The Shadow Wife

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

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

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

“Do your parents know?” he asked.

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

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

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

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you keep us posted?” John asked.

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

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

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

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

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

24

San Francisco, 1957

LISBETH SAT ON THE CABIN TOP OF GABRIEL’S SLOOP, MUNCHING on a pear. For the first time in her life, she did not crave candy and ice cream and cookies. Although she was dressed in knee-high rubber boots, bib overalls over a jersey, a yellow slicker, hat and gloves, she could actually feel the difference in her body beneath all that gear. Certainly, she was still larger than she wanted to be, but there was some unmistakable definition to her waistline, and although her hips and thighs were hardly slender, she could fit into the overalls without looking like an elephantine version of the pear she was eating. She had forgotten how it felt not to be tired all the time from carrying around so much extra weight.

She and Gabriel had been going together for six months, but they’d only been able to start sailing about a month ago, when the wintry San Francisco cold began to soften around the edges, and they could get out on the water without either freezing or capsizing. Their inability to sail had not interfered with their dating, however. They’d explored San Francisco together as though they were tourists, and met often for dinner at a restaurant after work. They had a few favorites, especially in the primarily Italian North Beach area where Gabriel lived, where the beats read their poetry in the coffeehouses, and where no one looked twice at a Negro man and a white woman walking or dancing together. She learned to play whist and bridge in the dark, smoke-filled clubs, and she fell in love with jazz and rhythm and blues.

She and Gabriel could talk all day and all night and never run out of things to say. He told her about growing up in the English Village section of Oakland, where a white Realtor had purchased the house his family had wanted and then transferred the title to Gabriel’s father, which had been the only way a Negro family could get into that neighborhood. His mother had been a housekeeper, his father a porter on the Southern Pacific railroad, where just about every man Gabriel knew worked. His father had died on one of the trains when Gabriel was eleven years old, killed by a fellow crew member during a game of craps.

Gabriel’s family had little money after that, and he’d worked his way through school and college. He’d met his wife, Cookie, at Berkeley, and they’d been married eight years when she discovered the lump in her breast. By the way Gabriel spoke of his late wife, Lisbeth knew he’d adored her, yet she never felt he was comparing her to Cookie. Gabriel knew how to focus on the future without letting the past get in the way, and he was teaching her, through his example, to live the same way. The fact that they both had suffered in their childhoods and their early adult years certainly drew them together, but it was their yearning to create a future that would be peaceful, bright and full of love that sealed that bond.

Dating Gabriel was not without its problems, though. Lisbeth had to find a new place to live after her landlord kicked her out the night she’d brought Gabriel up to her room. She’d only wanted to get him out of the rain while he waited for her to get ready for their date, but the landlord was livid, the tendons in his neck taut as ropes beneath his skin. He had teenage children, he yelled, as if she didn’t know, didn’t hear them playing Elvis on the phonograph at all hours of the night and day. He did not want them to witness interracial dating, and he couldn’t have a colored man in his house. So she left, finding an apartment in North Beach, four blocks from Gabriel’s, with a phone that was available for her use anytime she wanted. Her landlady was a boisterous Italian woman who didn’t care a whit what color Lisbeth’s friends were, and whose house always smelled of tomatoes and olive oil and oregano.

Now that Lisbeth no longer spent her free time huddled in her room eating, the weight dropped off her without her even trying. Diets had not been what she’d needed. All she’d really needed had been the unconditional love of a man, and that she had found in Gabriel.

She loved being out on his boat more than she enjoyed dining with him or listening to music or dancing, because out here they were alone. There was never anyone staring at them, never a look of disapproval or shock from a stranger, as there was sure to be when they ventured out of North Beach. Occasionally, someone would make a disparaging comment loud enough for them to hear, using language that belonged in a sewer, and it would only make Gabriel hold her hand tighter. Sometimes, he would apologize to her, as though the rudeness of others was his fault, and that irritated her no end. He had nothing to apologize for.

At least once every couple of weeks they got together with Carlynn and Alan. They were a compatible foursome, and they’d play bridge at Alan’s apartment, or go to a movie, or meet at Tarantino’s for cioppino. Conversation often seemed to turn to the topic of healing. Gabriel had even taken the three of them to Oakland to meet his mother, who remembered more than he did about his great-grandmother, and who filled their heads with stories they would never have believed, were it not for Carlynn.

“So, Liz,” Gabriel said now, once they were sailing smoothly downwind. “When is Alan going to pop the question to your sister?”

“This weekend,” Lisbeth said, licking a bit of pear juice from her thumb. “They’re going to Santa Barbara, and he plans to ask her sometime while they’re there.”

Alan had shown her the ring, a beautiful large diamond in a white-gold setting, and told her his plans. Lisbeth had been surprised at being taken into his confidence, but Alan had been anxious to tell her. He was a brilliant physician but a bit stuffy and private, and to see that sense of romance and excitement in him had touched her.

“Any chance she’d turn him down?”

Lisbeth laughed. “What do you think? She loves him to bits, and she’s dying to have babies.” Carlynn had found the right man, of that Lisbeth was certain. They were both bright, intense people with a passion for science and medicine and a shared curiosity about Carlynn’s ability to heal. Lisbeth herself would not have been happy with a man like Alan—not that Alan would have been happy with her, either. She needed someone like Gabriel, whose great joy in living was written all over his face.

Lisbeth was careful never to bring up the subject of marriage with Gabriel, although that was certainly where she hoped their relationship was headed. She was afraid he might think she was pressuring him, though. They had only been going out for six months, she would remind herself. Alan and Carlynn had known each other three times that long.

“Carlynn’s not a virgin,” Lisbeth said suddenly, shocking herself more than she did Gabriel. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “And how did you find that out?” he asked.

“She told me a couple of weeks ago when we were driving home to see Mother. We had a very long, sisterly conversation in the car.” Despite her mother’s usual criticism, the visit to Cypress Point had been wonderful. She’d felt whole to be back at the mansion, nourished by the scent of the sea and the cypress. She wished Gabriel could visit the mansion with her sometime, but knew that would never be possible.

“Were you shocked?” Gabriel asked her.

Lisbeth gazed in the direction of Angel Island. We’ve been lovers a long time now, Carlynn had told her, and Lisbeth had sensed that her sister was moving far, far ahead of her. Somehow, all of Carlynn’s medical skills, all her education and everything else she had accomplished that Lisbeth had not paled in comparison to this. Carlynn knew sex. Lisbeth had thought about the way Gabriel kissed her, his hands running up and down her arms or through her hair, never moving anyplace she could interpret as pushing her into something she might not want to do.

“No, I wasn’t shocked. But I was—” she lowered her gaze from Angel Island to Gabriel’s attentive face “—jealous,” she admitted, feeling the color rise into her cheeks.

“You mean, you want to make love with Alan?” Gabriel teased her, and she threw the rest of her pear at him.

“Don’t make this so hard for me, Gabe,” she pleaded.

“Sorry.” He smiled at her. “Is that something you want, baby?” he asked.

She loved it when he called her baby. “Don’t you?” She bit her lip, waiting for his answer. She’d wanted him to make love to her when he’d been nothing more than a voice on the phone.

Gabriel let out a long groan, leaning back in the boat and looking up at the sky. “Hell, yes,” he said. “But I’ve been trying to be a gentleman.”

“Well, stop it.” She giggled.

“I will, if you insist.” He glanced toward the shore, then grinned at her. “Think we should go in?” he asked. “Have you had enough sailing for today?”

She laughed. “We just got out here,” she said. “Besides, we can’t do it yet,” she said. “I have to get a diaphragm first. Carlynn told me about a doctor I can go to.”

“I could use a rubber,” Gabriel said, and she laughed again at his sudden enthusiasm.

“I didn’t even think you thought about sex,” she said. “That’s what I told Carlynn.”

He groaned again. “Why’d you tell her that, Liz? Now she’s going to think I’m queer.”

“Not for long she won’t.” She smiled coyly at him, enjoying the banter, but she hoped she wasn’t giving him the impression that she wanted sex for the sex alone. “I wouldn’t do it with someone I didn’t love, Gabe,” she said, the smile no longer on her face. “I only want to do it with you.”

“I know that, baby,” he said, his face just as serious. “And if I didn’t feel the same way about you, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

That night, they made love in the double bed in his North Beach apartment. She’d been nervous at first, but Gabriel had taken his time. She’d read about sex, but he knew more than had been written in the books she’d analyzed until the pages had started to fall out. Or maybe it was love that had been missing in those books, maybe the men in those stories did not take the time to teach, and to learn, what pleased him, and what pleased his lover.

She remembered something she’d heard one time: sex would either make a relationship better or it would make it worse, but it would not leave it unchanged. She was certain it could only make what she and Gabriel had better, but when they had finished making love, Gabriel rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling, following it with his gaze. She knew something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked, resting her hand on his bare chest.

He blew a smoke ring, then spoke without looking at her. “I’m afraid of costing you,” he said. “Costing you way too much.” He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her, and in the smoky, dark room, without his glasses on, he looked like a stranger. “The whole world’s not like North Beach, you know,” he said. “You haven’t even told your mother about me.”

“Yes, I have,” she said, already distressed by the tenor of the conversation. “At least, she knows I’m going with someone named Gabriel. I’ll tell her the rest when I have to.”

“I don’t want to be a ‘have to’ for you, Lisbeth,” he said. “It makes me feel like a burden.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is, isn’t it? That’s the reality.”

“It doesn’t matter what my mother thinks, Gabe,” she said. “She hasn’t truly been a part of my life for a long time.”

“But you still visit her, and Cypress Point is still important to you. I know you love it there.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his windowsill and rolled over, bracing himself on his elbows to look down at her. “I’ve taken you to Oakland,” he said. “I’ve introduced you all around, to my family and my neighbors. I showed you the house where I grew up and the places I hung around. What can you show me from your childhood? I can’t meet your mother, can’t set foot in the house you adore unless I pose as a delivery boy, can’t walk through your old neighborhood without scaring people out of their wits.”

“I don’t care about that, Gabe,” she said fervently, worried that she was lying to herself as well as to him. “I’d give all that up for you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t know that I should let you,” he said, sitting up and leaning back against the wall.

Lisbeth felt something precious slipping from her grasp. “Are you saying you want to break up with me?” She started to cry, silently, not wanting him to know.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to break up. But I’m not sure about our future together, Liz.”

Before they’d made love, he’d been full of tender words for her. Now he sounded as though he was pulling away, ready to end what they’d nurtured together for the past six months. And suddenly, she thought she knew the reason why.

“Was I not as good as your wife?” she asked, unable to hide the tears in her voice. “In bed, I mean. Not as good as the other women you’ve had?”

“What?” He looked truly surprised. “Oh, Lizzie. Oh, no, baby.” He moved toward her, pulling her up by her shoulders until she was in his arms. “You were perfect,” he said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I’m just thinking ahead, that’s all. Thinking about…how hard it could be to be married. How hard it would be on our children. I’m sorry, baby.” He lowered his head to the hollow between her throat and shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

She felt his tears on her shoulder then, and he pulled her even closer to him, so close she could barely breathe, and that was where she wanted to be. Always.

Although Carlynn was thrilled to be engaged to Alan, she knew there was trouble ahead and that it would take the form of Delora Kling. As soon as Carlynn told her mother about the engagement, Delora started planning.

“We’ll have the wedding on the terrace,” Delora said. “The weather in September should be ideal for it to be outdoors. I heard a harpist the other day who would be perfect. Wouldn’t that be lovely, dear? It’s so rare to hear a harpist at a wedding. Of course, if we have it here, that will limit the number of guests we can have. Would you prefer it to be in one of the cathedrals instead?” Carlynn did want to be married at Cypress Point, but she also wanted Lisbeth to be her maid of honor, along with Penny Everett as her bridesmaid. And Lisbeth was attached at the hip to Gabriel, as she should be. Carlynn had no problem with that—she adored Gabriel—but Delora was sure to have a fit if her “second daughter” showed up with a Negro by her side.

She and Lisbeth were closer than ever as they talked over wedding plans and shopped for the wedding gown and bridesmaids’ dresses. Lisbeth looked fabulous these days. She was only two sizes larger than Carlynn, and Carlynn persuaded her to try on wedding gowns, as well as the bridesmaid’s dress. She told Lisbeth that it would help her see how a dress would look on her to see it on her twin. But really, she’d just wanted Lisbeth to enjoy the thrill of seeing herself in a wedding dress. Only later did she think it might have been a little mean of her to make Lisbeth see herself as a bride without a wedding of her own in sight.

Lisbeth fell in love with one of the dresses. She couldn’t stop fingering the lace and looking behind her at the long train, and she spent a long time admiring herself in the mirror before she took it off. She tried to persuade Carlynn to try it on, as well, but, although Carlynn also loved the dress, she had never seen Lisbeth so enamored with an article of clothing.

“No,” she said, selecting her second choice for herself. “That one will be yours someday.”

They left the bridal shop and began walking toward the bus stop.

“I guess if Gabe and I ever get married, it won’t be at Cypress Point,” Lisbeth said as they walked.

Carlynn heard the wistfulness in her sister’s voice. She had no doubt that Lisbeth and Gabriel would be together for the rest of their lives, no doubt that they were meant for one another, and yet there would always be that extra burden for them to carry. They would never have the freedom to live their lives as she and Alan would.

“Honey,” she said, putting her arm around her sister’s shoulders as they walked. “We have to have a serious talk about my wedding.”

“You mean about having Gabriel there, don’t you?” Lisbeth asked, and Carlynn knew her sister had been expecting this conversation.

“Yes,” Carlynn said. “Alan and I want him there. He will be your guest. I’m going to insist upon it. It’s my wedding, after all.”

Lisbeth looked at her with affection, but there was doubt in her eyes. “It’s at Mother’s home,” she said. “Mother will make the rules.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, though,” Carlynn said. “Maybe we’re not giving Mother enough credit. I don’t think she’s a racist, exactly. It’s just that all the Negroes she’s ever known have been servants or waiters or other service people. She never had an opportunity to meet them under any other circumstances. We really don’t know how she’ll react. We’re guessing. Maybe you should just show up with him. If we act like there’s nothing amiss, what’s she going to say?”

Lisbeth was quiet for a moment. “I couldn’t put Gabriel in that position.”

Carlynn sat down on the bench at the bus stop. Lisbeth was right. That would be unfair to Gabe, and unnerving for the rest of them as they awaited Delora’s reaction.

“What if Mother knows, and says it’s all right?” Carlynn asked. “He’d come then, wouldn’t he?”

“Of course, and that would be wonderful,” Lisbeth said. “It would also be a miracle, though.” She ran a hand through her blond curls, which she now wore looser and longer, in a style that was so flattering Carlynn wished she’d discovered it first.

“Well, I’m going to talk with her about it,” Carlynn said.

“Good luck,” Lisbeth said. She didn’t sound at all optimistic.

Carlynn called her mother that evening from the phone in her bedroom, and Delora immediately launched into a litany of problems she was having making arrangements with the photographer and the caterer. Carlynn listened patiently, and when Delora stopped to take a breath, she said, “I need to talk with you about something, Mother.”

“Don’t tell me the wedding’s off,” Delora said. There was more of a warning in her voice than there was sympathy.

“No, of course not. Nothing like that. I just wanted…” She hesitated. “You know, of course, that Lisbeth will be bringing her boyfriend.”

“Yes, I have his name on the list. Gabriel, isn’t it? Shall I put him at the head table, next to Lisbeth?”

“That would be perfect, Mother. But I thought it would be best if you knew a little bit about him before the big day.” Carlynn screwed up her nose as she spoke. She hated this. Gabriel’s color should not be an issue, and she felt as though she, herself, was making it one.

“Well, tell me about him, then,” her mother said. “Where is his family from?”

“Gabriel’s a fabulous person, Mom,” Carlynn said, avoiding the question of family, “but I thought I should let you know ahead of time that he’s a Negro, just so you wouldn’t be surprised when you saw him.”

There was a long silence on the phone line, and Carlynn wondered if her mother had fallen into a dead faint.

“This figures,” Delora said finally, in disgust. “Lisbeth goes out with no one her entire life, and then when she finally does, it’s with a colored man. Well, it’s out of the question, Carlynn. He can’t come here.”

“It’s my wedding, Mother.”

“And it’s my house and many of my friends will be here, and I just won’t have it, Carlynn.”

Carlynn ran her hand over the chenille spread on her bed, trying to think of a different approach. “Mom, he’s really a lovely man,” she said. “He—”

“I don’t care if he’s president of the United States, he’s not coming here.”

Carlynn gritted her teeth. “Lisbeth loves him, Mother. And he loves her. Doesn’t that count for something? He’s a professional. An accountant at SF General.”

“So he thinks he can get a white woman, then? Because he’s an accountant? He’s going to lower Lisbeth to his level, that’s all he’s going to do. And Lisbeth is going to let it happen.”

Carlynn let out her breath. How was she supposed to respond to that?

“If you think I’m going to have someone like that at one of my parties, especially on the arm of one of my daughters, well…I wouldn’t dream of putting any of my guests in that uncomfortable position.”

“It’s not your party, Mother. It’s my wedding. And it’s Lisbeth you’re putting in an uncomfortable position. You’re making her unwelcome in the home she grew up in.”

“I never said she wasn’t welcome. She can come. But she’d better be alone.”

“Mother…” Carlynn’s voice trailed off in frustration.

