Diane Chamberlain - The Shadow Wife

In those first few days in the hospital, when he bottle-fed the nameless infant while Delora nursed Carlynn, Franklin decided he would like to name the baby Lisbeth after his own mother, who was still living at the time. Delora did not get along well with his mother, and he doubted she would agree to the name. When he broached the subject with her, though, Delora said, “I don’t care what we name it,” and he’d recoiled in horror.

“Name her,” he said, thinking protectively of the little white-haired angel he held in his arms.

The nurses told him Delora’s antipathy toward the second twin would pass in time. She would love both her babies equally, they said. Right now she was in too much pain to think about anyone other than herself. They did not know, and neither did he at the time, what Delora had known all along: she truly had room enough in her heart for only one child.

Lisbeth didn’t help matters. She was a difficult baby, colicky and forever waking her sister with her howling and fussing. But Franklin often blamed himself for Delora’s attitude toward the little girl. He never should have named her Lisbeth, because it set up yet another negative association between the infant and something Delora loathed: his mother. He should have let Delora pick a name. Make that baby hers. “Mr. Kling?”

Franklin turned now to see Rosa at the door to the terrace.

“Supper,” Rosa said, her voice still tinged with a Mexican accent, although she had been in this country three decades. “Come inside, girls, and get washed up.”

Dinner was served in the grand dining room, which looked out over the sea. Rosa served them, as she had served Delora’s family before Franklin had moved in. She was not the best housekeeper in the world, but she had a warmth about her that had charmed Franklin from the start. He liked that she treated the twins equally, and she had even complained to him once, with apologies for overstepping her role, that she thought it unfair that only Carlynn went to the Douglass School while Lisbeth did not.

Over dinner, Delora questioned Carlynn about her day at school, while Lisbeth nibbled her food, a small shadow in the room. When Delora stopped for breath, Franklin broke in.

“Who wants to go sailing with me tomorrow?” he asked and saw the instant sparkle in Lisbeth’s eyes. He’d asked the question just to bring that joy into her face.

“I do!” she said.

“How about you, Carlynn?” he asked his other daughter.

Carlynn shook her head. “No, thank you,” she responded, as he knew she would. Carlynn had hated the water ever since their sailboat capsized in Monterey Bay a couple of years earlier. The girls had been wearing life jackets, but the water was freezing and the whole experience had been frightening, particularly for Carlynn. Lisbeth still loved to sail, but Carlynn decided she would never go on the water again. That was fine with Franklin. Carlynn had many opportunities for adventure at school, and he wanted Lisbeth to have one for herself. A pastime she could love, at which she could learn to excel.

At the end of the meal, Delora looked across the table at Franklin, and he knew she was asking him if they should remain in the dining room to tell the girls about Presto. He mouthed the word library, and Delora stood up.

“Let’s go into the library, girls,” she said. “Your father and I want to talk with you.”

Franklin led his family across the foyer into the library, dreading the conversation he knew was coming.

Delora and Carlynn sat on the love seat near the window, while Franklin and Lisbeth opted for the wing chairs. The girls looked apprehensive. They were rarely invited to participate in family discussions such as this.

“You tell them, Franklin,” Delora said.

Franklin looked from one daughter to the other. “Presto is very sick,” he said.

Both girls glanced in the general direction of the kitchen, where they knew Presto slept by the stove. Neither of them spoke.

Clearing his voice, Franklin continued. “I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

“No!” Carlynn cried, instantly in tears, and Delora pulled her close, trying to smooth her unsmoothable hair.

“Hush, darling,” she said. “It will be all right.”

Lisbeth’s hands were locked on her lap and she sat motionless, quiet. But her eyes glistened.

“Tomorrow,” Franklin said, “we will take him to the veterinarian to have him … put down.”

“Killed?” Carlynn wailed. “Please don’t, Daddy. Mommy?” She looked at her mother with hope.

“He’s suffering, Carlynn,” Delora said. “He’s having trouble breathing, and you know how he can hardly walk these days.”

“He’s nearly blind,” Franklin added. “And we want to end his misery, Carly. It’s not fair to make him go on like this when we can help him die, so he doesn’t have to be in pain any longer.”

Carlynn nestled against her mother’s breast, sobbing quietly now, and Franklin saw the tears in Delora’s eyes. She was not an insensitive woman, just limited in her capacity to love. Lisbeth’s mouth was downturned and quivering, as though she was struggling to control her emotions, and a fat tear spilled from each of her eyes. Franklin walked over to the ottoman in front of her chair and sat down on it. Leaning forward, he covered her hands, still folded in her lap, with his own. “Are you all right, Lizzie?” he said.

Lisbeth nodded, biting her quivering lip. She was brave. Stoic. He felt a lump in his throat. No one appreciated this child except him.

But that was not exactly true. Carlynn drew away from her mother to see the pain in her twin sister’s face. Jumping up from the love seat, she ran across the room to hug her. “I won’t let them do it, Lizzie,” she said, as though she had forgotten she was only a child.

But Lisbeth knew the limitations of a seven-year-old. She nodded, as if she was humoring her sister, but Franklin saw that the sorrow never left her eyes.

That night, Carlynn slept on the kitchen floor, her arms locked around Presto’s failing body. Franklin and Delora tried to force her to come upstairs to bed, but she wouldn’t budge from the dog’s side.

“Let’s let her be,” Franklin finally said to his wife. “Let her have one last night with him.”

Delora agreed. She watched as Franklin covered the little girl with a comforter, squatted down to kiss the top of her head, and stroked Presto’s side. Then he and Delora went to bed.

The dog’s rasping breaths could be heard throughout the mansion. Carlynn spent the night whispering words to him, of comfort or love, or pleading, no one really knew, but the fur on his neck grew wet from her tears.

In the morning, everyone in the house awakened to the sound of Presto’s barking. They came downstairs to find him sitting up next to Carlynn, his breathing even and strong. Carlynn put her arm around the dog’s broad shoulders.

“Presto’s hungry,” she said simply, and Lisbeth ran over to embrace first the dog, then her sister.

The vet would later say that he must have misdiagnosed Presto’s condition, that he had judged it to be far more serious than it actually was. Maybe that was so.

And maybe it wasn’t.

THE CALL CAME JUST AS JOELLE WALKED IN THE DOOR OF HER condo that evening. Dropping her purse and appointment book on the kitchen counter, she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“I’m trying to reach Shanti Angel.” It was the voice of an older, possibly even an elderly, man—a deep, rich voice with an edge of refinement.

“This is Shanti,” she said.

“I’m calling you for Carlynn Shire,” the man said. “She got a message that you would like to meet with her?” “Yes,” she said, “I would.”