Chamberlain, Diane - The Shadow Wife

“Well, I sure regretted having to give up sailing,” she said with a laugh. That had been a true sacrifice for her. Everyone knew the real Carlynn never would have sailed.

“You’re making light of it—” Quinn squeezed her shoulders “—but I know that was a great loss for you.”

She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder again. “It’s hard for me to regret the ruse when I think about the center.”

“We’ve done a lot of good there,” Quinn agreed.

She and Alan and Quinn had won numerous awards over the years for their research into the phenomenon of healing.

“But Lisbeth died when Carlynn did, Quinn,” she said quietly, “and that was doubly excruciating for me. The new Carlynn, the person I became, the person I am now, is neither of those women, really. And I think you know that I was never completely comfortable with the deception.” She lifted her head to study his face again. “I didn’t want to die that way,” she said. “Feeling as though my life had been a lie. I had to truly heal someone before I died, make a difference in someone’s life. Does that make sense to you? I needed to finish what Carlynn started when she saved that baby’s life.”

“It makes perfect sense,” he said.

She thought of what else she regretted.

“At first,” she said, “it bothered me a great deal that we weren’t able to have a normal sort of marriage.”

“Me, too,” Quinn agreed. He was quiet for a moment. “But it’s been okay, hasn’t it?” There was an edge of worry in his voice.

“Much more than okay,” she agreed. “I think that’s why I wanted to help Joelle and Liam so badly. They reminded me of us.”

“How’s that?” Quinn sounded puzzled.

“They love each other, but they can only be married in their hearts,” she said. “Like you and me. Oh, we’re married, yes, but no one knows that but us. And over the years, I came to realize that no one else ever needed to know about that bond for it to be real.”

He lifted her chin with his hand to give her a kiss on the lips. “I love you, baby,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“And I have an idea.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Tomorrow—” he smiled “—I’m taking you sailing.”

Epilogue

J OELLE KEPT HER GAZE GLUED TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD IN FRONTof them as Liam drove slowly down Highway One. She was watching for the coastal redwood. She knew the sign that read “Cabrial” hadn’t been attached to the tree for years, but the tree was still there, at least as of a few years ago, the last time she’d made the trip south. She had no idea who, if anyone, still lived at the commune, and she only hoped, now that she had decided to make this trip, that the old dirt road leading in was passable.

The day was perfect. It was late December, and there was not a trace of fog along the coast. To their right, far in the distance, the ocean and sky met in a fine blue line.

“There’s the tree,” Joelle said suddenly. “I’m glad to see they didn’t kill it when they nailed up the sign.”

“I turn here?” Liam stopped the car at the entrance to the dirt road.

She looked down the road, which was little more than an overgrown path through the woods. “You think your car will make it?”

“I think we should give it a try,” Liam said, and he turned into the tunnel of green.

The dirt road did not look like anything from her memory. It was rutted with tire tracks, so it must have been used sometime since the last rain, but not by anyone who had taken the time to maintain it in reasonable condition. The trees seemed thicker, more enveloping than when she had been a child, and they scraped the side of the car as it bounced through the woods.

“Do you think anyone still lives out here?” Liam asked. “It doesn’t look like it by the state of this road.”

“I doubt there’s anyone here from the original commune,” she said. She knew that in the early eighties, political infighting had caused the splintering of what remained of the commune, and most, if not all, of the members left. If anyone was living in the cabins now, she hoped they wouldn’t mind her trespassing.

“This way.” She pointed toward the small clearing next to the large stone cabin that had served as their kitchen and dining hall.

Liam parked near the cabin steps. No other vehicles were in the clearing, and as they got out of the car, they were met with an almost eerie stillness. The air was cool, filled with the scent of earth and leaves.

“I think the place is deserted,” Joelle said, not disappointed. She walked onto the wide porch of the stone cabin and opened the unlocked door. The long tables were gone, and cobwebs formed lacy netting between the cabinets and the old wooden counter. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in a very long time,” she said.

“Show me where you lived,” Liam said, and she was pleased that he cared enough to ask.

“Let’s see if I can still find it,” she said, heading for the door.

They walked along the overgrown path leading away from the stone cabin until they reached the clearing where she thought they would find the Rainbow Cabin. She almost didn’t recognize the building at first. The cabin next door to Rainbow was no longer there, and without that landmark it took her a moment to realize the remaining cabin was, indeed, her old home. The small structure was doorless now, and two rusty hooks hung from the top of the doorjamb.

“That’s where the Rainbow sign hung.” Joelle pointed to the hooks as she walked inside, and Liam followed close behind her.

“I actually slept out here in the living room because the bedroom was too small for all three of us,” Joelle said. “I slept on a mattress on the floor for ten years.” She shook her head. “That seems so strange to me now.” She walked toward the minuscule bedroom. “This was my parents’ room—the room where I was born.”

Liam shook his head in wonder. “What a childhood you must have had.”

“Come on.” She took his hand. “Let’s find the schoolhouse. That’s where the cypress should be.”

They started walking north again, and it wasn’t long before she spotted the cabin that had housed her first five years of school.

“Yikes, look at it,” she said with a laugh.

The cabin was completely covered with green vines. In order to get the door open, she had to cut some of them with the shears they’d brought along.

“It’s so tiny,” Joelle said when she and Liam walked inside. The cabin was much smaller than her memory of it. Much smaller, but amazingly, it still possessed the cool, musty smell that had greeted her nearly every day when she was growing up. “How did we ever get all the kids in here?” she wondered aloud. There were no desks or chairs now, just empty space.

“Did you do some writing on this?” Liam pointed to the large black chalkboard, still attached to the wall at the front of the room.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. She’d written many sentences and worked out many math problems on that board. “I got a surprisingly good education here, Liam,” she said. “But enough of this. Let’s find the cypress.” She was anxious to see if the tree would still be there, if it had survived, maybe even flourished, on the bluffs of Big Sur.

Liam followed her outside again and around the west side of the schoolhouse. “The cypress is on top of a hill,” she remembered, stepping over the vines that covered the ground.

She spotted the rise of rubbly earth that she’d once considered a hill, and on top of it, a beautiful, bent and twisted Monterey cypress. “Oh my gosh!” she said. “That must be it, but it’s huge!”