“You know, I sometimes wonder if that girl is actually mine. I was asleep when they cut her out of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, I know she looks just like you, but you’re a true Kling, with elegance and bearing and intelligence…”

Carlynn rolled her eyes.

“…but, somehow, Lisbeth turned out to be nothing but trash. Fat trash. I just can’t believe she’s doing this to me. To our family.” Her mother was weeping now, and Carlynn ignored her tears.

She thought of telling her that any differences between her twin daughters were of her own creation, but wisely bit her tongue. “She’s not fat any longer, and you know it,” she said instead. “You saw her just a few weeks ago. She looks great. Give her some credit. She gained weight because she was miserable, but with Gabriel, she’s happy. She’s lost seventy pounds so far, and you didn’t even compliment her on it when you saw her.”

“I don’t care if she disappears,” her mother said angrily, and hung up the phone.

Carlynn stared at the phone in her hand a long time before placing it back in the cradle.

Lying down on the bed, she continued the conversation with her mother in her mind. She thought of telling her that she envied what Lisbeth had with Gabriel. There was an adoration between Lisbeth and Gabe, a love so caring and tender, it sometimes made her feel weepy to be around it. She knew Alan loved her, but it was different. She supposed that she, as a physician, did not invite the sort of attentive devotion that Lisbeth received from Gabriel. She couldn’t help but wish, though, that Alan would touch her more often, hold her hand in public and talk with her about his deepest secrets and feelings, the way Lisbeth said Gabriel spoke to her.

Rolling onto her side, she felt a pang of guilt for wanting Alan to be someone he was not. He would make a wonderful husband and father, and that’s what truly mattered. And he did adore her, in his own way. She was never quite certain, though, if it was her gift or herself that he treasured most.

Carlynn and Alan met Lisbeth and Gabriel at Tarantino’s the following night. It had become their favorite restaurant for a double date, despite the fact that the diners around them were mostly tourists. The sun had not yet set, and from their table near the window, they could see the boats in the harbor and gulls flying above the green water.

She’d told Alan about her conversation with her mother and about Delora’s unwillingness to have Gabriel at the wedding.

“How bad has her eyesight gotten?” Alan had asked, only half joking.

“Not that bad,” she’d replied.

They’d gotten serious then, weighing their options and coming up with the only solution that seemed both fair and feasible.

Now, after they’d ordered their cioppino, Carlynn looked at Alan, who nodded at her, letting her know it was time to tell Lisbeth and Gabriel the decision they had made.

“There’s been a change of plans,” Carlynn said.

“Regarding?” Gabriel was lighting a cigarette, but his eyes were on Carlynn.

“The wedding,” Alan said. “We’ve decided not to get married at Cypress Point, after all. We’re going to have a smaller wedding right here, in the little Episcopal church near my row house.”

“What?” Lisbeth was clearly astonished.

“It will have to be a different weekend than we’d planned,” Carlynn said, “because the church doesn’t have our date open, but—”

“Stop this,” Gabriel said softly, and they all turned to look at him.

“Stop what?” Lisbeth frowned.

Gabriel tapped the ash off his cigarette as he seemed to collect his thoughts, then he looked at Carlynn. “I know you’re making this change because of me,” he said, “and I don’t want you to do that.”

“Oh, no,” Lisbeth said, understanding dawning in her eyes.

Alan licked his lips. “Look, Gabe,” he said, resting his arms on the table so he could lean closer to Gabriel. “You’re right that you’re the catalyst for the change. But please understand that your friendship and your presence at our wedding are much more important to us than where we get married.”

Carlynn gratefully squeezed Alan’s knee beneath the table. How could she ever have wished for someone better than this gallant man?

“You spoke to Mother?” Lisbeth looked at Carlynn.

Carlynn nodded. “She reacted as you guessed she would,” she said. “And Alan and I are not willing to have Gabriel excluded or to have anyone feel uncomfortable at what is supposed to be a happy occasion.”

Lisbeth turned to Gabriel. “Oh, Gabe,” she said. “I’m sorry my mother is so impossible.”

Gabriel took another drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke into the air, then turned to Lisbeth. “Your mother called me,” he said.

“Oh, no.” Carlynn grimaced.

“How would she know where to reach you?” Lisbeth asked.

“I’d told her that he was the accountant at SF General,” Carlynn said. “I’m so sorry, Gabriel. I had no idea she’d call you.”

“Not your fault,” he said quickly to Carlynn, then leaned back, saying nothing as their waiter set plates of salad in front of each of them.

When the waiter had walked away, Gabriel continued. “She told me I wasn’t welcome at the wedding,” he said. “But she had a great deal more to say than that.”

“She is a class-A bitch,” Carlynn said too loudly, and a diner at the next table turned to glare at her.

“What else did she say?” Lisbeth looked worried.

Gabriel stubbed out his cigarette and covered Lisbeth’s pale hand with his dark one. “She made me realize that the cost of us being together would be even higher than we imagined. She said that she would cut you completely out of her life if you continued to see me, that you’ll never be welcome at Cypress Point again, ever, whether I’m there with you or not.”

Lisbeth leaned forward. “I’ve told you, I don’t care about any of that,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “Do you think in a choice between you and my mother, she stands a chance?”

Carlynn was furious with Delora. How could she hurt Lisbeth this way? Lisbeth adored Cypress Point, and her mother knew it.

“She said that,” Gabriel continued, “if we were ever to get married, she’d cut you out of her will.”

Lisbeth blanched at that. “She wouldn’t do that,” she said. “Her money was also my father’s money, and no matter what she thinks of me, he loved me and would have wanted me to have it.”

“I don’t believe Mother would really cut her out of the will,” Carlynn agreed. “I think she’s just saying that to try to control her. That’s the way she is.” She wasn’t sure, though, and she knew quite well what Lisbeth might be giving up for love: millions of dollars and her share of the mansion she adored.

“You know, Liz, I’m just a guy from Oakland,” Gabriel said. “There are plenty more men out there who are better than me, and who would cost you nothing. If I truly love you, and I sure do, how can I let you lose so much?”

“I want you,” Lisbeth said.

“And I want you, too,” Gabriel said, tightening his grip on her hand. “I just need to be very sure you know the risks of being with me.”

“I do,” Lisbeth said.

Carlynn felt her eyes burn.

“Your wedding—” Gabriel looked at Alan and Carlynn “—will be at Cypress Point. Lisbeth will be a beautiful maid of honor, and you will have pictures taken that you’ll show me when you get back to San Francisco. And I’ll be very sad to miss your special day, but the four of us can have a separate celebration when you get back.” He looked at the three of them one by one. “All right?”

“Thanks, Gabe,” Alan said, nodding. Beneath the table, he took Carlynn’s hand and held it tighter than he ever had before.

25

“HERE YOU GO, HONEY.” JOELLE’S MOTHER HANDED HER A GLASS of fresh lemonade, then sat next to her father at the small table on the balcony of the condominium.

“Thanks, Mom.” Joelle was in the lounge chair, where she’d planted herself an hour ago, after her parents brought her home from the hospital. It had been three days since her surgery, and she felt remarkably well. There wasn’t much pain, but she was tender and shaky, and she felt a need to move cautiously. The baby had been quiet during her hospital stay, but he or she was active today, the moving-bubble sensation filling Joelle’s belly a couple of times an hour.

Joelle took a sip of cool lemonade, then set the glass on the flat arm of the lounge chair. “I need to talk to you two,” she said, not completely sure she was ready to have this conversation.

Her parents turned in their chairs to face her.

“What’s up?” her father asked, reaching for a tortilla chip from the bowl on the table. He was wearing sunglasses, and she wished she could see his eyes.

“I’m pregnant,” Joelle said.

There was a moment of silence on the balcony.

“Oh, honey.” Her mother scraped her chair across the floor of the balcony to move it closer to the lounge. She put her hand on Joelle’s arm, her face impassive, unreadable, and Joelle felt some sympathy for her. Ellen didn’t know whether she should be happy for her daughter or not, and she was waiting for a cue from Joelle.

“It’s good and bad news,” Joelle said, “as you can probably guess.”

“How far along are you?” her father asked.

“Eighteen weeks,” she said. “Almost nineteen.”

“Wow,” said her mother. “You’re barely showing.”

“I haven’t emphasized it,” Joelle said. “I’ve tried to wear loose, nonmaternity clothes, but it will be impossible to hide soon. And, anyway, now everybody knows.”

“You poor thing,” said her mother. “You had to have your appendix out while you were pregnant!”

“Well, fortunately, everything turned out okay,” she said.

“Who’s the father?” her dad asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” her mother said quickly. “What matters is that you’re going to have a baby. Something you’ve wanted for so long. Something you thought was impossible.”

She imagined her mother was thinking the same thing as her colleagues—that she had gotten herself artificially inseminated or perhaps had found an egg donor. Something out of the ordinary, since everyone knew the struggle she and Rusty had had trying to conceive.

“I want you both to know the truth,” she said, longing to tell them. “But please keep this to yourselves.” Who would they tell, anyhow?

“Of course,” said her mother.

“Liam is the baby’s father.”

“Liam!” Her mother leaned back in the chair, surprise clear on her face. “I thought you and Liam were just friends.”

“We are.” She sighed and shook her head. “We spent so much time together when Mara got sick. And we became very close. One night…we made love. Just that one time, but…” She nodded toward her stomach. “That appears to have been enough.”

“Why does it have to be a secret?” her father asked.

Her mother turned to him. “Because Liam is married to Mara,” she explained as though he were senile. “He’s so committed to Mara. I’m actually surprised he would…” Her mother didn’t finish her sentence, but Joelle knew where she had been heading.

“But not surprised that I would?” she asked, then was instantly annoyed with herself. Her mother had meant nothing by her comment, and Joelle knew it. It was simply the truth. Anyone would be surprised that Liam had made love to another woman.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” her mother said.

“I know. It’s just…it’s a mess, Mom. We didn’t use birth control because neither of us figured I could get pregnant. And you’re right. Liam is completely and utterly committed to Mara.”

“Well, so are you,” her father said, rushing to her defense.

“What does Liam have to say about all this?” her mother asked.

Not much, she thought, feeling the unwelcome anger that had been teasing her lately. “He didn’t know until the appendectomy, when word finally got around that I was pregnant,” she said. “I was never going to tell him.” She smiled at them. “Actually, I was thinking of leaving here. Moving to Berkeley to be near you two, or to San Diego to be near another friend, where I could start a new life. Then no one here would have to know.”

Both of her parents stared at her in silence. “To spare Liam from having to deal with the whole thing,” her mother said. It was a statement rather than a question, and Joelle nodded.

“He’s so screwed up, Mom,” she said.

Her father shook his head. “You’ve always wanted to save everybody, Shanti,” he said. “Even when you were a kid, you’d take the blame for things the other kids did. Do you remember that?”

“Only once,” Joelle said, remembering the time she’d claimed she’d set fire to a flowering shrub near the cabin that served as the schoolhouse. She knew the parents of the boy who had actually set the fire would punish him far more severely than her parents would punish her.

“I can think of at least three or four times,” her father said.

“Are you still planning to move?” her mother asked.

Joelle shook her head. “No. There’s not much point to it now that the cat’s out of the bag. Liam and I are going to have to figure out how to handle this without creating more of a mess than we already have.” So far, though, Liam had shown little evidence that he planned to join her in that task.

While she was in the hospital, Liam had been careful to give her the attention befitting a friend with whom he’d worked for many years and about whom he cared a great deal, and nothing more than that. Paul treated her similarly. She doubted anyone’s suspicions had been raised. She wondered if, now that she was home, she would hear from Liam or if he would continue his policy of no longer calling her at night. Perhaps that would be wise. They would inevitably grow closer with each call, as they had before. She would love to have those calls again—she needed more support from him than she was getting—but that much contact could only lead them down the same slippery slope. “What do you want, honey?” Her mother touched her arm again. “What do you wish would happen?” There was such love in her mother’s eyes that Joelle had to look away from her.

She bit her lip. “I want what I can’t have,” she said, her voice breaking, and she began to cry.

“She’s tired,” her father said, talking about her as if she were not sitting just three feet from him.

“Dad’s right, hon.” Her mother leaned forward to stroke her hair. “How about a nap?”

Joelle nodded, letting her mother help her to her feet. She was tired. She reminded herself of Sam, when he’d gone too long without a nap and simply could not maintain his good disposition one minute longer.

She slept for hours, awakening to the unmistakable smell of her mother’s vegetable soup. Although her bedroom door was closed, the aroma still found its way to her bed, and it filled her with longing for her childhood, when everything had seemed so simple and good.

Slowly she got out of bed, her right side aching a bit. She combed her hair in the dresser mirror, thinking that she should tell her parents she’d finally gotten in touch with Carlynn Shire. They would love to hear that she and the healer were becoming friends, and that Carlynn would soon be working with Mara in earnest, for whatever that was worth.

Slipping on her sandals, she walked from her bedroom to the kitchen.

“That smells so good, Mom,” she said.

“I thought you might like some soup, even though it’s warm outside,” her mother said.

“You’re exactly right,” Joelle said, leaning against the breakfast bar. “My stomach still feels a bit queasy.”

Her father came up behind her and put his arm around her waist. “I’ve been thinking, Shanti,” he said. “Good and good and good can’t possibly equal bad.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

“You’re a good person,” he said. “And so is Liam, and so is Mara. There’s no way something bad can come from anything the three of you do.”

She was touched by his rationale, and she rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re so sweet, Daddy,” she said. “I’m glad you guys are here.”

Her father looked at her mother. “Hey,” he said, “remember Shanti’s cypress in Big Sur?”

“Yes, of course!” her mother said. “I’d forgotten all about that.” She looked at Joelle. “Do you remember? You’re supposed to take a cutting from it for each child you have. You know, plant a new tree for the new baby.”

She knew what they were talking about: the Monterey cypress planted on top of her placenta. To be honest, though, she didn’t recall anyone ever talking about taking a cutting from it to plant a tree for a new baby.

“I don’t have to bury the placenta under it, do I?” She tried to keep the teasing tone out of her voice, but wasn’t sure she had succeeded. She decided she would wait a while before admitting to them that she’d contacted the healer. She could only handle so much of her parents’ eccentricities at one time.

“No, of course not,” her father said. “We’ll go down and get you a cutting from it.”

“She really should get it herself,” her mother argued.

“You guys are too much.” Joelle laughed. “Is the soup ready yet?”

As she lay in bed that night, Joelle found herself thinking of Big Sur and the Cabrial Commune. It was more the smell of her mother’s vegetable soup than the discussion about the cypress that brought the memories to mind, and she felt a yearning to go back there, to the place she’d spent her first ten years of life. The troubles of the outside world had been nonexistent there, and the world inside the commune consisted only of friends and forest and fog. It was the place where her father and the midwife, Felicia, had taken the time to dig a hole and plant a cypress to ensure her future. She knew exactly where her cypress was planted—near the northwestern corner of the cabin that served as the schoolhouse. Each of the kids who’d been born at the commune knew which cypress was theirs, and all mysticism aside, it had been a pretty nice custom.

She’d been to the Big Sur area several times in the last twenty-four years, but never to Cabrial. Rusty had shown no interest in visiting the place where she’d grown up, and each time they drove down Highway One to Big Sur, she would pass the dirt road leading to the commune with an unspoken longing.

Maybe, after she had the baby, she would go.

26

San Francisco, 1959

“SHE’S MY RIGHT ARM,” LLOYD PETERSON SAID, HIS HAND ON Lisbeth’s shoulder. “I’m not sure if I can get along without her that long.”

He was looking across the reception desk at Gabriel, who had come to the office as they were closing up to plead with Lloyd to let Lisbeth take a vacation. Lisbeth had already told Gabriel she couldn’t possibly take a whole week away from the office in the middle of the summer, when she was the only girl working, but Gabriel was not one to give up easily.

“You need a break,” he’d told her as they walked back to his place from the cinema the night before. “You work too hard.” They’d just seen Some Like it Hot, during which Gabriel had whispered to her that he’d take her over Marilyn Monroe any day. Those flattering words were still on her mind as she listened to Lloyd and Gabriel’s amiable argument over the possibility of her taking some time off. He wanted to go to the coastal town of Mendocino with her for a week’s vacation. Although Lisbeth longed for a week alone with Gabriel, she knew Lloyd couldn’t spare her. Still she decided to let the two men—the two old friends and tennis partners—duke it out.

“Let’s talk about this over a beer,” Gabriel finally said to Lloyd, who nodded in agreement, and the two of them left her alone to close up the office.

Lisbeth had to smile as the men walked out the door. She doubted Gabriel would win this one, but it was sweet of him to try.

She turned on the radio on her desk, as she always did when she had the office to herself. Switching the station from Lloyd’s favorite, where the Kingston Trio was singing “Tom Dooley,” to the Negro station Gabriel had introduced her to, where the music was earthier and made her want to dance, she set about filing the charts that had been used that day.

Gabriel had become almost fanatical about wanting to take a vacation in Mendocino. He’d been talking about it ever since Alan and Carlynn honeymooned there after their wedding nearly two years earlier. They’d raved about the peace and quiet and the natural beauty of the location, saying how perfect it was for a romantic getaway. It would be different for her and Gabriel, though, Lisbeth knew. Whenever they stayed in a hotel, they had to get two separate rooms. Someday, Gabriel promised her, they would be married. She now wore a spectacular diamond and sapphire ring on her left hand, but they had not yet set a date. She trusted their relationship, its depth and its love, but she knew Gabe still harbored the fear that marriage to him would cost her more than he was worth.

