Chamberlain, Diane - The Shadow Wife

There were voices outside her room, and Alan quickly turned his head toward the door. He looked at Gabriel.

“I think the nurse is coming,” he said.

“Head her off,” Gabe said, and Alan dropped Lisbeth’s hands and strode to the door. She heard it open and fall shut with a soft thud.

“Lisbeth,” Gabriel said, “if the nurse should come in, Alan and I will be calling you Carlynn.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain, but just so you know. Please. It’s important. Pretend to be Carlynn.”

“No!” She tried hard to sit up, but her head was too heavy to lift from the pillow. “Why?” she asked.

“Shh,” Gabriel said. “Settle down. Please don’t talk so loud. I’ll try to explain. I know this is too much for you to handle right now. To absorb. But just listen, please, baby. Just listen to me.”

“I want my sister,” she said, still unable to grasp the realization that she would never be able to see Carlynn again. “Oh, Gabe, what will I do without her?”

“I know you want her back,” Gabriel said. “We all do. But will you listen to me? Please?” He glanced toward the door to her room. She knew her thinking was murky, but she was certain Gabriel was more anxious than she’d ever seen him before.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“You and Carlynn were in your bug, but Carlynn was driving, right?”

She shut her eyes, thinking. “I was, but then we switched,” she said. “It was foggy and I…my legs were shaking…it was so hard to see. She thought she could drive better in the fog than I could.”

“Right. So when you went over the cliff, and the rescuers got to you, they found your purse, with your ID, and none for Carlynn, and so they figured it was you in the driver’s seat. They told us you had died and that it was Carlynn who had been badly injured.”

She frowned again, trying to follow him. “Didn’t you…couldn’t you and Alan tell the difference when you saw me?”

“No, we couldn’t. We never saw Carlynn…after the accident. And you were so bandaged up, your face was cut and bruised—”

She lifted her hands to her face, touching the skin gingerly with her fingertips. “Do I look different?” she asked.

“No, honey. Your face is very nearly healed, and you look like yourself. And, of course, you also look like Carlynn.”

She realized suddenly what he was telling her. “You thought I had died?” she asked.

He nodded. “The worst day of my life, Liz.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “And the day we realized it was you lying here and not Carlynn was the worst day for Alan.”

“Oh my God.” She was still having difficulty absorbing it all. “How long did everyone think I was Carlynn?” she asked.

“Two weeks,” Gabriel said. “We…I don’t know if I should tell you all of this.”

“Tell me.”

“We had a memorial service for you and everything.”

She didn’t know what to say. Her emotions were so jumbled together that she didn’t know whether to feel joy or sorrow, sympathy or anger.

“And we didn’t have one for Carlynn,” Gabriel finished.

“We’ll have to have one for her now,” Lisbeth said. “As soon as I’m well enough to get out of this—”

“No,” Gabriel interrupted her. “That’s what I have to talk to you about. Some things happened while you were unconscious those first couple of weeks. There were newspaper articles. Magazine articles. All saying how ‘the famous healer,’ Carlynn Shire, had lost her sister in an accident, people praying for your—for her —recovery. And your mother sat with you, day and night, and—”

“Because she thought I was Carlynn.”

Gabriel licked his lips, nodding. “I don’t know how she would have reacted if she’d known it was you. Maybe she would have come around, Liz. I just don’t know. But she did believe, as we all did, that you were Carlynn. She said, though, that she felt guilty for the way she’d treated you—treated Lisbeth—and that she was going to make a huge—and I do mean huge —contribution to the center in your name.”

So confusing…so… Lisbeth shook her head, a small gesture that made her grit her teeth against the pain. “You mean…” She wasn’t even certain what question to ask.

“I mean that, if Carlynn recovered well enough so that the center could continue, your mother said that she would fund it. She’d pay salaries and rent.”

“So…” She was beginning to catch on. “If Carlynn is dead and I’m alive, Mother wouldn’t…”

“Alan would have to shut down the center,” Gabriel said. “It wouldn’t be a viable project without Carlynn and her reputation to keep it alive.”

“Her dream,” Lisbeth said, aching for her sister.

“Right. Her dream.”

“But…you can’t seriously think that I could—”

“There’s more,” Gabriel said. “One of your mother’s conditions is that the center be moved to Monterey. She wants to be closer to you, and she—”

“To Carlynn.”

“Yes, right. To Carlynn. And she wants Carlynn and Alan to live in the mansion. And I’ve avoided her as much as possible…or rather, she’s avoided me. Even if she’s gotten a few glimpses of me, here or at the funeral, she can’t see well enough to really know what I look like. So, Alan and I have a plan that will allow us…all of us…to live in the mansion together.”

“What?”

“Your mother has a bedroom downstairs now,” Gabriel said, speaking quickly. “She never goes upstairs anymore because of her arthritis. So you and Alan and I will live upstairs. I’ll be introduced to your mother as the new CEO. We’ll use my middle name—”

“Quinn.”

“Right, and she’ll never be any the wiser. We’ll say I’m new to the area and in need of someplace to live. You and Alan will tell her that you want me to live there at the mansion so that the three of us can do center work even at home. Your mother will like that. And with the money she’s contributing, I’ll be able to afford to leave my job here—at SF General—and work full-time for the center.”

Lisbeth closed her eyes. “This is so crazy,” she said.

“I know it sounds that way, Liz. If I just woke up after a month and heard all of this, I’d think so, too. But Alan and I have lived with the idea for a couple of weeks now, and—”

“I can’t do it, Gabe,” she said. “There’s no way I can be Carlynn.”

“Think through the alternative, baby. If you tell the world that you’re really—”

“How did you find out that it was me lying here and not Carlynn?” she interrupted him.

Gabriel leaned away from her. “Oh, Lizzie,” he said, “it was awful.”

“How?”

“The police brought over your rings and Carlynn’s rings. They were labeled in plastic bags. And your rings were in the bag labeled with Carlynn’s name, and vice versa. The cops gave the bags to Alan first, and he tried to tell them they’d made a mistake. Then it dawned on him, poor guy. Can you imagine? We still weren’t sure, so he and I came up here, and…well, we looked at your…you know how you have that little heart-shaped mole on your breast?”

Lisbeth closed her eyes. “So that’s how you found out I was alive, and Alan found out he’d lost his wife.” She turned her head to the side, crying again. “Oh, Carly.”

Gabriel smoothed his hand over her hair, and she could feel the tension in his fingers.

“You can have her life, Liz. Not her husband, though.”

She heard the hint of a smile in his voice and turned to look at him. He was smiling at her. They were not feeling the same thing right now. Gabe had already moved past the grief that was weighing her down. “Alan would be your husband in public, of course,” Gabriel said, “but you would be mine when we’re alone. Then, in all other ways, you can have Carlynn’s life. The mansion at Cypress Point will one day be yours. And you can live there forever. With me. Money will never, ever be a problem for any of us or for the center.”