was clear.

“Can we give you a lift home, Lisbeth?” Carlynn asked.

“I was hoping to have the honor of driving Lisbeth home,” Gabriel said before Lisbeth could answer.

“I’d like that.” Lisbeth easily put her hand through Gabriel’s arm, and the two of them started walking down the wharf together, and this time Carlynn didn’t even notice that Gabriel’s face was not like any of the others.

21

MIDMORNING FOUND THE WOMEN’S WING BUSTLING WITH activity. Two sets of triplets had been born overnight in addition to twice the usual number of single births, one of them to the wife of a popular local sportscaster. Newspaper reporters and photographers clogged the corridor, where a security guard was doing his best to keep them from disturbing the patients. The nurses were frantic, and extra staff needed to be called in. Although it was nearing the end of July, the weather was still unseasonably hot for Monterey, and the air-conditioning in the Women’s Wing was not working properly. Engineers trying to fix the problem added to the mayhem in the hallway. Some of the rooms were ice-cold, the mothers and babies bundled in blankets. At the other end of the corridor, perspiration dripped from the new mothers’ foreheads as they nursed their nearly naked infants.

Joelle didn’t feel well. She had picked up a stack of twelve referrals from the social work office earlier that morning, and so far had managed to see only one of the patients on her list. That case had required her to make over a dozen phone calls, and as she leafed through the remaining referrals, she hoped the rest of them would not be so labor intensive. She really wanted to go back to her office, put her head on her desk and fall asleep.

For the past couple of days, she’d been having pain low in her belly. It was subtle at first, and she’d mentioned it to Rebecca the day before when they passed each other in the hall. Rebecca said it was most likely more of the same ligament pain that had been bothering her for the past month. “Don’t be concerned about it unless it gets worse,” she’d said. Well, it was getting worse, although Joelle wondered if it was the chaos in the Women’s Wing that made everything about this day seem unbearable. She was certain, though, that the pain had been sharper when she woke up this morning, tugging at her groin along her right side. Plus, she’d been unable to eat breakfast. She’d made her usual oatmeal and strawberries, but when she sat down at the counter in her condominium and looked into the bowl, she’d felt nearly overwhelmed by queasiness. She was supposed to have lunch with Carlynn that afternoon and would have to cancel with her once again if she didn’t start feeling better soon.

Leaning against the wall of the corridor, trying to stay out of the way of a guy with a newscam, she studied the next referral on the top of the pile. It was for a twenty-four-year-old woman who did not want to see her baby, and her room was, unfortunately, in the hot end of the maternity unit. Joelle started down the hall, trying not to limp or wince as she walked, but unable to find a gait that didn’t increase the pain in her side. Rebecca had probably been right. Every step would pull on the ligament, wouldn’t it? Still, she made a bargain with herself: if, after seeing this patient, the pain had not lessened, she would find Rebecca and have a discreet chat with her about it.

Stopping outside the patient’s room, she had to read the referral once again, despite its simplicity. Her brain felt foggy, and she’d already forgotten why she had to see the woman in room 23.

The woman was alone in the room, in the bed nearest the window. Her eyes were closed, her head turned toward the window, and Joelle stopped first at the foot of her bed.

“Hello, Ann,” she said. “Are you awake?”

The woman slowly opened her eyes and turned her head toward her. She was a striking young Asian woman, most likely Chinese-American, with long, straight black hair. The expression on her face was flat and lifeless, however, and the whites of her eyes were so pink they nearly glowed. Joelle recognized the look. She’d been in this business long enough to know that it meant one of two things. She glanced at the referral again, and saw that Ann’s baby was a girl. That fact alone was probably responsible for driving Ann into the depths of depression.

Joelle stepped around to the side of the woman’s bed and sat in the chair between the bed and the window, wincing as she did so from the cramping in her belly. Would ligament pain cause cramping? For the first time she wondered if something might be wrong with her baby.

“Hi,” she said again, trying to concentrate on the woman in front of her. “I’m Joelle D’Angelo. I’m a social worker here in the maternity unit, and your nurse asked me to visit you because she’s concerned about how sad you are.”

The woman turned her head away from her so that her perfect profile was sharp against the pillow. “You can’t help me,” she said in a voice that only hinted at a Chinese accent.

“I’d like to understand what has you so down, though,” Joelle said. “Sometimes new mothers feel terrible because of the hormonal changes that occur after pregnancy, and—”

“That’s not it.” Ann spoke into her pillow.

