The Shadow Wife

  He was right. She could feel the intentional rigidity in her body.

  “I’m afraid that if I move, I’ll throw up,” she said.

  “The basin’s right next to your head.”

  She made a face. “I don’t want to throw up in front of you.”

  He smiled at that. “I’ve been cleaning up baby upchuck and changing nasty diapers for more than a year now,” he said. “I think I can handle it. So if you need to, you go right ahead.”

  “Thanks.” She felt almost instantly better having been given that permission, and she felt her body begin to relax.

  “Can you explain to me what’s going on?” he asked.

  She told him about the two centimeters dilation, about the mag sulfate, the betamethasone and the baby’s fragile lungs. “If she’s born now, and she makes it, she could have severe problems,” she said. “Cerebral palsy. Respiratory problems. Brain damage.” She expected him to flee from the room at that last one, but he stayed in his seat.

  “Is there a chance she could be born now and be all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “With a lot of luck and good medical care in the NICU.”

  Liam sighed. “I seem to jinx my women when it comes to delivering babies.”

  The sentiment itself meant nothing to her, but the fact that he’d included her in “his women” meant everything.

  “It’s hardly your fault that that guy kicked me.” She shook her head.

  “I asked you to take the case.”

  “You didn’t know.” She shifted her weight carefully in the bed, trying to ease the pain of her cracked ribs. “Did you call Carlynn to come?”

  He nodded. “Is that all right?”

  “Of course. Thank you. It can’t hurt to have an official healer here, though I’m still not sure I’m a believer.”

  “Me neither.” He touched the bandage on his jaw with his fingers, wincing a little. “You know what I do believe in, though?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You and me,” he said. “With this baby or without her.” He nodded toward her belly. “Somehow, Jo, you and I are going to make this work.”

  She felt her eyes fill again with tears. What had happened to Liam? What sort of epiphany had he experienced in the last couple of hours? She didn’t dare ask him; she would just enjoy it.

  “That would be wonderful, Liam,” she said.

  “I called Sheila and told her I’d be working late,” he said, looking at his watch. “But I think I’d better call her again and see if she can keep Sam all night.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I’ll probably just sleep tonight, and I may end up being in here for days. Maybe even weeks.”

  “Well, you’ve got my company, at least for tonight,” he said. “I’d like to make up to you for giving you none of it over the past seven months. Unless you’d rather I didn’t stay.”

  “I’d love you to stay,” she said. “But you may just be watching me sleep.”

  “Fine,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll call Sheila.”

  “What will you tell her?” she asked.

  “The truth,” he said. He was standing now, his hands on the back of the chair. “She already knows the baby is mine.”

  Joelle was shocked. “She does? How?”

  “She guessed, and I told her she was right.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She beat me up with her purse.”

  “Are you kidding?” She laughed.

  “I wish.” He smiled and left the room.

  She woke herself up with her own moaning, the sound coming from somewhere deep inside her. There was cramping low in her belly.

  “What is it, Jo?” Liam asked.

  She opened her eyes. The room was dark, except for the light pouring through the open door from the hallway, and for a moment Joelle wasn’t certain who was sitting next to her.

  “Carlynn?” she asked.

  “She went home, Jo,” Liam said. “Are you okay?”

  “I think…” she said. “A contraction, I think. What time is it?”

  “Two in the morning.”

  She could see the paleness of his eyes in the light from the monitor. “You’d better get the nurse,” she said.

  He was back in a moment with Lydia, who examined her, then stood up.

  “You’re four, almost five centimeters dilated,” she said. “The mag sulfate didn’t work. I’m going to call Rebecca.”

  She looked at Liam after Lydia left the room. “I’m afraid this is it,” she said.

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’ll be with you,” he said.

  “My mother was supposed to be my birth partner,” she said.

  “Do you want me to call her?”

  “She didn’t take any of the classes.”

  “I’ve had all the classes, Jo,” he said. “I’m a pro.”

  Another contraction gripped her belly, and she tightened her hold on his hand. When the pain had passed, she looked into his eyes. “I’m scared,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “Me, too.”

  “I’ve been having these terrible nightmares lately,” she said. “That I get the headache.”

  He pressed his lips to her hand. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

  “What did Sheila say when you called her?”

  “Essentially, nothing. I said that you were in labor, that if she could keep Sam, I would like to stay with you. And there was a long silence, and then she said, ‘Fine,’ and hung up.”

  “Oh,” Joelle said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “She could have said she wouldn’t keep him.”

  “You can’t blame her. This must be terribly difficult for her.”

  “I know.” He swallowed hard, and she saw the blue of his eyes darken for a moment. “Let’s not talk about it now, okay?” he asked. “Let’s just focus on you.”

  Within thirty minutes, they had moved her to the birthing room, and, as though her body knew she was ready, her contractions started in earnest. The anesthesiologist, someone she didn’t know, came in to give her an epidural. It only numbed her right side, but that was enough to let her sleep, and when she awakened she was surrounded by people. Her legs were in the stirrups, Rebecca between them, and she recognized a neonatologist from the NICU standing to the side, at the ready. Liam was next to her, brushing her hair back from her forehead with his hand.

  “You slept right through the hard part,” Rebecca said to her. “It’s time to push.”