She’d certainly thought about the price she was paying for being with Gabriel. She had not visited Cypress Point since Carlynn’s wedding, and she missed the mansion and the view from the terrace in a way that could cause her actual physical pain. Sometimes at night, she yearned for her old bedroom, where the open windows let in the sound of the waves slapping against the rocky shore.

She thought, too, about the financial cost a marriage to Gabriel would mean for her. She would lose a fortune if she was cut out of her mother’s will. That only meant, she tried to reason with herself, that she and Gabriel would live like most couples, dependent on only themselves and their own resources to get by. They would never be rich, but between her small salary and Gabriel’s larger one, they would be in better shape than many people they knew. She should need nothing more than that.

It was not fair, though. Not fair that Carlynn, who had gotten the best of everything as a child, should still receive it now, as an adult. It was a struggle for Lisbeth not to shift the anger she felt toward her mother onto her sister’s shoulders. When Carlynn would return from a visit to the mansion, Lisbeth could barely look her in the eye, she was so jealous. She knew that her twin fought with Delora to allow Lisbeth to visit Cypress Point, but there was no way she could win that battle. Delora had all the power.

Although Lisbeth hadn’t set foot in the mansion in two years, Carlynn made regular trips to see their mother, whose eyesight was worsening and who was developing other aches and pains as well, even though she was only in her fifties. Carlynn would be upset after those visits, because although she possessed the ability to heal total strangers, she seemed unable to rid her mother of her ailments.

Carlynn was upset over other matters, as well, Lisbeth knew. After two years of marriage, she was still not pregnant, and Lisbeth heard the frustration in her sister’s voice every month when she’d call to announce she had, once again, gotten her period.

Lisbeth, though, had decided she didn’t want children, and she thought Gabriel seemed relieved by that decision. He still worried about how their half-white, half-Negro children might fit into the world, but Lisbeth’s reasoning went even deeper than that. Her own childhood had been so unhappy, and her memories of herself as a little girl so excruciating, that she couldn’t bear the thought of watching a child of her own endure anything that might be hurtful. She still used a diaphragm to keep from getting pregnant, but Carlynn had told her that within a year or two, birth control pills would be on the market. Lisbeth had kept her joy over that news to herself out of sensitivity to her sister, who might never need a pill to avoid getting pregnant.

Little Richard was singing about Miss Molly when Lloyd and Gabriel surprised her by returning to the office. Lloyd wore a look of defeat on his face, but Lisbeth knew him well enough to see the smile behind it.

“Your boyfriend drives a hard bargain,” Lloyd said to her, and she looked at Gabriel.

“We’re going?” she asked, surprised.

“This Saturday,” Gabriel said. “For an entire week. I already called to book two rooms for us at the same inn where Carlynn and Alan stayed. Right on a bluff over the water.”

Lisbeth walked around the desk to give each man a hug. She could hardly wait to call Carlynn to tell her the news.

Mendocino was a small, stunning village, perched on a bluff high above the Pacific, and in some ways it reminded her of the area around Cypress Point. As they drove into the town in Gabriel’s open convertible with its fins and whitewall tires, she wondered if that might have been the reason he had so wanted to bring her here. Maybe it was his attempt to give her back a bit of what she’d lost.

The architecture ranged from Victorian to early Californian, and the homes and shops looked bright and clean in the afternoon sun. In the distance to their left, a group of people stood at the edge of a bluff, staring out to sea.

“What’s going on out there?” she asked, and Gabriel followed her gaze to the bluff.

“Everyone’s dressed in black,” he said. “It’s probably a funeral service of some kind. Maybe they’re scattering someone’s ashes into the sea.”

She thought he was right as she, too, noticed the dark clothing and somber demeanor of the group silhouetted at the edge of the cliff. “What a glorious location,” she said, and it was a moment before she could tear her gaze away.

The inn was small and lovely, set back just a bit from the bluff and surrounded by a gorgeous coastal garden in full bloom. They walked together into the small office at the side of the inn, and Lisbeth was relieved when the woman behind the counter greeted them with a wide smile, as though she had interracial couples checking in every day of the week. Lisbeth wondered if they might have been able to get away with a double room instead of two singles, but Gabriel would never have agreed to that. He was more protective of her honor than she was.

“No keys,” the innkeeper said after they had paid and signed the guest book. “You have the two rooms on the second floor. Just turn right at the top of the stairs.”

Gabriel thanked the woman, and they left the office, gathered their luggage from the car and entered the front door of the inn. At the top of the stairs, they turned right and opened the first of two doors.

The room was small and cozy, with a white iron double bed and a view of the bluffs. Lisbeth set her suitcase down and walked over to the open window, its white, gauzy curtains wafting into the room on the soft breeze. She could see the dark-suited throng walking away from the cliff, some of them with their arms around one another.

“I think this room is mine,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him in surprise. “Why don’t we look at both of them before we decide who gets which?” she suggested.

“All right.” He set his own suitcase on the floor. “Let’s look at the other one,” he said, walking back into the hall.

She was first to enter the room and her gaze instantly fell on a wedding dress hanging from a hook on the closet door. “Oh,” she said, drawing back quickly. “This must be someone else’s room.”

Gabriel stood right behind her, preventing her from exiting. “No,” he said, his lips against her ear. “I think it’s yours.”

Lisbeth felt a chill run up her spine. That dress. She suddenly recognized it as the dress she had tried on two years earlier when shopping for Carlynn’s wedding dress with her. She could never forget that magnificent arrangement of satin and lace.

“I…I don’t understand, Gabe,” she said.

He turned her toward him, smiling at her. “Will you marry me?” he asked. “Here? Tomorrow? Out there?” He nodded toward the view outside the window. “On the bluff overlooking the ocean?”

For just an instant, she felt torn, thinking of the wedding she’d long dreamed about, where she and Gabriel would be surrounded by family and friends. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that she would become Gabriel’s wife. Tomorrow night, they’d be able to share a hotel room for the first time. She would be Lisbeth Johnson.

She threw herself into his arms. “Yes, of course I will!” she said. “How on earth did you know about the dress?”

“Does it matter?”

“No…except that I’m thinner than I was when I last tried it on.”

“It will fit,” he promised. “And I’ll find someone here who can take pictures of you in it, so you can show everyone back home how beautiful you looked.”

The minister was to meet them on the bluff at eleven the following morning, and at ten, Lisbeth put on the dress and styled her hair, which would probably fall flat once she was out in the damp, cool air above the ocean. But she didn’t care. There was no full-length mirror in her room, but she knew the dress fit perfectly, and the beauty of wearing it was more in the feeling than in the seeing. Carlynn had something to do with this, of course. How else would Gabriel have found the right dress, in the right size for her? She had no flowers, though, and her hands felt a bit awkward, with no place to rest. Gabe had probably not given a thought to flowers.

At ten of eleven, Gabriel knocked on her door. She pulled the door open, and Gabriel’s eyes glistened behind his glasses when he saw her. “You are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “And you look beautiful yourself.” He was wearing a white tuxedo she had never seen him in before, a red carnation in his lapel.

He put his hands on her arms and looked into her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” he said. “I wanted it to be a surprise, but I know how sad you must feel that Carlynn’s not here with you. So, I’m going to tell you that she is.”

Her mouth dropped open. “She is? Where?”

“She and Alan will meet us on the bluff, okay?”

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Thank you so much, Gabe.”

“And she has flowers for you,” he added.

She laughed, slipping her hand through the arm he offered her.

It took them a few minutes to get down the narrow stairs of the inn. Her dress was perfectly tailored with a narrow cut that hugged her slender body, but Gabriel had to carry the long train in his arms to prevent them both from falling headlong down the stairs.

They started walking toward the cliff overlooking the water, Lisbeth searching for three people—Carlynn, Alan and the minister—but she was distressed to see another crowd on the bluff, as there had been the day before. Probably another scattering of ashes, she thought, and it was only as they neared the throng of people that she began to make out faces. Carlynn. Alan. Lloyd Peterson and his wife. Gabriel’s mother and sister, aunts and uncles and cousins from Oakland. Their boating friends. All of them standing there on the bluff, grinning at the stunned look on her face.

Gabriel clutched her hand where it rested on his arm.

“Surprise, baby,” he whispered to her. “We’ve been planning this for months.”

She was unable to take another step forward as she began to cry. Carlynn ran out from the crowd to hug her, hard, and handed her a bouquet of red roses, and the Negro minister from the Johnson family’s Oakland church walked toward her and Gabriel, since Lisbeth seemed unable to move herself.

“We assumed you wouldn’t mind if I was your matron of honor,” Carlynn whispered as she took her place next to her.

Lisbeth shook her head numbly, noticing that Alan stood next to Gabriel as his best man. She floated through the ceremony, touched beyond words that Gabriel had planned this, going back in her mind over clues she’d missed: Lloyd allowing her to go on this trip after pretending to be against it; Carlynn asking her a month or so ago if she thought they were exactly the same size now; the Fourth of July celebration at Gabriel’s mother’s house, when the chattering in the kitchen had stopped the moment Lisbeth had walked into the room.

She barely heard the words of the minister, managing by some miracle to get the “I do” in the right place. Her eyes were on her husband as she waited for the moment she could wrap her arms around him, telling him she would never forget this gift he had given her.

They celebrated in the side yard of the inn with a feast and three-tiered wedding cake served under a huge tent which had been miraculously erected in the garden during the ceremony. And afterward, she and Gabriel retired to the honeymoon cottage, located a distance from the inn itself, where the innkeeper had already moved their luggage.

In bed that night, Gabriel held her close.

“Do you mind that I did it this way?” he asked. “I saw all the anguish Carlynn went through in planning her wedding, and I just didn’t want any of those crazy family problems to get in the way of your day. But you didn’t get to do any of the planning, yourself, and I worried that—”

She kissed him to stop his talking. “This was perfect,” she said. “The fact that you did this for me, for us…I can’t think of anything more remarkable you could have done.”

She snuggled against him. She didn’t care about planning a wedding, or even about the quaint little honeymoon cottage, or the view from the bluffs, or the dress she had worn. At that moment, she didn’t even care about her mother’s will, which would no longer contain Lisbeth’s name except to acknowledge her as the daughter to whom Delora would leave nothing. All she cared about now was the man lying by her side.

27

AT TWENTY-ONE WEEKS, JOELLE COULD NOT HAVE HIDDEN HER pregnancy even if she had wanted to. She sat on the front porch of the condominium that Saturday afternoon waiting for Liam to pick her up to go to the nursing home, and for the first time she was wearing maternity clothes in public. She had on black leggings with a soft, stretchy fabric panel over her belly, a red cotton sleeveless blouse and a white, black-trimmed sweater tossed over her shoulders in case the day grew cooler, which was often the norm in Monterey. Her mother, who, until that morning, had been staying with her while she healed from the appendectomy, had taken her shopping the day before, and Joelle thought they must have hit every thrift shop in Monterey County.

“No need to pay high prices for clothes you’ll only be wearing a few months,” her mother had said.

Her father had stayed with them the first week, but he needed to get back to the coffeehouse he managed, so only her mother had been with her for the last two weeks. It had been a good visit. A wonderful visit, actually. For the first couple of weeks, Joelle had not felt up to leaving the condominium except for her doctor’s appointments, and her mother had grocery shopped and cooked for her. They played cards and board games, just the two of them, with Tony and Gary joining them a couple of evenings. She and her mother talked in a way they’d never really had the time to before. Joelle learned that her mother was still madly in love with her father after all these years, despite what she referred to as some “difficulties” during those last few years at the commune, something they had hidden well from Joelle. Her mother told her how afraid she’d been when she found out she was pregnant and the absolute terror she’d felt when she thought her baby had been born dead.

“I remember wanting to scream,” she said, “but I was all screamed out by that point.”

Joelle couldn’t bear to think what that experience had been like for her parents. Her baby, to whom she was already irrevocably attached, no longer felt like a bubble so much as a butterfly, and she couldn’t imagine going through nine months of falling in love with her unborn child only to have something go wrong at the last minute. That thought made her glad she didn’t have to go back to work right away. She was not at all in the mood to deal with stillbirths, and she knew that when she returned after this sick leave, someone else would have to take those cases. If not for her own sanity, then out of kindness to the bereaved parents, who should not have to receive counseling from a healthy pregnant woman immediately after enduring such a loss.

Her baby was more real to her now. The sonogram she’d had several days ago had shown arms and legs, one visible eye, an open mouth. Rebecca had asked her if she wanted to know the baby’s sex.

“Yes!” Joelle had said.

Her mother had been with her, marveling at the image on the screen, and Rebecca pointed out the barely perceptible labia to both of them.

“Three generations of women, right here in this room!” her mother said, and for some reason, that made Joelle cry. Although she had not intended to do so, her imagination flashed forward to a baby dressed in little-girl clothes, a child with braids in kindergarten, a giggling teenager in a prom dress and a happy young woman at her wedding. And who would be the man walking that little girl down the aisle? She was afraid it would not be Liam.

She longed to tell Liam that the baby was a girl, but he had not even mentioned her pregnancy since their conversation in the recovery room after her appendectomy, and she was angry with him for that. She feared expressing that anger, though. Feared pushing him farther away. How would he react if she told him he would soon have a daughter? She was most afraid that he wouldn’t react at all, and if that was to be the case, she didn’t want to know it.

He’d called her every few days while she was away from work, but she’d gotten the feeling he was making the calls out of a sense of duty rather than desire, and their conversations had been short and superficial. She had no idea what was going on inside his head, and she didn’t dare ask him; it was apparent he didn’t want either of them to dig too deeply into the other’s thoughts and feelings. It had been easy to honor his unspoken wishes while her mother had been with her, when she hadn’t felt the need for much contact with anyone else. But now, with her mother gone and two more weeks of recovery ahead of her, she worried that she would have too much time to think.

It was now ten of one, and Liam was late. They were to meet Carlynn at the nursing home at one o’clock. Quinn would drive her there, Carlynn had told Joelle, and he’d run a few errands while she spent an hour with the two of them and Mara. Although Liam wisely had not balked when Joelle told him the plan, she knew he saw this whole outing as pointless, if not preposterous.

She and her mother had met Carlynn for lunch earlier that week at a café in Pacific Grove. Her mother had embraced Carlynn tearfully when she saw her, and the three of them had talked about how different they all looked from that day in Rainbow Cabin, so long ago.

Ellen, of course, had been thrilled to learn that Carlynn was using her healing ability on Mara, and even more pleased to know that Liam had agreed to participate.

“He says he will,” Joelle told the two women at lunch, “though I have the feeling he’s doing it out of guilt. Trying to make up to me for what he can’t truly give me.”

“It doesn’t matter why he’s doing it,” Carlynn had said. “Just as long as we can get him there in that room. That’s what will help Mara.”

Liam’s car turned the corner onto her street, and she stood up and walked down the sidewalk to meet him at the curb, very aware of the way the red blouse gently ballooned over her stomach. He stopped the car and she let herself in.

“Hi,” she said, fastening the seat belt.

“Sorry I’m late.” He glanced in the side-view mirror as he pulled into the street again. He looked so good. Pretty, pale eyes, straight nose and slight point to his chin. She tried not to stare. Her body suddenly felt alive and hungry for him. This was the longest she’d gone without seeing him in years, probably since he’d started working at Silas Memorial, and she could barely stand the intense and untimely desire that was ambushing her here in his car.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, the word a bland mask for the mixture of anger and desire churning inside her. “It feels good to get out.”

“When are you allowed to drive?”

“Probably next week,” she said. “I feel like I could drive now, but since they say five or six weeks, I’ll compromise on four.”

“Good idea,” he said. “They’re talking about five or six for the usual patient. Not someone in…your condition.” He actually smiled when he said those words, giving her hope that her pregnancy would not continue to be the great unbroachable subject.

“How did it go with your mom?” he asked.

“It was really good to be with her,” she said, missing her mother a bit already. “She bought me five thousand different types of vitamins and a few aromatherapy candles and gave me foot massages every night.”

“I’m glad it was a good visit.” He glanced at her, then smiled the smile that put that provocative crevice in his cheek. “You are a really cute pregnant woman,” he said.

She laughed. “Thanks,” she said. That was the warmest thing he’d said to her in ages. “And thanks for doing this, Liam,” she said. “I know you don’t want to.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with a brief nod of his head, acknowledging that she was quite right.

Carlynn met them in the foyer of the nursing home. Liam greeted her with a stiff, but cordial, hello, and Joelle gave her a hug. The older woman felt more frail than ever beneath her arms, as though her bones might crack if she squeezed her too hard. The three of them walked in silence down the corridor to Mara’s room.

Mara was sitting up in bed, getting her face wiped by an aide who had just fed her lunch. She smiled and, when she spotted Liam, let out a little cry of delight. He was first to reach her bed, and he leaned over to kiss her. Mara lifted her right arm up as though trying to hug him, although she could not quite master the maneuver.

“Liam!” Joelle said. “Look at her arm! She’s trying to hug you with it.”

Liam stepped back. “She’s been doing that for the past few weeks. They’ve brought the physical therapist back in to help her work with her arm a bit more.”

Joelle remembered the last time she’d seen Mara with Carlynn, when Mara had appeared to massage the older woman’s palm with her right hand. Was that the day the use of her arm had improved? She didn’t dare suggest that to Liam, at least not right then. She knew he wouldn’t think Carlynn’s visit had anything to do with an improvement in his wife.