Joelle felt the nausea returning, rising up from somewhere low in her gut, washing over her slowly, the way it had when she’d looked at the bowl of oatmeal. It was so hot in the room. She wasn’t sure she could make it through this interview.

She licked her lips and tried again. “Your nurse told me you gave birth to a healthy baby girl during the night,” Joelle prompted, and she knew immediately she’d hit the real reason for Ann’s depression. The woman turned her face toward her, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“My mother-in-law will never forgive me,” she said. “It’s the second girl. My husband is so angry. He won’t even come in to visit me.”

Joelle barely heard her last words. She was going to be sick. Standing up quickly, she managed to say, “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” to the woman before fleeing from the room.

All she wanted was to make it to the restroom in the nurses’ lounge, halfway down the hall, but the colors and smells and motion in the corridor made her dizzy, and she knew she would never reach the lounge in time. Ducking into one of the patient rooms, she was relieved to see that the bathroom serving the two beds was free, and she managed to close the door behind her before vomiting into the toilet.

Flushing the toilet, she stood up and leaned back against the wall. What a lousy time to run out on that mother! What a horrible thing to do to the poor woman. But her thoughts quickly returned to her own pain, which was still there, burning and cramping, and the bathroom felt like a sauna. Could it be her appendix? she wondered, but the pain now seemed too high on her side for that.

Wetting paper towels with cool water, she pressed them to her forehead. Did she have a fever, or was it the lack of air-conditioning that was making her so hot? Either way, something was definitely wrong with her. A summer flu, maybe. Whatever it was, she didn’t dare try to go back to Ann’s room. She’d have to fill one of the nurses in on the situation and see if someone else could take over for her. Right now all she wanted to do was find Rebecca.

She rinsed her mouth out with cool water and looked at her watch. It was nearly eleven. Rebecca should be finished with her rounds by now and in her office.

Leaving the patient room, she headed down the long corridor toward Rebecca’s office, the pain in her belly jarring her with every step. Someone behind her called her name, but she didn’t bother to turn around. They would have to get along without her for a while.

She was nearly crying by the time she reached Rebecca’s office, and she felt the two patients in the waiting room staring at her as she limped toward the reception counter.

“LuAnn, I need to see Rebecca,” she said to the receptionist, who was writing something on a form.

LuAnn glanced up at her, then back at her notes. “She’s with a patient, Joelle,” she said, but then her head jerked up again as if the sight of Joelle’s sweaty face had just registered in her brain. “You look terrible!” she said, setting down her pen. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not sure. I’m sick. Let me go into one of the examination rooms, please. Then tell Rebecca I’m here.”

LuAnn’s eyes flew open. “Are you pregnant?” she whispered.

“Shh.” Joelle pressed a finger to her lips, but she knew the gesture was futile. So much for her plan to escape Monterey before anyone knew. She had the feeling that, whatever was going on with her body, today was the day everyone would learn that unmarried, unattached Joelle D’Angelo was more than four months pregnant. And if everyone knew about it, Liam would, as well.

“Go in the first room,” LuAnn said. “I’ll let Reb know you’re here and that you look like hell.”

In the small examination room, Joelle could not decide whether to sit, stand or lie down. No position offered relief from the pain, and every movement felt as though it was tearing something loose inside her. She thought she should try to undress so that Rebecca could examine her. Her red-checked dress could stay on, but she should at least get her panty hose off.

She was leaning against the examining table, the room spinning around her, one leg of her panty hose off and the other on, when Rebecca stepped into the room.

“What’s going on?” Rebecca asked, taking Joelle’s arm as if to steady her.

“The cramping is worse,” Joelle said. “And I’ve been throwing up. I’m dizzy. I’m hot. I think something’s really wrong, Rebecca.”

“Can you get up here?” She patted the table with her free hand.

Joelle nodded and managed to climb onto the step, then turn around and sit down gingerly on the edge.

“Are you all right?” Rebecca asked, her hand still on Joelle’s arm and a look of concern in her eyes. “Do you need a basin?”

“I don’t think so,” Joelle said. “It hurts, though, Rebecca. I don’t think it’s ligament pain anymore.”

“No, I don’t either.” Rebecca helped Joelle lie down. She pulled off the remaining leg of her panty hose, setting them on the chair in the corner, before picking up the receiver of the phone on the wall.

