Chamberlain, Diane - The Shadow Wife

“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

C ARLYNN STEPPED INTO THE HOSPITAL ROOM, WHERE THE LITTLEboy 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.