“Hi, Mara.” Joelle stepped forward to give her a hug, noticing how Mara’s silky hair brushed against her cheek. “Your hair’s getting longer, sweetie,” she said. “I haven’t been around to cut it in a while, but it looks really pretty. Maybe we should leave it this way. What do you think, Liam?”

He nodded. “I like it,” he said, then he turned to Carlynn. “So, what do we do now?” he asked, the impatience barely concealed in his voice.

Carlynn leaned on her cane in the center of the small room and looked around her, as though trying to make a decision. “Okay,” she said finally. “Here’s what I suggest. Liam, could you see if you could find another chair for in here? Then you and Joelle can sit while I massage Mara’s hands again.”

Liam left the room without a word, and Joelle exchanged a look with Carlynn.

“It’s all right,” Carlynn said, knowing what she was thinking. “He’ll be fine.”

Liam brought back one of the hard, straight-backed chairs from the cafeteria across the hall and set it near the recliner that was next to the bed.

“You take the recliner, Jo,” he said, and she sat down. Then he sat in the smaller chair and looked at Carlynn, waiting for his next instruction.

Carlynn sat on the edge of Mara’s bed, poured baby lotion onto her palm and began to massage Mara’s hands, as she had the last time she’d visited the nursing home with Joelle.

“Joelle and Liam,” she said without looking at them, “please talk about memories you have of your time with Mara. Any situations you can remember that involved the three of you.”

“What’s the point?” Liam asked, and Joelle felt like kicking him.

“I want her to hear you talking about things that involve all three of you that she would also remember, if she were able. We want to stimulate that memory bank in her brain.”

Liam wearily rubbed the back of his head, his eyes closed, and Joelle doubted he was going to put much effort into this exercise. Obviously, it would be up to her to start. Resting her head against the recliner, she stared at the ceiling and thought back over the years to some of the many memories they shared.

“I remember the party Rusty and I gave where I was hoping to fix Mara and Liam up without their knowing it,” she said. She smiled at Liam, and he looked at her. “I remember the exact moment when it clicked for both of them.”

“When?” He looked curious.

“We were all sitting around my living room, remember? And everyone was playing instruments. And you and Mara had your guitars. And you started playing that song…I don’t remember the title…the Joan Baez song that goes, ‘Show me the something, show me the—’”

“‘There But for Fortune,’” Liam said.

“Right. And you were singing, and suddenly Mara started singing and playing the same song, in perfect harmony with you, and you two were looking at each other across the room, and it was like there was this invisible thread connecting you, and neither of you knew anyone else was there. And I was thinking, yes! I just knew once the two of you met it would be like that.”

Pursing his lips, Liam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “it was a good call on your part. And you were playing a pan and a spoon, right?”

“No, I had the comb and the tissue paper,” she said. “Rusty had the pan and spoon. The instrument of least effort.”

“Rusty was a pill,” Liam said. “It’s good you ditched him.”

“He ditched me,” she said, “but never mind.”

They fell silent, and Joelle glanced at Mara. Her gaze was on Carlynn, and it surprised her that she was not looking at Liam, since he was well within her range. She wasn’t smiling, but her face looked relaxed, as though the massage was soothing her.

“I’ve got one,” Liam said. “Talking about Rusty reminded me of it.”

“Do we have to talk about Rusty?” she asked.

“Remember the time we all went to San Diego for a few days?”

She nodded. “Over Christmas.”

“Right, and I don’t know where we were, somewhere in San Diego County, I guess, or maybe not, but out in that place you had heard about that had pocket canyons and other strange rock formations and—”

“Oh, no,” she said, starting to laugh as she remembered the hour-long hike that had turned into four rather scary hours.

“You swore you knew where you were going, and we followed you like we trusted you,” Liam said.

“I had a map. It’s just that we got turned around some how.”

“There were those weird hills or dunes or whatever they were. And you kept saying, ‘Our car is parked right over that hill,’ and we’d climb over it, which would take a half hour, and then all we’d see in front of us was…”

“Another hill.” She laughed. “But see? We can laugh about it now.”

“I don’t remember laughing at the time,” Liam said. “I thought Rusty was going to divorce you the moment we actually did find the car.”

“And remember Mara had taken a whole roll of pictures of us goofing around in the pocket canyon and then realized she had no film in her camera?”

Liam laughed. “Oh, I felt so sorry for her.” He leaned over and squeezed Mara’s arm, giving Carlynn a look that said, “Try and stop me,” but Carlynn only smiled at him.

“Do you remember what happened on the beach?” Joelle said. “That same trip. In Coronado, I think. We were lying there and a gull flew over and—”

Liam interrupted her with a groan. “Not my favorite memory,” he said. “Mara wouldn’t kiss me for a week.”

“God, it was funny,” Joelle said.

“Do you remember that E.R. case, where we called Mara in to do a psych consult?” Liam asked.

“Which one?”

“The pregnant woman who was in a car accident and her arm was nearly—”

“Oh, yes!” Joelle started laughing. “Her arm was hanging by a thread, and all she kept saying was that she thought her pierced belly button was infected.”

“I can still hear Mara,” Liam said. “Remember? She went into the treatment room wearing that professional expression she was so good at, and said, ‘Your belly button is fine, but your arm is falling off.”’ He looked at Carlynn, who was not smiling. She appeared to be deeply focused on Mara’s face. Liam shrugged. “I guess you had to be there,” he said, and Joelle chuckled.

“I remember the time we called Mara in for that woman who was using her vagina as a bank,” she said, “and—”

“Don’t go there,” Liam interrupted her with a laugh. He looked at Mara. “Don’t worry, honey, we’re not going there.”

They were quiet for a minute, and Joelle felt gratitude toward him for playing this game. Liam closed his eyes.

After a moment she asked him, “What are you thinking about?”

He took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “A memory,” he said, opening his eyes. “When you were over at our house, right after you and Rusty split up. And we made you dinner and were consoling you, and then I got that call that my father died.”

His father had been only fifty-nine years old, and he’d simply keeled over at work one day. She could still remember Liam’s shock and sorrow.

Joelle leaned forward and touched his hand, and to her surprise he turned his hand to hold on to hers. His eyes were on her, and he looked beaten down, tired of whatever game it was they were playing. It was time to free him from it.

“Carlynn?” she said. “Can Liam and I stop now?”

Carlynn nodded, stilling her own hands. “Mara?” she said softly, and Mara smiled at them as though she’d forgotten they were there. She lifted her right arm toward Liam. It was an unmistakable, meaningful gesture. That arm had always been usable, but until now Mara had not seemed to know what to do with it. Carlynn stood up, and Liam took her place on the bed.

“Would you like to visit Mara a while longer, Liam?” Carlynn asked. “Quinn and I can drop Joelle off on our way home.”

Liam looked at Joelle. “Do you mind?” he asked.

She shook her head, still moved by the way Mara had reached out to him.

“Next week, Liam, I would like you to bring your guitar, please,” Carlynn asked.

“I don’t play anymore,” Liam said without looking at her.

“Joelle told me that, but I think it’s important,” Carlynn said. “Music can touch so many parts of the mind and heart in a way that nothing else can. So bring it, please.”

In the corridor outside Mara’s room, Joelle said quietly. “I don’t know if he will.”

“I hope he does,” Carlynn said. “I think it can make a difference.”

They walked together down the hallway, and Joelle could still feel the grip of Liam’s fingers on her hand and recall the way he’d looked at her. The moment had been brief, a mere few seconds, but she hadn’t felt that close to him in months.

28

CARLYNN SAT ON THE VERY EDGE OF THE TERRACE FLOOR LOOKING out at the sea. She hadn’t sat this way, with her legs dangling over the terrace’s stone floor, in a very long time. Probably not since she was a child. She could feel the cold of the stone through the fabric of her slacks, and the sensation was not unpleasant. It let her know she was still alive.

“Carlynn?”

She glanced behind her to see Mary McGowan walking toward her from the house.

“Hello, Mary,” she said.

“It gave me a start to see you sitting out here like this,” Mary said as she neared her. “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

“I’m fine,” Carlynn said. “And no, you can’t get me anything, thank you. But why don’t you sit down here with me for a bit?”

“On the cold ground like that?” Mary sounded a bit stunned at the suggestion.

“Yes. Come on.” Carlynn waved her hand through the air in invitation. “My sister and I used to sit like this all the time when we were children.”

“Not sure I can get down that low.” Mary laughed, but Carlynn knew she would be able to. She’d seen Mary scrub the kitchen floor on her hands and knees more than once.

“Come on,” Carlynn said again, reaching toward her. “I’ll give you a hand.”

Mary held on to Carlynn’s hand and gingerly lowered herself to the edge of the terrace, letting her own legs and her sensible shoes dangle over the side.

“How are we ever going to get up?” Mary chuckled.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Carlynn said. She’d given that some thought herself. She lived in a house of old people.

“Ah,” Mary said, looking out to sea. “This is beautiful. I feel closer to the water down here.”

“And the trees,” Carlynn said. She studied the milky horizon, where the overcast sky and frothy sea met in an indistinct line. “I was thinking before,” she said. “Thinking about the perennials.”

“The perennials?” Mary asked.

Carlynn nodded. “I realized this was probably the last year I’d ever see them.”

“Oh, Carlynn.” Mary gently touched her shoulder.

“Don’t feel bad,” Carlynn said. “I don’t. But it was just a shock to realize that. I wish I’d paid better attention to them over the summer.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. “I know Alan’s worried about you,” Mary said finally. “He doesn’t think you should be going to that nursing home, seeing that brain-damaged girl.”

“Well, he’s wrong about that,” Carlynn said.

“How is she doing? The girl with the brain damage?”

Carlynn smiled to herself. “She’s at peace,” she said. “Smiles all the time. She’s not the one who needs healing.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Joelle and Liam who need to be healed, though they don’t realize it yet.”

“Who’s Liam?” Mary asked.

Carlynn watched a pelican fly through her cypress-framed view of the ocean. “He’s a man whose forgotten how to make music in his life,” she said. “And he’s also the man Joelle is in love with.” She looked squarely at Mary. “And he’s the husband of Mara, the brain-damaged woman.”

“Oh,” Mary said with a knowing nod, and Carlynn heard the understanding in that simple word. Mary knew all about forbidden love, love that must remain hidden.

Just as she did.

29

San Francisco, 1962

CARLYNN STEPPED INTO THE HOSPITAL ROOM, WHERE THE LITTLE boy lay in the bed nearest the window. The room was dark, except for a low-wattage lamp on the boy’s night table, and his mother sat in a chair near his bed. Carlynn did not know this child or his mother, but she’d received a call early that morning from the doctor treating the seven-year-old boy, asking for a consult. Carlynn had a reputation as a gifted pediatrician. No one, save Alan, understood the depth of that gift, but she was called on regularly by her colleagues to see their patients who were difficult to diagnose and harder still to treat.

She and Alan shared a practice in their office on Sutter Street, where Carlynn specialized in children, while Alan saw adults. There was crossover, of course. A great deal of it, actually, because Alan often called her in to “meet” one of his patients, in the hope that such a meeting would lead him to a better course of treatment through Carlynn’s intuitive sense of the patient. It was gratifying work, something she seemed born to do. Still, she was not completely happy. All day, every day, she treated the children of other people, when what she longed for was a child of her own.

A year ago, Alan had learned he was sterile. They would never be able to have children unless they adopted, and neither of them was ready or willing to take that step. Carlynn had wondered briefly if she might be able to use her healing skills to make Alan fertile again, but she didn’t want to subject him to being a guinea pig, and he did not offer.

The news that they would remain childless had thrown Carlynn into a mild depression, which she’d attempted to mask so that Alan would feel no worse than he already did. What kept her going, what still brought her joy, was her continued fascination with the nature of her gift. She spent her days pouring her energy into her patients, but at night she was exhausted and often went to bed early, and she knew that Alan worried about her.

“Mrs. Rozak?” Carlynn spoke softly to the woman in the little boy’s room.

“Yes.” The woman stood up to greet her.

“I’m Dr. Shire,” Carlynn said. “Dr. Zieman asked me to see your son.”

“I didn’t expect a woman,” Mrs. Rozak said, obviously disappointed.

“No, I’m often a surprise.” Carlynn smiled.

“Isn’t there another Dr. Shire? A man?”

“That’s my husband,” Carlynn said. “But he treats adults. I’m the pediatrician in the family.”

“Well…” The woman looked at her son, whose eyes were open, but who had not moved or made a sound since Carlynn had walked into the room. “Dr. Zieman said that if anyone could help him, you could.” She spoke in a near whisper, as though not wanting her child to hear her. Her small gray eyes were wet, her face red from days of crying, and Carlynn moved closer to touch her hand.

“Let me see him,” she said.

The woman nodded, stepping back to allow Carlynn to move past her.

Carlynn sat on the edge of the boy’s bed. His name was Brian, she remembered, and he was awake but silent, his glassy-eyed gaze following her movements. She could almost see the fever burning inside him. Touching his forehead, her hand recoiled from the heat.

“Nothing’s brought the fever down,” his mother said from the other side of the bed.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Carlynn said softly to the boy. “Can you hear me?”

The boy gave a barely perceptible nod.

“He can hear,” the mother said.

“It hurts even to nod?” Carlynn asked him, and he nodded again.

She thought of asking the mother to leave, but decided against it, as long as she could get her to be quiet. Ordinarily, she preferred not to have family members present, since her style of work tended to alarm them because of her lack of action. They wondered why she had been called in to see their sick children, when she appeared to do absolutely nothing to help them. This particular woman was very anxious, though, and if Carlynn could keep her in the room while she worked, it would probably help both mother and son.

“Back here?” She touched the back of Brian’s neck. “Is this where it hurts?”

The boy whispered a word and she leaned closer to hear it. “Everywhere,” he said, and she studied him in sympathy.

Standing up, she smiled briefly at his mother, then lifted Brian’s chart from the end of the bed, leafing through the pages. They’d ruled out rheumatic fever and meningitis and all the other probable causes for his symptoms, as well as those that might not be so obvious. He had an infection somewhere in his body—his blood work showed that much—but the cause had not been determined. Frankly, she didn’t care what was causing his symptoms as long as the logical culprits had been ruled out. It only helped her to know the cause if it was something that could be removed or repaired. Fever caused by a ruptured appendix had one obvious solution, for example, but when a child presented this way, with intense, hard-to-control fever and pain everywhere, and the usual suspects had been ruled out, learning the cause was no longer on Carlynn’s agenda.

“No one can figure out what’s wrong with him,” Mrs. Rozak said.

Glancing through his chart again, she assured herself that every treatment her physician’s mind could imagine had already been attempted. The treatment she would now give the boy would have little to do with her mind and everything to do with her heart. Sitting down once more on the edge of Brian’s bed, she looked up at his mother.

“I’m going to ask you to be quiet for a while, Mrs. Rozak, all right?” she asked. “It’s very important, so no matter how much you want to say something to me, please save it until I tell you it’s okay. I’d like to give Brian my undivided attention.”

The woman nodded again and walked across the room to sit on the edge of the empty second bed.

Carlynn spoke to Brian in a soft voice, holding his small hand in both of hers.

“Nothing I do will hurt you,” she said. “I’m going to talk to you, but you don’t need to talk back to me,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you any questions, so you don’t have to worry about answering me. I’m just going to talk for a while and hope I don’t bore you too much.” She smiled at him.

She talked about the weather, about the Yankees winning the World Series, about the way the blond in his hair sparkled in the soft light from the lamp. She talked about Halloween coming up and about the new movie The Miracle Worker, and how strong and tough and smart Helen Keller had been as a child. She talked until she knew his gaze was locked tight to hers. Then she gently lowered the blanket and sheet to his waist.

“I’m going to touch you very gently now,” she said. “I won’t hurt you a bit.”

Through his hospital gown, she rested one hand on his hot rib cage and leaned forward so that she could slip her other hand beneath his back.

“I’m going to be quiet for a few minutes now, Brian. I’ll close my eyes, and you can close yours, too, if you like.”

Shutting her eyes, she did what had become second nature to her. She allowed everything inside her, all her thoughts and hopes and loving feelings, to pour from her into him. She could feel the energy slipping through his body, from one of her hands to the other. Sometimes, healing came easily to her, and tonight, with this particular child, was one of those times.

“There’s a light inside you, Brian,” she said softly, her hands still on his small, hot body. “It’s not a hot light, like a lightbulb. It’s cool, like the water in a cool lake, reflecting the sun off its surface. I can feel it passing into your body from my hands.” There was no need for her to speak—this was not hypnosis—but talking sometimes helped, and with this boy she thought it might. She opened her eyes to see that his were closed, a small crease in the space between his delicate, little-boy eyebrows as he listened hard to her words.

Precious child, she thought, closing her eyes again.

After another moment or so, she slowly drew her hands away from him. He was asleep, she noticed, the crease gone from between his eyebrows, and she knew he would get well. She didn’t always have that sense of certainty; in fact, it was rare that she did. Right now, though, the feeling inside her was strong.

Standing up, she pressed her finger to her lips so that Mrs. Rozak would not say anything that might wake her son.

Carlynn leaned forward to hold her wristwatch into the circle of light from the night-table lamp. She’d been in the room an hour. It had seemed like fifteen minutes to her.

Walking toward the hallway, she motioned Mrs. Rozak to follow her.

“What do you think?” the woman asked as soon as they’d reached the intrusive bright light of the corridor. The poor woman had to be thoroughly confused by what she had just witnessed, and Carlynn thought she’d probably made a mistake in allowing her to stay. She hadn’t realized how long she would be working with Brian.