“I need to get a CBC on a patient, stat,” she said into the phone. Then she was back at Joelle’s side, pressing her fingers on her belly, and Joelle tightened her abdominal muscles to keep her from pushing too hard.

“Extend this leg out,” Rebecca said. “That’s it, all the way.”

“It hurts,” Joelle said. “Oh my God, Rebecca!” She tried to sit up. “I just realized I haven’t felt the baby move yet this morning!”

“I think the baby’s okay,” Rebecca said. “She or he is probably just giving you a break, since you have so much else to deal with right now.” Rebecca took her temperature, but Joelle didn’t need a thermometer to know she had a fever.

“I’m going to do a sonogram,” Rebecca said as Gale Firestone, a nurse Joelle knew well, walked into the room. Joelle saw the sharp look of astonishment on Gale’s face at the sight of her rounded belly, but the nurse got her surprise quickly under control.

“Sorry you’re not feeling well, Joelle,” she said as she set up the phlebotomy tray on the counter.

“I think you’ve got a case of appendicitis,” Rebecca said. She turned on the ultrasound monitor. “But I’d like to rule out a cyst and a few other things just to be sure.”

Joelle closed her eyes as Gale drew blood from her arm, but opened them again to watch the screen while Rebecca moved the transducer over her belly.

“I don’t see a cyst,” Rebecca said. “But I do see a healthy baby. Not too sure of the sex yet, though.”

“It’s okay?” Joelle asked. “It’s moving and—”

“There’s the heart,” Rebecca said, leaning back so Joelle could see the screen, and she spotted once again that reassuring flutter of life inside her.

“Thank God,” she said, lying back again.

“I’ll call you with this,” Gale said to Rebecca as she carried the tube of Joelle’s blood out of the room.

“Make it fast,” Rebecca said, and Joelle could feel her urgency.

Rebecca gently wiped the gel from Joelle’s stomach, then lowered her dress back over her thighs.

“Do you want to sit up or stay like that?” she asked.

“I don’t want to move any more than I have to,” Joelle said. She looked at Rebecca. “Now what?” she asked.

Rebecca’s gaze settled on the small, shaded window of the room, and Joelle recognized that look on the obstetrician’s face: she was thinking through her options.

“I’d really like to get an MRI,” Rebecca said, “but I’m concerned about wasting time. I’m ninety-five percent sure it’s your appendix, and we don’t want it to rupture. That’s not something we need, with you pregnant.”

“Is that serious?”

“It could be quite serious,” Rebecca said. “Let’s see what your white blood count tells us and go from there.” She moved toward the door. “Do you need a blanket?” she asked, her hand on the doorknob. “It’s cold in this part of the building.”

“No,” Joelle said. “Just hurry back, please.”

She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, Rebecca was telling her to sit up.

“What’s happening?” Joelle tried to sit up with Rebecca’s help and let out a yelp as the pain cut into her side again. “Did the blood work come back?”

“Yes, and it confirms my suspicions. I’m sending you upstairs for an emergency laparotomy. Dr. Glazer will perform it. You know him, don’t you?”

Joelle nodded as she carefully lowered herself from the table onto the step. “What about the baby?” she asked. “What about the anesthesia? How will that—”

“It will be fine,” Rebecca said. “And I’ll be there, keeping an eye on the baby the whole time.”

Joelle suddenly realized that Gale was in the room, moving a wheelchair close to the step she was on. With Rebecca’s help, Joelle lowered herself into the chair, nearly doubled over with pain.

“I’ll take her up,” Rebecca said to Gale, and the nurse held the door open while Joelle was pushed out into the hallway of the office. When they neared the door to the corridor of the Women’s Wing, which they would have to pass through to reach the elevators, Rebecca leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“This means the end of your secret, you know that, don’t you?”

Joelle nodded. “Not important,” she said, and it wasn’t. Not anymore. She just wanted to get through this crisis with both herself and her baby intact.

Rebecca wheeled her through the Women’s Wing, which passed by her in a blur. She could hear the word pregnant following her down the hall, being spoken in surprise and disbelief, and she knew she would be the subject of that day’s gossip in the hospital.

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.”

22

LIAM ENTERED THE SOCIAL WORK OFFICE TO FIND MAGGIE 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.”

23

JOELLE OPENED HER EYES, THEN SHUT THEM AGAIN. HER 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.