Chamberlain, Diane - The Shadow Wife

So now, those dreaded middle-of-the-night E.R. calls meant that he had to awaken Sheila, Mara’s mother, and ask her to come over and stay with Sam while he went to the hospital. Sheila was a great sport, though. She lived less than a mile from Liam in a two-story house Mara had always called “the pink house” because of its cotton-candy color. The pink house was just a block from Monterey State Beach, where Sheila often took Sam, bundled up against the cool air, to watch the kites zig and zag through the sky. A widow who had retired several years earlier from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where she’d taught Russian, Sheila took care of Sam every day while Liam was at work, and she never complained when he had to ask her to come at one or two in the morning, as well. She also, unfortunately, had to help Liam with his mortgage. Monterey housing was horrendously expensive, and without Mara’s handsome income from her psychiatric practice, he couldn’t possibly have kept his three-bedroom, cottage-style home. He was dependent on Sheila in many ways, which was both a blessing and a curse. Liam’s own family—his parents and older sister—lived three thousand miles away in Maryland. Although they kept in frequent touch with him, there was little they could do to help him financially.

He drove straight from Silas Memorial to the nursing home in Pacific Grove, a ten-minute ride in decent traffic. Once in the parking lot, he spotted Sheila and Sam sitting together on the concrete bench outside the entrance. He waved to them as he pulled into a parking space, a smile forming on his lips. He could actually feel the unfamiliar change in his face; his smile muscles were atrophying from disuse.

The grounds of the nursing home were beautifully landscaped and vibrantly green and alive. That was one of the reasons Liam had been drawn to this place, why he had selected it over the others. It was also cleaner and brighter inside, and he and Sheila and Joelle had eaten a meal there and found the food to be both palatable and nicely presented. He remembered those days of searching, of weighing the aesthetics of various homes, and thought of how naive the three of them had been. None of that mattered to Mara. Very little mattered to her anymore.

Liam walked up the pathway from the parking lot to the home, and Sam tottered toward him as he neared the bench. The cutest child on earth, Liam thought, not for the first time. Sam was small for his age, a doll-like fourteen-month-old little boy, with curly blond hair that was certain to darken as time wore on, and Mara’s dark eyes and fair skin, which would always need protection from the sun. Sam wore a constant smile. He had no idea that his birth had brought about such tragedy. Liam hoped that, somehow, he’d be able to protect his son from making that connection, at least until he was much, much older.

When he walked quickly like this, filled with excitement at seeing Liam, Sam looked as though he might topple over at any second. Sometimes he did, but this time he made it all the way to Liam without a hitch. Bending over to pick him up, Liam planted a kiss on his cheek, breathing in his scent—which was all too quickly changing from baby to little boy—before settling him into his arms. He knew Sam would only remain there for a moment. Sam loved his newfound skill of walking, and Liam missed the closeness of holding him for more than a minute at a time. It was going to be hard to let go of his son, bit by bit over the years, as his development demanded. There were days when Liam felt as though Sam was all he had left in the world.

“We had such a wonderful day,” Sheila said, standing up from the bench and brushing a lock of blond hair away from her face. The warm breeze blew it back again, along with a few other wayward strands. In the sunlight, Liam could see the subtle crow’s-feet at the corners of Sheila’s eyes, reminding him that she had turned sixty the week before. She’d had a face-lift at fifty-five, and while she was a stunning woman, her skin smooth and barely lined, there was something in her face that told her age. Only in the last year had he noticed that. Everyone involved in Mara’s care had aged: Sheila, Joelle, Mara, himself. This year had stolen something from each of them.

“Oh, yeah?” Liam sat down on the bench. “What did you do today, Sam?” he asked, and Sam squirmed to get out of his father’s arms and back on the sidewalk without answering. Sam was not very verbal yet, still speaking in one-or two-word sentences, but ever since discovering his legs, he’d been impossible to keep still. Liam didn’t know how Sheila kept up with him all day.

Liam watched his son as he explored one of the light fixtures that lined the sidewalk near the ground. Sam banged it with the flat of his hand, as though trying to make it do something, and Liam turned his attention to his mother-in-law. “How are you doing, Sheila?” he asked her, and she smiled.

“He’s my world, Liam,” she said, nodding toward Sam. “He’s the joy that helps me deal with the sorrow. I don’t know what I would do without him.”

Liam nodded. He understood completely. Standing up, he held his hand out to Sam. “Let’s go see Mom,” he said, and Sam tottered over to him, slipping his tiny hand into Liam’s.

The foyer was bright from two huge skylights overhead, and the place smelled truly clean without being antiseptic. It was actually Joelle who had first recommended this nursing home to him. He remembered her sitting at the desk in her tiny office, tears running down her cheeks, as she called around looking for the best place for Mara. It had been a terrible day, a giving-up day. After four months in the intensive-care unit of the hospital, a short coma, two surgeries and a fruitless stint in rehab, Mara’s doctors had said they should begin looking for a home. He’d felt paralyzed at first, and Joelle had taken over. There was rarely a day that he walked into this building without thinking of her with silent gratitude.

Mara’s room was at the end of the hallway, where he had insisted she be placed because the room possessed two huge windows, one of which overlooked the beautiful green courtyard with its white gazebo. He had visited Mara every single day since she’d been moved here nine months earlier—except for the day after he and Joelle had slept together. He couldn’t bring himself to visit Mara that day, to see the innocent wonder in her face and experience her joy at seeing him. He’d been filled with guilt and anguish that he and Joelle had crossed that line. He was disgusted with himself for wanting it to happen, for allowing his heart and body to overrule his mind.

Mara began to make her “happy sounds,” which Joelle affectionately called her puppy squeals, as soon as the three of them stepped into her room, and Liam immediately broke into the upbeat voice he had mastered for these visits.

“Hi, Mara!” he said as he walked toward her bed. He bent over to kiss her on the lips, then lifted Sam and put him on the edge of the bed.

“We should get her up in the chair,” Sheila said, but an aide passing by in the corridor must have overheard her, because she peeked around the doorway.

“She was up for a while this afternoon,” she said. “It’s better if she stays in bed for your visit today.”

Liam was secretly glad. Getting Mara from the bed to the chair was an ordeal, and he felt certain she didn’t like the man-handling it necessitated, because she would lose her smile during the process. Mara could only control her head and her right arm. She couldn’t speak, and her brilliant mind, or at least most of it, was gone.

“Okay,” Liam said. “We’ll let her rest in bed while we’re here.”

Mara’s smile widened, as though she understood him. He still felt love from her. She couldn’t express it except with her smile and her squeals and the light in her eyes when he walked into her room, but he knew it was there, and he felt both honored and burdened by that fact. Not even Sheila, her own mother, could elicit that demonstration of recognition from her. Nor could Joelle, who Mara had known and adored years longer than she’d known Liam. And certainly not Sam. Oh, Mara now recognized Sam and sometimes even seemed to enjoy his company, despite the fact that she’d never cared much for children, but she hadn’t a clue that the little boy was hers. Sometimes Liam found that unbearably painful. He longed to share Sam, his antics and his development, with Mara. With the Mara of the past. His loving, beautiful, fully functioning wife.