“I think Brian will get well,” she said.

“But what’s wrong with him?”

“I’m not certain,” Carlynn said honestly. “But I believe he will turn the corner very quickly.”

“How can you say that?” The woman looked frantic, wiping a tear from her cheek with a trembling hand. “You didn’t even examine him.”

It was true. She hadn’t listened to his heart or his lungs or looked into his ears or his throat, and perhaps she should have allowed that ruse, but she had gotten out of the habit of pretending to do something she was not. It stole her energy from the task at hand.

She smiled at Mrs. Rozak. “I examined him in my own way,” she said. “And I feel very strongly that he will be just fine. Back playing with his friends in a week. Maybe sooner.”

She didn’t want to answer any more questions. She couldn’t. A dizziness washed over her that she knew would drop her to the floor if she didn’t escape quickly. Excusing herself from the bewildered woman, she walked down the hall to the ladies’ room.

Inside the restroom, she washed her hands in cold water, shaking them out at her sides, then splashed water on her face, trying to regain some of the energy she had just given away. God, she would love a nap! Once or twice, she’d given in to that temptation by closing herself into one of the stalls, sitting fully clothed on the toilet and resting her head against the wall while she dozed. But there was no time for that tonight.

She left the restroom and walked to the nurses’ station, where she made a call to the physician, Ralph Zieman, who had referred the boy to her.

“I saw Brian Rozak,” she told the pediatrician. She was never sure what to say in these situations. How could she explain that she had no new diagnosis to offer, no concrete treatment to suggest? The doctors talked about her, she knew, some of them scoffing at the idea that this female doctor could do something they could not. But there were a few physicians, and Ralph Zieman was one of them, who were beginning to understand and accept that what she did was outside the norm. “I spent about an hour with him,” she said. “Like you, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think you’ll find him improved in the morning.”

Ralph Zieman hesitated a moment before answering. “If that’s true, Carlynn, you’d better be prepared to open your own medical school, with me as your first student.”

She laughed. “Just let me know what you find when you do your rounds in the morning, okay?” she asked.

It was two months later when Carlynn realized her decision to allow Brian Rozak’s mother to remain in his room while she treated him would change her life. She was walking in the door of the row house she shared with Alan when the phone rang. It was Lisbeth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lisbeth nearly shouted.

“Tell you what?” Carlynn frowned.

“About Life Magazine, you secretive little thing.”

It had been a very long day, and Carlynn creased her forehead as she tried to discern the meaning in her sister’s words. Finally she gave up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?”

Carlynn was beginning to feel annoyed. “No, I have no idea.”

“Gabe and I just got our new issue of Life, the one with the Cuban Missile Crisis on the cover, and there you are! A great big fat article! It’s called ‘The Real Miracle Worker,’ and it’s all about you, Carly.”

Carlynn sat down, her mouth open. “I… That doesn’t make any sense. I knew nothing about it.”

“Want me to read it to you?”

“Yes, definitely.”

Lisbeth began to read, and it all started to fall into place. Brian Rozak’s mother was a writer for Life Magazine, and she had come to the conclusion that Brian’s miraculous recovery from his strange fever could only be attributable to the magical work of the young woman doctor, Carlynn Shire. Mrs. Rozak had done some sleuthing after Brian’s recovery. She’d spoken to a few doctors, some of whom trusted Carlynn’s skills and others who found them suspect, and somehow she’d managed to track down several patients who Carlynn had helped over the years. The article made Carlynn sound like equal parts saint, genius, fruitcake and charlatan.

But the Bay Area was full of people who were full of hope, and the next day the office she shared with Alan was crammed with walk-ins. The phone rang continuously, and they had to call in a temporary worker in the middle of the day to give the receptionist they shared a break. Carlynn worked until ten that night and until midnight the following night, and when she failed to wake up with the alarm on the third morning after the appearance of the Life article, she knew she could not continue this way. She couldn’t see everyone who wanted to see her. The work drained her, both mentally and physically. Yet, how could she turn people away? Even more distressing to her was that she was not able to help all of those people she did treat, and she didn’t understand why that was the case.

Some people, like Brian Rozak, were relatively simple for her to heal. With others, she didn’t know where to begin. It was as though her intuition left her when she sat in a room with certain people. Why did one approach succeed with a particular patient and not with another? Why did talking sometimes help and other times hinder? She simply didn’t know the answers to her own questions, and the more patients clamored to see her, the more her lack of knowledge disturbed her. Sometimes she felt alone. She was the only person who could do this. Invaluable. Irreplaceable. And that scared her more than it honored her.

Alan both supported and envied his wife. He pleaded with her to teach him everything she knew about her method of healing, but no matter how long Alan spent with a patient, no matter how intently he spoke to them, looked into their eyes, held their hands, he made no difference in their physical condition.

Carlynn knew he was proud of her, though. Proud and thrilled by the newfound fame that brought them more patients than they could handle. He tried to protect her from overdoing it by putting an end to the walk-in appointments and by hiring nurses to screen the patients so that she would see only those in the greatest need. Some, she turned away herself, knowing from talking with them on the phone or in person that she could not help them. She just knew. There was something in their voice, or in the words they used, that told her. And it was nothing she could explain to anyone who asked, not even her husband.

Her own mother was one of those people.

She tried to visit her mother every month, sometimes with Alan, sometimes alone. Delora never asked Carlynn about Lisbeth, and if Carlynn offered any information about her sister, Delora feigned deafness in addition to her failing eyesight and arthritis. Once, Carlynn overheard an interviewer ask Delora the question, “How many children do you have?” and her mother replied, “One” without a moment’s hesitation.

Carlynn had felt guilty at first, continuing to see their mother, but Lisbeth insisted that she did. Someone needed to be sure Delora was all right and getting her eyes checked regularly, Lisbeth said. So she encouraged Carlynn’s contact with their mother, and Carlynn was relieved. No matter how horrid one’s parents were, she thought, it was the duty of the family to look after them.

Her mother had grown rather famous in Monterey County, not that she’d truly ever been an unknown. But now that word had spread about Carlynn’s healing powers, newspapers and magazines were always after Delora for an interview. Sometimes they tried to contact her to see if she might be able to get them an appointment with her daughter to treat their cancer or their ulcers. It annoyed Delora tremendously that she, herself, wasn’t a better advertisement for her daughter’s skills. Carlynn had been unable to heal her arthritis or the macular degeneration that was stealing her vision. Not for want of trying, certainly, and with every visit she tried again, sending her energy into her mother’s body until she was drained and had to sleep for hours. But nothing worked, and Carlynn was never surprised. Her mother was one of those people she would turn away from her office, knowing that no matter what she did, this woman would not get better. Not her eyesight nor her knees. Not her narcissism. And certainly not her cruelty toward her unwanted second daughter.

30

LIAM WALKED INTO MARA’S ROOM CARRYING HIS GUITAR CASE. Joelle smiled at him from the edge of Mara’s bed, and Carlynn looked up from where she was sitting in the recliner.

“Good!” Carlynn said. “I’m proud of you.”

He had not brought the guitar the week before, when Carlynn had initially instructed him to do so. He hadn’t touched it since the day Sam was born. It would need new strings, he told himself. The calluses on his fingers were no longer as tough as they should be. He’d had a world of excuses. Mainly, he just did not want to have to look at, hold or play something that was so strongly connected to his life with Mara. He was afraid of how it would make him feel, and he didn’t want to be that vulnerable, especially in front of Joelle and Carlynn.

He was annoyed at Carlynn’s intrusion into his life. Yet, he had to admit, it was kind of spooky in Mara’s room when she was there. There were changes in Mara since Carlynn had been seeing her. Even the physical therapist admitted it. Mara was tracking better with her eyes as she followed the little stuffed toy the therapist moved through the air. She was awake for longer periods during the day, and her right hand and arm were not only getting stronger, but seemed to move now with a purpose, something he had never seen before Carlynn’s involvement.

The therapist said, though, that this was not a miraculous change in Mara. Often, after a period of little or no progress, a person with the sort of damage Mara had suffered could begin to show signs of improvement. Liam should not expect too much, though, the therapist warned him. Mara’s cognitive impairment was likely to remain at its current level, even if she did make small strides in the use of her muscles.

Even though he had not brought his guitar to their last meeting in Mara’s room, he had to admit that the visit had been almost fun. He’d brought a couple of tapes that he and Mara had made of their performances, instead. They’d listened to the music while Carlynn did whatever she was doing to Mara’s hands, and the songs brought back memories of various concerts and made him and Joelle laugh again. The laughter had seemed alien the first week, when he and Joelle obediently talked about their memories of being together with Mara. How long had it been since they’d laughed together? But last week had been better. Joelle didn’t seem like so much of a stranger, or an enemy, or, as Carlynn had pointed out to him weeks earlier, an evil person to be avoided. She seemed actually quite harmless, and it felt okay to enjoy his time with her as long as it was to help Mara. That was how it had been the first year after the aneurysm: he and Joelle had done many, many things together, all in the name of helping Mara. It wasn’t until they did something just for themselves that their togetherness felt wrong.

Joelle was back at work now, a week sooner than her doctor’s recommendation, but she seemed fine. Pregnancy looked good on her. There was something about her small size and long hair and the clothes she was wearing, which drew attention to her expanding middle, that led everyone to talk about how cute she looked. Was he the only person who thought she also looked very, very sexy? He’d always found something provocative in her petite body and in the way her long dark hair fell over her breasts. He could still remember the weight of that hair on his chest and his thighs and the feeling of it in his hands. That memory would come to him at the most unexpected and inappropriate times—when he was working with the family of a cancer patient, for example, or in the midst of a meeting with the E.R. staff—and he was annoyed with himself for being unable to control it.

Everyone at the hospital was still speculating about how she came to be pregnant. He speculated right along with them, feigning ignorance. People thought he knew and was keeping it from them, not because he personally had been involved in the conception, but because he and Joelle were good friends. The newest rumor was that she was pregnant through in vitro fertilization with one of her gay neighbors having donated the sperm. He said nothing to dissuade that thinking. But his big worry of late was that Joelle’s baby might look like Sam, with those telltale blond curls.

It upset him that that night would not go away. With Joelle pregnant, that night would always be there, staring him in the face, first in the shape of her pregnancy itself, and later in the form of a child. What his relationship would be to that child, he didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine any relationship at this point.

He’d told Sheila that Joelle was pregnant, not wanting her to find out either by bumping into her or through the grapevine, and again, he pleaded ignorance to knowing how she came to be that way. Sheila, he thought, had eyed him suspiciously.

Now he felt Mara’s eyes on him as he opened the case and pulled out the guitar. Would it upset her to see the instrument that she used to play so well, far better than he ever could, when she was unable to even hold it herself? But there she was, smiling as usual, with no hint of sorrow or distress or anything, really, other than that simple happiness that had become such a part of her.

“Okay, now,” Carlynn said as she stood up from the recliner. “Is that the best chair for you to sit on to play?” She pointed to the straight-back chair and he nodded.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and Joelle admonished him with a teasing look.

“You want to sing with me, Jo?” he asked.

“No way,” she said. She took her seat in the recliner, while Carlynn sat on the bed and began massaging Mara’s hands.

He started with “There But for Fortune,” then played and sang several more songs in a row, and it felt like coming home to him. He no longer cared what this music was doing to Mara. He was in his own world, and it was a good place to be.

He played one of his favorite songs, an upbeat tune that had a zydeco feel to it.

“Oh!” Joelle said in the middle of the song, hands on her belly. “She’s dancing.”

He stopped playing and looked at her. “She?” he asked, and Joelle nodded.

For some reason, he hadn’t thought of the baby as a girl. Or as a boy, either, for that matter. He’d managed to give it no identity whatsoever. But now, as he continued singing, he couldn’t get the image of a curly-haired, blond baby girl out of his mind.

“Play the one you and Mara wrote for me,” Joelle requested when he’d finished that song.

“Only if you’ll sing it with me,” he said.

“Are you out of your mind?” she asked.

“Come on,” he said, although he knew she couldn’t carry a tune. “It’s just a fun song. You don’t have to really be able to sing.”

Joelle shifted in the recliner, sitting up straighter, readying herself to sing, and he had to laugh.

“By all means, sit up straight,” he said. “Maybe your posture was the problem with your singing all along.”

She looked at him from under hooded lids. “Don’t make fun of me, or I’m not going to sing with you,” she warned.

“You’re right. Sorry.” He played a few chords of introduction, then started singing, and she joined in. God, she was terrible. Worse than he’d remembered, and he had a hard time keeping a straight face. He happened to glance at Carlynn, who was still studiously massaging Mara’s hands, but who looked as though she, too, was trying not to laugh. They finished the song, and Joelle looked quite pleased with herself.

Silence filled the room for just a moment. Finally, Carlynn spoke. “Mara, dear,” she said as she focused on the massage she was delivering, “you will never, ever, have to worry about Joelle taking your place.”

31

San Francisco, 1964

GABRIEL’S NEW BOAT WAS A STUNNING FORTY-FIVE-FOOT, refurbished, two-masted yawl, and Lisbeth felt a thrill as they pulled away from the pier at China Basin. Carlynn and Alan were sailing with them, and she could see her sister’s nervous smile as they motored past the breakwater into San Francisco Bay. Lisbeth and Gabriel had finally persuaded Carlynn to join them, telling her it would mean so much to them to have her and Alan’s company as they christened their new boat. Lisbeth knew how hard it had been for Carlynn to climb aboard, and she was glad the breeze was gentle, the sun bright and the air warm for an August morning.

Carlynn was too pale, Lisbeth thought as she watched the sunlight play on her sister’s face. Pale, but beautiful, with the identical features Lisbeth saw every time she looked in the mirror. The twins still weighed exactly the same: one hundred eighteen and a half pounds. They even went to the same hairdresser these days, getting the same cut each time just for the fun of it, although Lisbeth wore her cut curled under, and Carlynn wore a flip. Lisbeth had some stretch marks on her belly and thighs and breasts from losing so much weight over the years, but other than those few differences, they were very much twins.

She was worried about Carlynn, though. Ever since learning that she and Alan couldn’t have children, Carlynn hadn’t been the same. Sometimes it seemed as though she was merely going through the motions of living, and her smile, when it was there at all, seemed artificial. Alan was worried, too. He’d confided in Lisbeth that he’d suggested Carlynn see a psychiatrist, afraid that the stresses of her work, combined with her pervasive sadness, might lead to a nervous breakdown. Carlynn had told him she had no time to add another appointment to her already crammed schedule.

“I can’t force her,” Alan had said to Lisbeth. “All I can do is worry about her.” He’d looked terribly sad, and Lisbeth had put her arms around him in comfort. But she could think of nothing to say to alleviate his concerns, since she shared them.

Gabe carefully walked out on the narrow bowsprit above the water to release the jib from the sailbag, and Lisbeth laughed as Carlynn hid her head on her arms at the sight of her brother-in-law balancing on that narrow piece of wood. She didn’t dare tell Carlynn the other name for the bowsprit: “widowmaker.”

“I’ll haul the mainsail up if you take care of the jib,” Gabriel said to Lisbeth as he came back on the deck.

Lisbeth hoisted the jib, and once Gabriel had the main up, he trimmed the sheets and killed the engine. Then they were moving over the water with only the sound of the wind in the sails.

“We’re going to head upwind for a while, Carlynn,” Gabriel said. “Then we can take a nice, smooth downwind ride back. All right? Are you ready?”

“I’ll never be ready,” Carlynn said. “Weren’t we going upwind when I fell overboard, Lizzie?”

“Yes, but that’s not going to happen this time,” Lisbeth reassured her.

Gabriel jumped into the cockpit. “Helm’s alee!” he called, turning the wheel, and Lisbeth released the starboard jib sheet. The sails luffed wildly above their heads, then began to fill with the wind, and Lisbeth winched the port sheet in.

The boat tacked from side to side as they made their way toward and beneath the Bay Bridge. Sailing this new boat would have been a thrill, anyway, but the fact that Lisbeth had a skill her sister did not possess made it all the more enjoyable for her. She only wished Carlynn could enjoy it, too. Carlynn clung to Alan, her face contorted in fear, even though Gabriel was obviously doing his best to prevent the boat from tipping too severely to either side.

“Look at the Golden Gate Bridge.” Alan pointed toward the orange structure as it came into view in the distance. Although the sky above the sailboat was clear, the bridge was haunted by a ghostly fog slipping in and out of the cables and hiding the tops of the towers.

“Carly and I went to the opening ceremonies when the bridge was built,” Lisbeth said, trying to pull her quiet sister into the conversation.

Carlynn looked at her and smiled her I’m-trying-to-look-happy smile.

When they had finally tacked far enough, Gabe steered off the wind and eased the sails, and the ride instantly flattened.

“Oh, thank God,” Carlynn said, taking in a deep breath.

“You can relax now, Carly,” Gabe said to her.

The air was much warmer as they sailed downwind, and Lisbeth persuaded her sister to take off her jacket and bask in the sun with her for a while, while the men talked about sports.

Lisbeth could see Gabriel from where she lay on the deck. He was wearing a T-shirt, and the muscles in his dark arms were still long and lean and strong, and for just a moment she wished her sister and brother-in-law were not with them so that she and Gabriel could anchor the boat, go belowdecks to the beautiful cabin and make love on one of the berths. He was getting more handsome as he got older, she thought. It scared her sometimes to think that he was eleven years older than she was. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. Thank God he’d given up smoking the year after their wedding.

They sailed for a half hour or so before she brought the picnic basket up from the galley. Carlynn seemed more relaxed now, her smile almost genuine, and they ate sourdough bread and Monterey Jack cheese and toasted the new boat with champagne.

“I wish you’d leave Lloyd’s office and come work for Carlynn and me,” Alan said to Lisbeth as they ate. It was not the first time he’d made the offer, but this time he sounded truly serious. “Our office is getting out of hand.”

“Getting out of hand?” Carlynn said.

Lisbeth occasionally thought about working for Carlynn and Alan, but she’d been with Lloyd Peterson for more than a decade, and her loyalty to him was strong. Lloyd had taken in a couple of partners, and she’d enjoyed the challenge of learning new skills and training the girls who worked under her. Still, she knew things had grown wild at Carlynn and Alan’s office and that they desperately needed someone with experience to come in and take charge.

That one simple article in Life two years earlier had spawned dozens more, and Carlynn’s reputation had grown more quickly than any of them could have imagined. People came from as far away as Europe and Africa and Japan to see her, and some of her patients were celebrities—a couple of movie stars, an injured baseball player and a politician from the Midwest. Even Lisbeth didn’t know their exact identities, since Carlynn honored their pleas for confidentiality. They didn’t want to be perceived as kooks, as Carlynn often was herself.

“What I wish,” Alan said as he polished off his second glass of champagne, “is that Carlynn could train people to do what she does. There’s only one Carlynn to go around, and it’s just not enough.”

“I hate turning people away when I know I can help them,” Carlynn agreed. “And it’s not like there’s someone I can refer them to.”

“Do you think that what you do is a trainable skill?” Gabriel asked. “Or do you think it’s a true gift?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Carlynn said. “I barely understand it any better than I did when I was sixteen.”

“She’s tried to train me,” Alan said with a self-deprecating smile that Lisbeth found endearing. “I’m apparently untrainable.”

“I believe that my…techniques, for want of a better word…may be something other people can learn to do,” Carlynn said, “in spite of Alan’s experience. My fantasy is that, if I could figure out what works and what doesn’t, and we could somehow prove that what I do has validity, and we could offer a scientific explanation for it…then I could train people in what works, and those people could train other people, and there would be a whole lot more healing to go around. But it would require years and years of research to get to that point, and I don’t have enough time to breathe right now, much less add another facet to my work.”

“What if you could create an institute of some sort, where you could just focus on the research?” Gabriel cut a piece of cheese and handed it to Lisbeth with a chunk of bread.

Carlynn and Alan exchanged a look. “We’ve actually talked about that,” Alan said. “It’s a pipe dream, though. We couldn’t afford to give up our practices, and it would take a lot of money to get something like that off the ground and keep it going.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “maybe you could treat people there as well as do the research. You’d just have to get enough funding for it so you weren’t dependent on seeing X number of patients a day.”

“Oh my God,” Carlynn said, looking up at the sky. “How I would love that!” Lisbeth couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard such enthusiasm in her sister’s voice.

“I could help you apply for grants,” Gabriel said. “I’ve written so many grant applications for research at SF General that I could write them in my sleep.”

“Where would they apply?” Lisbeth asked her husband. It was one thing to find grant money for the customary studies SF General would embrace. How would Gabriel find money for something most of the world considered quackery?

“In the beginning, you’d need some seed money to get you started,” Gabriel said. “Then once you’re up and running—and showing some results—it shouldn’t be that hard to get more.” He smiled ruefully. “Not impossible, anyway. And I love a good challenge.”

“Are you serious, Gabe?” Carlynn asked him.

“Completely serious.”

“This would be great.” Alan sat up straight, a look of excitement on his face. “Carlynn and her reputation would be our draw, of course, and I could design and direct the research. You could be our financial guy, Gabe. And Lisbeth could run the whole shebang.”

“What would you call it?” Lisbeth asked.

“The Healing Research Institute of San Francisco,” Alan said, and Lisbeth knew this was not the first time he’d said that name to himself.

“We need Carlynn’s name in there, though,” Lisbeth said. “People need to know she’s behind it.”

“The Carlynn Shire Center for Healing,” Alan suggested.

“No,” Gabriel advised. “Leave out the healing part. The word is too charged. Just call it the Carlynn Shire Medical Center.”

“You’re all just dreaming, right?” Carlynn asked. “You’re tormenting me with this.”

“Everything worthwhile starts with a dream, Carly,” Alan said, and he passed her the bottle of champagne.

Carlynn was coming back to life, and she hadn’t truly known she’d been away. She chattered endlessly as she and Alan drove south toward Monterey the day after they’d survived sailing with Gabriel and Lisbeth.

“I really, really want to do it,” she said. “The research center. Or institute. Or whatever we call it.” She was turned in her seat so that she could face Alan as he drove. They’d been talking about starting a research center all the night before and that morning, but their conversation had focused on the type of work they could do there, not on the feasibility. “Do you think we can? I mean, I know it would mean we’d lose a lot of our income, at least initially, but, Alan, this is so important. There are answers we need to find.”

Alan let go of the steering wheel to reach across the seat and take her hand. “I don’t care about the money,” he said. “I don’t care if we never live in a beautiful home in Pacific Heights. I care about two things: your happiness and using your gift to the fullest. A research center seems the best way to do it. And Gabe made it sound as though it really could work.”

“But we can’t have him writing grant applications for us for free. We have to pay him.”

“Yes, we’ll have to pay him,” Alan agreed, and it pleased her to realize that he’d been thinking about this just as she had. “We’ll need him working full-time to handle all the financial aspects of the center as well as the fund-raising.”

“You’re serious about this!” Carlynn could barely contain her enthusiasm.

“You bet. We’ll need to ask him if he’ll do it. Then he can work out our business plan and our budget, and give himself a nice fat salary. And then we have to see if we can get Lisbeth away from Lloyd Peterson.”

“This is so wonderful!” Carlynn threw her arms up in the air. “All of us working together. I would absolutely love it.” After a moment, though, she leaned her head against the headrest, suddenly somber. “How the heck do we get something like this off the ground? Gabriel said we’d need seed money. Where does that come from?”

Alan glanced at her, but it was a minute before he spoke. “I’m surprised you haven’t thought about the answer to that question,” he said quietly, and she knew he had thought through this part of the plan as well. “How about the woman we’re on our way to visit?”

“Mother?” she asked, surprised.

He nodded. “What do you think?”

Carlynn stared out the window as they passed the Santa Cruz exit off Highway One. Delora Kling was an undeniably wealthy woman. She’d been born to money and had inherited even more when her husband died, and she regularly donated large sums to charities. This would not be a charity, of course, but she had never been shy about publicizing Carlynn’s gift.

“I hadn’t thought of her,” Carlynn said, “but she just might be willing.”

There was a new servant at the mansion, a fat and sassy Negro woman named Angela, who was working as Delora’s personal aide, helping her get around when her vision did not allow her to move independently. Carlynn wondered just how poor her mother’s vision had become. Did she know this was a Negro she had come to depend upon?

She did, indeed. Over lunch on the terrace, Delora spoke about how fabulous it was to have someone to find her hairbrush for her when she’d misplaced it or to guide her to a chair on the terrace so that she didn’t tumble off the edge.

“Even though she’s colored,” Delora said as she sank her fork into the salad in front of her, “she has been a splendid help. I don’t know how I got along without her.”

Carlynn took courage from her words. Maybe her feelings about Angela would have softened her attitude toward Lisbeth and Gabriel. She glanced at Alan.

“Mother, Alan and I would like to talk to you about a plan we’re considering.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is it, Mother?” Carlynn asked.

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

Carlynn glanced at Alan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then you know my answer,” Delora said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

“What are you doing?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

32

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shut up, Liam!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happens now?”

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

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

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

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

“I know.”

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

He nodded, unwilling to tackle her denial tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

33

Big Sur, 1967

THE FOG WAS DENSE AND DISORIENTING. CARLYNN DROVE ALONG Highway One at ten miles an hour, afraid to go any faster for fear she’d sail right off the cliff into the Pacific. It had been a long time since she’d been down this stretch of coast. She remembered it as winding and treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful, as well. The beauty was lost on her at the moment, though, as she neared the Bixby Bridge. She had never liked this bridge. It was far too high, the expanse between the two cliffs far too long. She had to stop the car before driving onto it, licking her lips and gathering up her courage. “It’s just a road,” she told herself and started across. Fog swirled beneath the bridge, and she supposed it was just as well that it camouflaged the distance between herself and Bixby Creek, far below. Once she reached the other side of the bridge, she let out her breath. Not that the road she was on, which hugged the bluffs high above the ocean, was much better.

Highway One was always a work in progress along the stretch between the Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur. It was subject to floods and landslides and forest fires, and if there were boulders or fallen trees littering the road ahead of her, she wouldn’t know it until it was too late because of the opaque, cottony fog. There were also very few other cars. For a summer’s day, that seemed odd to her, but she supposed it was the weather that was keeping tourists away. Maybe they knew better than to drive when the fog was this thick. The route to the Cabrial Commune was only thirty or so miles past Monterey, Penny had told her. Carlynn hadn’t known they were to be the thirty slowest miles of her life.

Penny Everett had called earlier that week. Carlynn had been in her office at the center, looking over Alan’s initial draft for a brilliant research project he was designing, when Lisbeth buzzed her on the intercom.

“Phone call for you, Carlynn,” she’d said. “It’s Penny Everett!”

“You’re kidding!” Carlynn had set down her pen and picked up the phone. “Penny?”

“Oh, Carlynn.” The voice was a whisper. “I’m so glad I could reach you.”

The woman didn’t sound like Penny, and for a brief moment Carlynn wondered if it might be a desperate patient scheming to get in to see her. It had happened before.

“Penny? What’s wrong with your voice?” she asked. “You sound terrible.”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling. I hate to bother you…I know you must be terribly busy. But I was wondering if there’s any chance you could help me.”

It most certainly was Penny, but her voice made Carlynn wince. It sounded as though her throat was lined with sandpaper.

“What’s wrong?” Carlynn found herself whispering as well, and Penny laughed.

“Everyone does that,” she said. “Everyone whispers when they talk to me. It must be catching.”

Carlynn chuckled. “I’ve missed you, Penny,” she said. “I was going to say it’s good to hear your voice, but that would be a lie.”

“I’ve been this way for four months,” Penny said. Was she crying? Carlynn couldn’t tell.

“Four months!” She stood up and walked over to the window, which looked out at the traffic on Sutter Street. “Do you know what started it?”

“It started while I was in a musical,” Penny said. “Just this little off-Broadway thing. I was under a lot of stress. That’s what caused it, my doctor said. He said I needed a break and my voice would come back, but it hasn’t.”

“Have you alleviated the stress?” Carlynn asked.

“Yes!” Penny sounded as emphatic as she could, given there was no power to her voice. “I left New York. I’m back in California, staying in a commune in Big Sur where there’s no pressure, just a lot of loving people and peace and quiet, and I’ve been here for two months now, and I still sound like this.” There were definitely tears behind her words now, and Carlynn felt her own eyes well up.

“Oh, honey, that must be frightening.” She tried to picture what Penny’s life must be like on a commune. They were cropping up here and there, filled with hippies who rarely washed and slept around with abandon. The lifestyle sounded unappealing to Carlynn, but she could see her old, unconventional friend thriving in that sort of environment.

“And the worst part is, there’s this play I want to do in New York next year,” Penny continued. “I want it in the worst way, Carly. It’s called Hair, and it’s going to be so good and so much fun, and I know they want me to audition for it, but I can’t. I’m afraid I may never be able to sing again. Maybe not even talk again.”

“Can you come up here to San Francisco?” Carlynn asked. “It wouldn’t be a huge drive for you. Come and spend a few days with us and I’ll work with you.”

There was a moment of silence on the line.

“I wanted to invite you down here,” Penny said. “I really don’t want to leave here right now. I’m afraid of the…you know, the stress. I have a little cabin with twin beds. Well—” she giggled hoarsely “—I have two mattresses, anyhow. On the floor. It could be like a little vacation for—”

“Oh, Penny, I can’t. I’m swamped here.” But her mind was racing ahead. A few days in Big Sur. The windswept cliffs above the coastline, the ocean and the fanciful cloudlike fog that put San Francisco’s to shame. A week off. She loved the center and adored her work, but still… Time with her old friend on a commune, of all places, would be an adventure. And Penny obviously needed her help. By the time Penny said, “Oh, please, Carly?” she had made up her mind.

Had she really thought of this fog as fanciful? It was positively blinding, and she wondered if this was how Delora felt all the time, unsure of where to place her next step.

The only way she would ever know where to turn off Highway One was by her mileage. She’d set her trip odometer as she passed the Carmel exit, and when it reached thirty miles, she would start looking for the tree. “It’s a coastal redwood,” Penny had said. “Sort of out of place right there along the road. You can’t miss it.”

Oh, yeah? Carlynn thought. But just as she was about to give up and drive to the nearest store or restaurant or anything she could find, if she could find one, the tree rose out of the fog to her left. It was massive and truly did seem out of place. An arrow-shaped board, only a foot long by three or four inches high, had been nailed to the tree, and yellow or white letters—she couldn’t tell which—spelled out “Cabrial.” That was the name of the commune, she remembered. Penny had told her the land had been owned by a family named Cabrial at one time. Now it was owned by a bunch of out-of-their-mind hippies, Carlynn thought as she turned onto the dirt road. Who would choose to live out here?

Highway One was nothing compared to this road, she thought as the dirt road climbed and plunged and twisted through the foggy forest. She would hate to drive it in the muddy season, and she said a silent prayer that it didn’t rain while she was at the commune or the road would be completely impassable.

For four miles, she drove through ruts and over rocks, and it was only then that she noticed her gas gauge: the needle was a hairbreadth above empty.

“Idiot,” she said out loud to herself. She would never get out of here.

She spotted another wooden arrow affixed to a tree, and turned in the direction it pointed to find herself in what appeared to be a clearing, or at least a parking area. She could make out a green truck and a battered white Volkswagen van. Then she spotted a building, a large cabin, perhaps, to the right of the vehicles. It wasn’t until she’d parked her car next to the van that she saw a woman run down the few steps of the cabin toward her car, and it took her a moment to recognize her. Penny! Her dirty-blond hair was long and straight, parted in the middle, and she was wearing a white halter top with strands of beads dangling from the shoulders. Even in the hazy fog, it was obvious she was wearing no bra. She looked more like twenty than thirty-seven, and only when Carlynn got out of the car to hug her old friend did she see the fine lines on her face.

“You look beautiful!” Carlynn said as she drew away from Penny.

“You, too,” Penny whispered.

Carlynn hugged her again, this time in sympathy at the weak sound of her voice. “Poor Penny. We’ve got to see if we can get you well again. It used to be hard to shut you up.”

“I know,” Penny said. “Everyone back home is teasing me that I must have used up my lifetime allotment of words already. The weird thing is, no one here knew me before, so they all think I’m this quiet little person.”

Carlynn laughed. “I can tell them the truth about you.”

“Let’s take your things to my cabin, and then I’ll give you a tour.” Penny grabbed Carlynn’s hard-sided suitcase and guided her down a trail through the woods.

“Carly,” she said, looping her free hand through Carlynn’s arm. “I just want to make sure you know that I don’t expect a miracle from you. I mean, I know you can’t always make things better. I read that in an article.”

“I’ll do my best,” Carlynn said.

“You are not dressed for a commune,” Penny whispered. “Do you have some other clothes with you?”

“Of course,” Carlynn said. She’d left the center midday, so she still had on her work clothes—navy blue slacks, a white blouse and a white-and-blue checked cardigan. She’d brought jeans, jerseys and a sweatshirt with her, and she couldn’t wait to change into them.

“How’s the medical center you opened?” Penny asked as they walked.

“It’s great,” Carlynn said, missing it a little already. “It’s my dream come true. We’re hoping to prove that many so-called healers can really heal.”

“Well, you’re the one for that job. I’ll never forget how you fixed my leg after I fell from the terrace at your house.”

Carlynn laughed. “I’m not sure I did much,” she said. “I don’t think your leg was really broken.”

“You’re too modest. And speaking of modest, this is my abode.” Penny let go of Carlynn’s arm and stepped onto the porch of a small cabin. “Come on in.”

Carlynn followed Penny into the cabin, noticing the wooden sign that read “Cornflower” hanging above the door.

The cabin was tinier than Carlynn could have imagined. It contained a minuscule living room, with an old sofa and a woodstove taking up much of the space, and an even smaller bedroom. Two twin mattresses, their sheets and blankets in disarray, were pushed together on the floor, leaving mere inches of floor exposed around them.

“Wow,” Carlynn said. “Cozy.”

Penny laughed. “No television,” she whispered. “No radios. Just birdsong and the sound of the ocean on a still night.”

Carlynn noticed the lanterns on the floor and the one tiny dresser. “Is there electricity?” she asked, thinking of her hair dryer. “Plumbing?” She hadn’t noticed a bathroom in the small cabin.

“No and no,” Penny said. “There are a couple of communal latrines.” She must have seen Carlynn’s look of dismay, because she laughed again. “You’ll get used to it after a couple of days,” she whispered, then looked at Carlynn’s navy-blue pumps. “Do you have anything that would be easier to walk in?” she asked.

“Sneakers,” Carlynn said. “I’ll put them on.”

She changed her clothes and her shoes, and they left the cabin and wandered through the woods and open spaces of the commune. Penny obviously knew her way around. She pointed out the different cabins to her, and after a while they reached a clearing, where children swung on rope swings hanging from the branches of mammoth trees and darted in and out of the fog. The latrine was not far from the clearing and it was worse than Carlynn had expected, an open area where everyone was expected to defecate side by side. She now understood why hippies had the reputation of being dirty, as they passed the one shower that served the entire community. The showerhead was rigged up to a tree, and it was connected to a huge barrel of water resting above a fire that someone would have to keep stoked, if anyone was to ever have a hot shower.

“Guess what, though,” Penny said in her anemic voice. “The main cabin—the one near where you parked—is where we cook meals, and it has plumbing, so you don’t have to freak out about germs when you eat.”

Carlynn was secretly relieved by that fact. She was wondering how quickly she could help Penny with her voice so that she could leave this place. Being here was like stepping back—way back—in time. She decided, though, that she could only get through the next few days by taking on a positive attitude, and so she followed Penny to the large cabin for dinner that night with a smile on her face and her appetite intact.

They sat on benches at one of three long wooden tables, and Carlynn enjoyed the vegetables and rice and tofu, which she had never eaten before and which was not as bad as she’d expected. Penny introduced her to a few people at their table, but then leaned forward to tell her about her other friends sitting elsewhere in the room.

“I’ve slept with him,” she whispered, pointing to a man with very long, kinky-curly blond hair. “His name is Terence, and God, he was so good.” Penny’s eyes were half closed, as though she could taste the memory. “So amazing. And with him.” She pointed to the young black man sitting next to the curly-haired blond, then to the heavyset woman next to him. “And with her,” she said.

“Her?” Carlynn tried not to look as stunned as she felt.

“It’s nothing here,” Penny said. “Everyone sleeps with everyone.”

“You’re on the Pill, I hope.”

“Of course,” Penny said. “Although, I was thinking that if I never get my voice back, I could just stay here and have babies. It’s so natural and beautiful, having babies here. There’ve been two born since I arrived. The fathers actually help deliver them. And there’s another one due soon.” Leaning forward again, she nodded in the direction of a very young dark-haired woman, huge with child, who was laughing at something one of her tablemates had said. Even from the next table, though, Carlynn could see a strain in that laugh. Whether the woman was in physical—or perhaps emotional—pain, she didn’t know, but something was troubling her.

“Her old man is the guy sitting over there.” Penny pointed. “Johnny Angel.”

“Johnny Angel?” Carlynn tried not to laugh.

“His real name is something else, but that’s what everyone calls him,” Penny said. “I’ve slept with him a few times, too. He’s very young, but the young ones can go all night long, if you know what I mean.”

“You slept with him while his wife is pregnant?”

“Her suggestion,” Penny said. “It’s a different world here, Carly.”

A large woman with long, frizzy gray hair walked into the cabin and climbed over the bench to sit next to Penny.

“How’s your voice today, Penny?” the woman asked.

“Same as always,” Penny said. “Felicia, this is my old friend Carlynn. Felicia’s the midwife here. She’ll be delivering Ellen’s baby.”

“How far along is she?” Carlynn asked the midwife.

“Carlynn’s a doctor,” Penny whispered to Felicia.

“She’s thirty-eight weeks.” Felicia’s voice was loud and commanding. She dished a large serving of vegetables and rice onto her plate. “I think she’s going to be early, though,” she added. “She said she was having some back pain today.”

Carlynn nodded. That explained the halfhearted laughter.

Felicia looked across the table at her as she began to eat. “Do you have any antibiotics on you?” she asked. “River has the clap and he ran out.”

“No, sorry, I don’t,” she said, although she had brought some just in case she needed them to treat Penny. She would leave them for the guy with gonorrhea if Penny didn’t need them.

“Hey, Pen!” Terence called from one of the other tables. “Since you have company tonight, would you like to sleep at my cabin? Give your friend some privacy?”

“No, thanks,” Penny said as loudly as she could, to be heard over the chatter and crying babies. “I want to be with her.”

“Oh, I get it.” Terence smiled, and Carlynn grimaced.

“It’s not like that,” she said to the man. “I’m a married woman.”

Everyone laughed as though she’d said something hilarious, and she smiled.

“Let me start treating you,” Carlynn said when she and Penny had returned to Cornflower. She was anxious to see how Penny would respond to her touch. “I’d feel so good if I could get you back to New York and into that beauty parlor musical.”

“Beauty parlor musical?” Penny frowned at her.

“Didn’t you say you were going to be in a musical about—”

“Oh, Hair!” Penny interrupted her, laughing. “Oh my God, Carlynn, a beauty parlor musical! You’re too much.” She could hardly catch her breath for laughing, and Carlynn joined in, not sure what the joke was.

“Hair is about Vietnam, and love and diversity and people taking care of each other. It is decidedly not about a beauty parlor. God, I love you, Carly.”

“Now don’t start that.” Carlynn laughed. “I am not sleeping with you. No lesbian stuff.”

“Right, you’re a married woman.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Carlynn grinned. She was a fish out of water, but felt no discomfort at being the brunt of the jokes, as long as Penny was the joker. “Come here,” she said, pointing to one of the mattresses on the bedroom floor. “Lie down and get comfortable.”

Penny lay down and Carlynn sat on the mattress next to her, taking her hands. “Tell me about when it started.”

“Is this how you do it?” Penny asked. “You talk, like a shrink? I’ve been to a shrink already. He was useless.”

“I’m not a shrink, honey,” Carlynn said. “Now just talk to me. How did it start?”

Penny cried as she reported waking up one morning without a voice. Carlynn tuned out the outside world, the shouts of children, the occasional laughter from an adult, the guitar music that was floating in through the window from somewhere nearby. Closing her eyes, she let Penny’s words come inside her. This was going to work. She could feel it in Penny’s hands, in the absolute concentration in her face. Thank God. She did not want to disappoint her old friend. It might take some time, but Penny would get her voice back.

The next day, when the world was again white with fog, Ellen Liszt’s cries filled the commune, and everyone knew she was in labor.

“Should I help?” Carlynn asked Penny as she stared out the bedroom window in the direction of the cries.

Penny shook her head. “No. Believe me, they don’t want a doctor in there,” she said. “They don’t particularly trust doctors here.”

Except to hand out antibiotics when they contract a sexually transmitted disease, Carlynn thought.

She spent the morning working with Penny some more, listening to her and gently placing her hands on her throat. At lunch that afternoon, Penny said something in a perfectly natural voice and everyone turned to look at her. Instantly, the whisper was back, but Penny got up and did a little jig across the wood-plank floor of the cabin.

Walking back to Cornflower, they passed Rainbow Cabin and could hear an occasional cry, more of a scream really, from the mother-to-be inside. Johnny Angel chopped wood at the side of the cabin without seeming to notice the two women passing by.

“I thought you said the men help deliver their babies?” Carlynn asked.

“Most do,” Penny said. “But Johnny’s freaking out, I think. Poor kid.”

She worked with Penny’s voice for an hour, then sat with her on the sofa in the small living room, sewing patches on several pairs of Penny’s well-worn jeans. Suddenly, there was the sound of steps on the front porch, and Johnny Angel burst into the cabin. His face was ashen, his hands raised in panic.

“The baby’s not breathing!” he said.

Carlynn dropped her sewing and ran toward the door, Penny and Johnny close behind her. “Which way?” she asked as she stepped off the porch into the fog.

Johnny grabbed her arm and ran with her toward the cabin he shared with his young girlfriend, but he stopped, frozen at the front steps.

“In there.” He pointed inside.

Carlynn looked at him squarely. “Your girlfriend will need you,” she said, taking him by the wrist and nearly dragging him inside with her.

Felicia was on her knees on the mattress, crouched between the young mother’s legs, holding a bluish baby. Carlynn dropped to her own knees beside her.

“The cord was wrapped around her neck,” Felicia said, handing the infant to her.

Carlynn placed the baby girl on the bloodstained newspapers that covered the mattress, then bent over her to perform CPR, covering the tiny nose and mouth with her own mouth, gently blowing air into her lungs, then pressing with two of her fingers on the infant’s breastbone.

“I’ve tried CPR,” said Felicia, but Carlynn continued puffing and pressing. After a moment, she felt Felicia’s hand on her shoulder.

“She’s gone,” Felicia said gently. “She’s gone.”

“No!” Ellen cried from the bed, struggling to raise herself up, trying to see. “No, please!”

Holding the baby with one hand on her back, the other against her chest, Carlynn lifted her until her own lips touched the infant’s temple. Shutting her eyes, she willed every ounce of her strength and energy and breath and life into the child. Her body began to rock, very slowly, in time with her breathing. She couldn’t have said how long she sat that way, rocking, breathing, holding the child between her hands, but after a while, she felt a flutter beneath her right hand, a twisting of tiny muscles beneath her left, and when she opened her eyes, the baby girl let out a whimper, then a wail. Carlynn became aware of her surroundings again as if rising up from a dream, and by the time she wrapped the baby in the flannel blanket Felicia handed her, the child was pink and beautiful.

She found herself strangely reluctant to relinquish the baby, and she held her for another moment, running her hand over the infant’s dark hair before reaching forward to hand her to Ellen. Then she walked outside, still dazed and a little dizzy from her efforts, to find that the fog had burned off, and sunlight followed her to Penny’s cabin.

She slept the rest of that afternoon and most of the following day, and when she awakened, the air outside the window was growing dark. Penny sat on the other mattress and told her the baby was nursing well and appeared healthy.

“They named her Shanti Joy Angel,” she said, her voice a whisper.

Carlynn giggled.

“They’re all on to you now, Carly,” Penny said. “A few of them had heard of Carlynn Shire, but they hadn’t made the connection to you till now. They were all ready to come to you with their sniffles and rashes and bellyaches, but I told them that’s not what you’re here for.”

“Thanks,” Carlynn said. “I’m sorry, though, that I lost time for treating you.”

“That hardly matters in light of things,” Penny said. “You must be starving. You haven’t eaten since yesterday. I brought you some food from dinner. Does it always take this much out of you? The healing?”

Carlynn stretched and smiled. “That little baby took everything I had, Penny,” she said. “But I’m fine now, and after lunch we’ll get back to work on you. How long have I been sleeping?”

“You arrived Saturday. The baby was born yesterday afternoon, and now, it’s Monday night.”

“I can’t believe it.” Carlynn sat up. “I’m a lazy lump.”

“I brought you some rice and veggies,” Penny said. “They’re still a little bit warm from dinner. You ready for them?”

Carlynn nodded. “But then I have to find a phone somewhere, Penny,” she said. “I have to call Alan and tell him I’ll be here a few more days.”

“The nearest phone is miles and miles away,” Penny said. “I tell you what. Everyone’s agreed that you should have the next shower. The water’s heated up and ready for you. So, how about you get up, go use the shower, have some food, and meanwhile, I’ll borrow your car and go call Alan. How’s that sound?”

She would have liked to speak with Alan herself, but the thought of a shower, food and a little more time in bed sounded even more appealing at that moment. “All right,” she said. “Oh! But my car is on empty.”

“I’ll borrow Terence’s van, then. Just give me the number.”

She wrote down Alan’s numbers at both the center and their row house, as well as Lisbeth and Gabriel’s, in case Penny had trouble finding Alan. Then she dragged herself out of bed, picked up one of Penny’s flashlights from the floor and headed outside, walking toward the latrine.

The rest of the week went quickly, and it was a week Carlynn knew she had needed for herself. She’d had no vacations the past few years. The center was truly her life, and she had never considered taking a break from it, but the peace here, the lack of contact with newspapers and television and the rest of the world, was rejuvenating beyond anything she might have expected. She enjoyed holding the baby whose life she had, perhaps, saved, and the thought of leaving the infant, of never seeing her again, was distressing in a way she couldn’t understand. Everyone at the commune called the baby’s survival a miracle, but she was not sure. All she knew was that she could now hold in her arms a beautiful little girl who would probably not have survived had she not been at the commune. Maybe that had been the reason for Penny losing her voice, everyone said, to draw Carlynn here at that exact moment, to make her part of some huge, cosmic plan. Carlynn neither knew nor cared if their rationale was the truth. That sort of thinking only annoyed the scientist in her.

Penny’s voice came back in force on Thursday morning, and Thursday night there was a celebration around the bonfire in honor of Carlynn Shire, the straight woman doctor who turned down marijuana and hashish and LSD and cheap wine, who had given them Shanti Joy and had allowed them to hear Penny’s true voice in song for the first time.

Lisbeth was typing letters for Carlynn when Alan walked into the reception office at the Carlynn Shire Medical Center the following afternoon. He stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips.

“When the heck is Carlynn coming home?” he asked.

Lisbeth turned to look at him. She understood Alan’s frustration. She, too, felt the void Carlynn left by not being at the center, and Alan had to be experiencing it at home, as well. That they were unable to communicate with Carlynn except through that one phone call from Penny made her absence that much more difficult.

“This weekend, I’m sure,” Lisbeth said. “She has to be back by Monday, because her appointments start up again then.”

“I feel like I don’t know her anymore,” Alan said glumly.

“Oh, Alan, that’s silly.”

“I know, but I haven’t gone a day without talking to her in over ten years.”

“Maybe she’s been seduced by communal life,” she joked, but Alan looked so distraught that she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “Why don’t we go get her?” she suggested.

Alan looked surprised. “I’d thought of that myself, actually, but I don’t even know where she is, exactly.”

“Well, we know she’s in a commune in Big Sur,” Lisbeth said. “We can ask around. The locals will probably know where it is.”

Alan looked at his watch. “All right. If you’re serious, let’s do it.”

“Let me call Gabe and see if he wants to go with us,” she said, excited at the thought of the adventure.

“It’s nearly four o’clock,” Alan said. “I have some notes to finish up. Should we wait until tomorrow?”

“No,” Lisbeth said, suddenly anxious to get on the road. “Let’s go tonight.”

“We won’t be able to find anything in the dark,” Alan protested.

“I know a lodge where we can stay,” Lisbeth said. Lloyd Peterson had once told her about a lodge he liked in Big Sur. “Might be tough to get a room, since it’s a Friday, but let me try. That way, we’d be there bright and early tomorrow and could start looking.”

Alan nodded and smiled. “I can’t wait to see her,” he said. “Thanks, Liz.”

There was a full moon hanging in the sky over the ocean, but the winding road was still too dark for Lisbeth’s comfort. They were nearing Big Sur on Highway One. The little reflectors built into the line in the middle of the road formed a long string of lights, and she and Alan were alone out here. It was spooky, she thought. They didn’t see another car as Lisbeth’s Volkswagen Beetle crept around each curve.

“It’s actually better to drive this road at night than in the daytime,” Alan reassured her. “You can see the lights of cars coming around the curve. In the daytime, you’d have no idea what’s waiting for you around the bend.”

Lisbeth supposed he was right, but still she turned each corner gingerly, her stomach beginning to protest a little. Gabriel had been unable to come with them, and she was driving, since Alan thought he was a better navigator. The green bug strained a bit on the inclines, and she was relieved when they found the road leading to the lodge. She pulled into the parking lot close to the building.

Inside the lodge, the man behind the desk handed them a key.

“It’s for one of the cabins behind the main building,” he said. “Number four. Very nice. Fully furnished.”

“We need two beds, though,” Lisbeth said.

“Right,” the man said. “It has two twins. You can push them together if you like.”

“Thank you,” Alan said. “And by the way, we’re looking for a commune that’s near here. Would you know of it?”

“That depends on which one you’re looking for. There’s a few of them. Gordo. Redwood. Cabrial. What do you want to go to one of those places for? Just a bunch of filthy hippies.”

“We’re picking up a family member who’s visiting there,” Lisbeth said, disappointed to learn there were several communes in the area and trying to remember if Carlynn had mentioned the name of Penny’s. None of those names sounded familiar, and she wondered if this had been such a great idea, after all.

But Alan looked unperturbed. “You go ahead to the cabin,” he told her. “I’ll stay here and get directions to the different communes.”

It was a bit unnerving walking to the cabin alone. The path through the woods was lighted, but Lisbeth was still relieved when she found the cabin and stepped inside. It was spare, with a living room, bedroom, small kitchenette and bathroom with a claustrophobic shower, but it was clean, and luxurious surroundings were not what she and Alan were after.

Alan returned to the cabin around ten o’clock, several sheets of notes in his hand.

“Well,” he said as he lay down on one of the beds, fully clothed, “I think we can find her if she’s at one of these three places. If she’s somewhere else, we’re out of luck.”

Lisbeth fell asleep quickly, but it was only a short while later that she was awakened by Alan shaking her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to see her watch in the dark. “What time is it?”

“It’s eleven,” Alan said. “And I can’t sleep. I’m going to take the car and those directions I got from the innkeeper and see if I can find her. Do you want to go with me?”

“No.” She sat up. “And I don’t want you to go, either. You’ll just be wandering around in the dark out there on those little roads.”

“Better than lying here staring at the ceiling.” Alan picked up her car keys from the old dresser and left the cabin.

Carlynn had the commune practically to herself. Many of the adults and nearly all of the children, who’d been roused from their beds in what seemed to Carlynn to be a misguided attempt at adventure, were on a moonlight nature walk. From where she lay on her mattress in Penny’s cabin, Carlynn could hear the occasional cry of a baby, and she knew that at least Shanti Joy Angel and her parents were nearby. That gave her some comfort. It was remarkably light outside tonight. There was no fog at all, and the moon was full, which was precisely why the nature seekers had grabbed this opportunity for their walk.

An hour earlier, Johnny Angel had come to Cornflower, asking her if she would take a look at Shanti Joy.

“She has a fever, I think,” Johnny had said, and Carlynn had walked with him over to Rainbow.

She found Shanti nursing strongly from Ellen’s breast, and her forehead felt cool to her touch.

“What made you think she had a fever?” she asked Johnny.

“She was crying, and she hardly ever cries,” he said. “And she seemed flushed to me.”

Ellen and Carlynn exchanged a smile. Johnny was an over-anxious new father, and it was not the first time he had come to Carlynn with a concern about his baby daughter since her dramatic birth. She didn’t mind, though. She welcomed any chance to hold the baby.

She rested her hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Shanti is fine,” she said. “And you are going to be an exceptional dad.”

She left Johnny Angel and his family and walked back to Cornflower alone, enjoying the play of moonlight on the trees and shrubs and glad that Penny had gone with the walkers so she had some time for herself. She was longing for home. It had been a wonderful week, but she’d had her fill of rice and vegetables, naked children, guitar music late into the night, and wondering over breakfast who had slept with whom the night before. Tomorrow she would head back to Monterey, her work here finished, and all she could think of was seeing Alan and her sister and Gabriel. She’d tried not to think too much about Alan this week, knowing she couldn’t talk to him and that thinking about him would only make their separation that much harder, but now her head was full of him, and she felt near tears as she drifted off to sleep.

“God, I’ve missed you.” It was a man’s voice, soft and close to her ear, and Carlynn’s eyes sprang open to see Alan sitting on the side of her bed, his hand stroking her hair back from her forehead. Moonlight bathed the room and allowed her to see the love in his eyes. She sat up with a girlish squeal of delight and threw her arms around him.

“I’m dreaming,” she said. “Are you really here?”

There were times she had wondered if she truly loved Alan or if theirs was a partnership based on a passion for their work rather than for each other. But in that moment, she knew the truth. Her love for him filled her.

“I’m really here,” he said. “Are you ever coming home?”

“Oh, yes! Tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, and it’s been terrible not being able to call you. And how is everyone? And what’s going on at the cen—”

“Come with me now,” he said. “Lisbeth and I drove down here to spirit you away from this place and take you home with us.”

“Is Lisbeth here?” She peered behind him.

“We rented a cabin not too far from here. She’s there. And you will be, too, if you’d get up and get dressed.”

“How did you ever find me?”

“Well, it wasn’t easy,” he said. “I visited another commune before coming here. This place seemed deserted, but I heard a baby crying. I went to that cabin and the baby’s father—”

“Johnny Angel,” she interrupted him with a grin.

“Whatever you say.” Alan smiled with a roll of his eyes. “He told me where you were. Said everyone else was out on a nature walk or something.”

“Yes, they are. I should probably wait till they get back before I—”

“Come now,” Alan pleaded. “They’ve had you long enough.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She lit one of the lanterns so she could dress and pack her suitcase. On the back of one of the sheets of directions Alan had brought with him, she scribbled a note to Penny, then left the cabin with her husband, arm in arm.

“Oh!” she said when they reached the area where her car was parked. “My car’s nearly empty. Keep an eye on me in your rearview mirror in case I run out, okay?”

“These roads would be a bad place to run out of gas,” Alan said. “Especially at night.”

“I know,” she said. “I think I’ve got a smidgen left. But just in case, watch me.”

“I’m never taking my eyes off you again,” Alan said, squeezing her shoulders.

Carlynn’s car made it to the cabin without a problem, although the needle was below the empty line by then. They would have to find gas somewhere in the morning and bring it back to her car before she drove it anywhere, but for the moment it didn’t matter. She and Alan awakened Lisbeth, and the three of them spent much of the rest of the night lounging on the two twin beds and talking. Carlynn told them about life at the commune, assuring both of them that she’d had nothing to do with the bed-hopping that left them wide-eyed with disbelief and disgust. She told them about the drugs and about healing Penny’s voice, and that Penny would be in a musical next year about hippies and long hair. She told them about the infant, Shanti Joy, and the moment she started breathing in her arms.

“I didn’t want to let go of her,” she said wistfully. “I felt so strongly connected to her.”

“Because you saved her life,” Lisbeth said.

“I guess,” Carlynn agreed. She told them about the tiresome food she’d eaten that week, and Lisbeth laughed, promising to go out early in the morning to find some bacon and eggs to bring back and cook in the cabin.

It was nearly four in the morning when the three of them fell asleep, Alan and Carlynn wrapped in one another’s arms, Lisbeth stretched out on her twin bed alone. Outside the cabin, the fog began creeping in from the ocean, hugging the coastline and easing its way through the trees, silently covering Big Sur in a milky-white shroud.

34

JOELLE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS PREGNANT AND ATTENDING her first childbirth class, which was held in one of the large, carpeted meeting rooms at the hospital. Gale Firestone, the nurse practitioner in Rebecca’s office, was the instructor, but everyone else in the room was a stranger to her, and she was the only pregnant woman there without a partner. A couple of the women had other women with them instead of husbands, but she had no one.

Her mother was going to be her birth partner, and Ellen was going to sit in on childbirth classes in the Berkeley area to prepare herself for that role, but she would only be able to attend a couple of the classes in Monterey. Joelle told her that didn’t matter, just as long as she got herself to Monterey when she went into labor, and her mother had promised to be there for her.

They were watching a movie in the class tonight, and everyone was either sitting or lying on the floor of the dimly lit room, absorbed in the film. Joelle found it hard to concentrate on the images on the screen. She’d seen birth movies before, and she’d seen the real thing plenty of times, given that she worked in the maternity unit. But lying on the floor, a pillow beneath her head, she was having difficulty putting herself in the place of the spread-legged woman in the movie.

She was beginning to have nightmares about labor and delivery. The dreams were always the same: during labor in one of the birthing rooms, she would get a raging headache. Liam would be there, and he would run out of the room, and Rebecca and the nurses would abandon her, as well, saying they had other patients to take care of. She would be left there with that terrible headache, about to give birth, and no one to help her. She felt abandoned in the dream, just as she was feeling abandoned in her life.

The woman on the movie screen was panting now, and Joelle closed her eyes, her mind wandering to the visit the day before with Carlynn and Liam in Mara’s room. Mara had actually made a sound while Liam was playing the guitar, a “woo-woo” sort of sound, and she and Liam had looked at each other, stunned.

Did that sound mean something? Was Mara trying to sing? To communicate? When she lifted her arm in the air, was she reaching out to Liam? Or were they just seeing what they wanted to see?

Joelle’s bulging tummy was an ever-growing object in that room, something none of them discussed, and she wondered if at some point Mara might notice it. Would she ever have the ability to think to herself, “Joelle is pregnant,” and would she wonder then who the father was? She wished she knew how many questions Mara wanted to ask but was unable to. But maybe there were none. Maybe that was why she was able to smile so easily.

Joelle was beginning to have a terrible fear, one she hadn’t voiced to Carlynn, and she wondered if Liam shared it with her. If Mara were to get better, but not well enough to truly function in the world outside the nursing home, would that be a positive thing? What if she could only get well enough to know what she was missing? Right now, Mara was not suffering, and there were moments when Joelle wondered if they should be tampering with the blissful ignorance she seemed to enjoy.

No matter what was happening to Mara, though, there was a miracle occurring in that room. The miracle was that, as long as she and Liam were with Carlynn and Mara, they could talk and laugh together. Sometimes Joelle felt as though Carlynn was saving her life all over again.

35

Big Sur, 1967

A THICK WHITE FOG WRAPPED ITSELF AROUND THE CABIN THE following morning, and Carlynn woke up before her sister or Alan. It was chilly, and she snuggled closer to her husband, but she was too wide awake to stay in bed for long. She nudged Alan gently, hoping he would wake up and go out with her to get something for breakfast, but he was snoring softly, the way he did when he was deeply asleep.

Carefully, she extracted herself from his arms and got out of the narrow bed. She opened her suitcase, which was resting on the floor of the dimly lit cabin, and pulled out a pair of socks, her jeans and a heavy sweater and went into the bathroom to change.

She should go back to the commune, she thought as she brushed her teeth. She needed to say a real goodbye to Penny and the other people she had befriended over the last week. She’d forgotten to leave the antibiotics for anyone who needed them. And she wanted to hold the baby one more time. If she were being honest with herself, she would have to admit that Shanti Joy was her primary motivation for wanting to go back to Cabrial. Since she and Alan had started the center, she didn’t see as many babies as she had as a pediatrician, and she missed them.

She left the bathroom, her flannel nightgown bundled in her arms, and walked across the bedroom to put it in her suitcase.

“Good morning.”

Carlynn stood up from her suitcase to see her sister smiling at her. Lisbeth was still lying in bed, her arms folded behind her head.

“Sorry,” Carlynn whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Lisbeth said. “I was already awake when you went into the bathroom.”

“I was thinking I’d like to make just a quick trip back to the commune to say goodbye to everyone.” Carlynn looked at Alan. “I have a feeling he’ll be out for another couple of hours. Would you like to go with me and we can let him sleep?”

“Sure.” Lisbeth sat up. “Let me change and then we can go.”

Carlynn wrote a note to Alan and then walked onto the porch to wait for her sister. She sat on the step in the fog, thinking back to those socked-in mornings in the mansion, when she and Lisbeth were kids and would go out to the terrace and sit on the lounge chairs, pretending they were in a cloud.

“There you are,” Lisbeth said as she stepped on the porch behind Carlynn. “Didn’t see you for a minute.”

“Doesn’t this remind you of mornings at the mansion?” Carlynn asked.

Lisbeth stood next to her, looking out at the shifting cloud of fog. “I don’t like to think about the mansion, actually,” she said.

Carlynn stood up and put her arm around her sister. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know how much you miss it.”

“We should probably get some food to bring back to Alan for breakfast,” Lisbeth said, changing the subject.

They started walking down the shrouded path toward the parking lot of the lodge. “We can ask at the commune if there’s a store where we can get some bacon and eggs,” Carlynn said, “but I don’t think there will be one close by.”

“The lodge serves breakfast,” Lisbeth said. “We can eat there if we can’t find anything else.”

The fog in the parking lot was translucent enough for them to make out their cars. “I have no gas in mine,” Carlynn said. “We’ll have to take your bug, okay?”

“Sure.”

They started walking across the small dirt lot toward the Volks wagen. Carlynn looked out toward the road, where the fog seemed thicker as it hugged the coast.

“Maybe we should wait until later,” she said. “We’re really socked in here.”

Lisbeth stopped walking and followed her sister’s gaze to the road. “What do you think?” she asked.

Carlynn remembered her drive through the fog a week ago to reach the commune. This couldn’t be any worse than that. “Oh, let’s do it,” she said.

They got into the car, and Lisbeth carefully turned around and headed toward the road. She hesitated at the exit from the parking lot and looked to her left.

“Can’t see a damn thing,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, if anyone’s coming, they’ll be driving very slowly, I would think,” Carlynn said. “Are your fog lights on?”

“Uh-huh.” Lisbeth turned right onto the road, gingerly, the car jerking a bit with her apprehension.

Carlynn looked through the front windshield at the swirling fog. The foliage at the side of the road was quite visible, and the road itself suddenly slipped into view.

“That’s better.” Lisbeth sounded relieved, and she gave the car a little more gas.

“Just keep close to the side here,” Carlynn said.

Lisbeth glanced at her once they were under way. “I know why you really want to go back to the commune,” she said.

“Why?” Carlynn asked.

“You want to get your mitts on that baby again. What’s her name?”

“Shanti Joy.” Had she been that obvious? “Well, I really just want to say goodbye to Penny. But seeing the baby again would be a bonus.”

“Right.” Lisbeth smiled at her, and Carlynn knew she didn’t believe her. Her sister knew her too well.

“I have been having sort of a sick fantasy,” Carlynn said.

“What’s that?” The fog had suddenly thickened again, and Lisbeth’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, her head pitched forward in an effort to see the road.

“My fantasy is…well, I’m appalled at myself for it. My fantasy is that her parents would die. Maybe not die. Maybe just be unable to take care of her for some reason and they’d give her to me.”

A small smile came to Lisbeth’s lips, but she didn’t take her eyes from the road. “You still long for a baby, don’t you?” she asked.

“I thought I was past it,” Carlynn said. “I love my work at the center. And I’m thirty-seven years old, for Pete’s sake. But that little life in my hands…” She shook her head with a smile. “She’s so beautiful. She has a ton of dark hair, and…”

Lisbeth suddenly stopped the car.

“What’s wrong?” Carlynn asked.

“I can’t do this, Carly,” Lisbeth said.

“Can’t do what?”

“Drive in this fog.” Lisbeth nodded toward the invisible road ahead of them. “I’m sorry. We have to go back. My legs are shaking.”

Carlynn turned in her seat to look behind them, but she could see nothing other than the fog. “We can’t turn around here, honey,” she said. “And we shouldn’t just stop like this. Another car could come up behind us and hit us.”

“Could you drive?” Lisbeth seemed frozen behind the wheel.

“Okay,” Carlynn said. “It was like this when I drove here from San Francisco, so I got pretty used to it.”

Quickly, the two of them got out of the car and exchanged places. Once Carlynn was in the driver’s seat, though, she understood why Lisbeth had panicked. The road was gone. Even the foliage along the side of the road was hidden.

“Yikes,” she said. “I see what you mean.” Putting the car in gear, she began inching it forward. The fog was far worse than it had been the day she’d driven to the commune, and if there had been a way to turn around on the narrow, winding road, she would have. But they were stuck now.

“So,” Lisbeth said, “were you tempted?”

“Tempted?”

“To sleep with someone at the commune?”

“Lisbeth! Are you crazy?” She stole a quick glance at her sister. “Of course not. Would you be?”

“No, but I was just wondering if, you know, the atmosphere would have gotten to you after a week. You said Penny was doing it with everyone.”

“But Penny’s always been that way. I hope she doesn’t get herself preg—”

“Carlynn!” Lisbeth shouted. “Watch out!”

The headlights of a car were directly in front of them, in their lane, and Carlynn had no choice but to quickly swerve to the left to avoid crashing head-on into the vehicle. The Volkswagen skidded on the wet pavement, sending them sliding across the road, and Carlynn knew the second the wheels left the pavement. Something crashed into the bottom of the car, which tipped precariously, teetering for a moment on the edge of an unseen precipice, and then they were falling.

Lisbeth tried to grab the wheel from her in a futile attempt to save them, but it was too late.

Carlynn caught her sister’s arm. “Oh my God, Lizzie!” she screamed. “I’m sorry. The road…”

She thought the car was falling sideways, although she couldn’t have said for certain, because every window offered only a view of fog. But she felt a jolt as they hit something, some outcropping from the cliff. She heard Lisbeth scream once more, and then, suddenly, the world was still and dark.

36

ONLY PAUL WAS SITTING AT THEIR USUAL LUNCH TABLE, EVEN though Joelle was late getting to the cafeteria. She carried her tray to the table, glancing over her shoulder to see if Liam might have been in the line behind her, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Paul stood up and pulled a chair out for her, and she laughed.

“I’m looking that pregnant, am I?” she asked.

“Just trying to be chivalrous,” Paul said. “When are you due, again?”

“New Year’s Day,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. How could I forget that?”

“I’m thirty weeks today,” she said.

“You look great,” Paul said.

“Thanks. Where’s Liam?” She tried to sound only mildly curious.

“He’s had a rough morning in the E.R.,” Paul said. “It’s been like a Saturday night down there.”

She popped a prenatal vitamin into her mouth and swallowed it with a few sips of milk. “And how are your units today?” she asked.

“Not bad, actually. How about yours?”

Her pager buzzed as he asked the question, and she looked down to see the E.R.’s number on the display.

“Speak of the devil,” she said.

“E.R.?” he asked as she got to her feet.

She nodded. “Be right back.”

She walked over to the wall phone near the cafeteria exit and dialed the number for the E.R.

It was Liam who picked up on the other end. “Are you in the cafeteria, Jo?” he asked.

“Yes. What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to drag you away from lunch, but I could really use your help down here. I have a couple of accident victims I’m tied up with, and a woman just came in who looks pretty beaten up, but says she just fell. Any chance you could see her?”

“Sure. I’ll be right there.”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

She hung up the phone and returned to the table, but didn’t take her seat again.

“Just leave this here for me in case this doesn’t take too long, okay?” she asked Paul, pointing to her tray.

“I’m almost done, Joelle,” he said. “Want me to take the E.R. case for you?”

“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s a possible battered woman, so it’s probably better if I do it. But thanks for offering.” She gave him a quick wave of her hand. “Have a good afternoon.”

From the hallway of the E.R., she could see into the waiting room, and Paul had been right. It looked like a weekend night in there. Mothers bounced irritable babies on their knees, a couple of kids held ice packs to their legs, and several men slouched in their chairs, looking in the direction of the reception desk, waiting for their names to be called.

A nurse spotted Joelle and walked toward her, handing her a chart.

“She’s in four,” she said. “Bart stitched her up and set her broken arm and tried to get her to admit what happened, but she insists she fell down the stairs.” The nurse shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she did. But we didn’t want to let her go until one of you guys had a chance to assess her. She wants to get out of here, though. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep her.”