  What?

  “What time is it?” she asked. There was an intense pressure low in her belly. “I thought I had an epidural.”

  “It’s a little after six in the morning,” Liam said.

  “You did have an epi,” Rebecca said. “It’s probably worn off by now, but it’s time to push, Joelle.”

  Somehow, she’d slept through five centimeters’ worth of dilating. She felt the pressure again, and the urge to push was tremendous.

  “I want to push!” she yelled, and several people laughed.

  “Good!” Rebecca said. “We’ve been begging you to for the last ten minutes.”

  She could feel everything as the baby slipped through the birth canal. It felt good, actually, the pushing, but she feared the whole process seemed so simple because her baby was very, very small.

  “I’ve got her,” Rebecca said, instantly swiveling to hand the baby over to the neonatologist.

  “Is she okay?” Joelle strained to see, but the neonatologist’s back was to her as he worked on her baby girl at the side of the room. She heard a whimper. “Was that the baby?”

  “Want me to go see?” Liam asked her, and she nodded.

  She watched Liam’s battered face as he talked to the neonatologist. He was asking questions, then looking down at the table where her baby lay. Much as she tried to read his face, his expression remained impassive.

  In a moment, though, he was back at her
side. “She’s tiny, Jo, but she looks good,” he said. “She weighs three pounds, and the doc seemed impressed by that. She’s not crying exactly, but she’s making noises—”

  “I could hear them,” she said, still trying to look through the neonatologist’s back to see her baby.

  “Her Apgars were six and eight,” Liam said. “He said that was good, considering.”

  The neonatologist wheeled the incubator toward her. “Quick peek for Mom,” he said. “Then we’re off to the NICU.”

  It was hard to see through the plastic. The baby was just a tiny little doll with arms and legs no bigger than twigs, and before Joelle had even had a chance to make out her daughter’s features, the incubator was whisked away.

  “I want to get up,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows. She wanted to follow the incubator to the nursery.

  Rebecca laughed again. “Soon, Joelle, for heaven’s sake. Let me finish up here.”

  Less than an hour later, Liam pushed her down the corridor to the neonatal nursery in a wheelchair. She could have walked, but her nurse insisted on the chair, and she wasn’t about to argue. She didn’t care how she got there, as long as it was quickly. She left the chair in the hallway, though, wanting to walk into the nursery on her own steam.

  The NICU was familiar territory to her, and she showed Liam how to scrub up at the sink and then dressed both of them in yellow paper gowns. Inside, Patty, one of the nurses she knew well, guided them over to the incubator, and Joelle sat down in the chair at the side of the plastic box.

  “She’s bigger than I expected,” she said, smiling at the tiny infant, who had a ventilator tube coming from her mouth and too many leads to count taped to her little body.

  “Bigger?” Liam asked in surprise.

  “I’ve seen a lot of babies smaller than her in here,” she said.

  Patty brought a chair for Liam, setting it on the opposite side of the incubator, then she came around to Joelle’s side and rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “She looks good, Joelle,” she said. “You know the next couple of days will be critical, but you have every reason to hope for the best.”

  Joelle smiled up at her, then returned her attention to her baby as the nurse walked away.

  “Can we touch her?” Liam asked.

  “I was just about to.” She reached through one of the portals on her side of the incubator, and Liam reached through his. Joelle smoothed her fingertips over her daughter’s tiny arm. It was like touching feathers. She watched Liam touch the little hand and the baby wrapped her tiny, perfect fingers around his fingertip.

  “Have you thought of a name?” Liam asked. His voice sounded thick.

  She didn’t answer right away. She had, actually, but it had been a fantasy name, one she could never use because it meant combining her name with Liam’s, and although he had been with her all night and all morning, she didn’t yet trust this change in him.

  “You have, haven’t you?” He looked at her quizzically, and she knew her hesitancy had given her away.

  “Yes, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Joli,” she said, looking across the incubator at him, and he broke into a grin.

  “I was going to suggest that,” he said.

  “Really?” She laughed.

  “Did I hear you just name her?” Patty had been working behind Joelle, and now she moved closer to the incubator, pulling the little name card from the plastic holder in the front of the box and withdrawing a marker from her pocket.

  Joelle grimaced at Liam. She hadn’t realized the nurse had been close enough to hear.

  “We’re naming her Joli,” Liam said firmly. “J-O-L-I. It’s a combination of our names.”

  Patty cocked her head at him quizzically. “Are you…?” Her eyes were wide, and she didn’t finish her sentence.

  “That’s right,” Liam said with a smile. “I’m this baby’s father.”

  40

  CARLYNN RESTED HER HEAD AGAINST QUINN’S SHOULDER. THEY were in their bed at the mansion, and the night was so clear that she could see the stars through the window from where she lay. She’d returned from the hospital a couple of hours ago, exhausted after spending much of the evening visiting Joelle and her new baby. So far, things looked good for that little one. Carlynn had touched her through the portals of the incubator, but only to stroke her twiglike arm. She told Joelle that her touch was no more mystical than her own. And she told her much, much more.

  “You’ve wanted to tell her everything from the start, haven’t you?” Quinn asked her now.

  “Yes, and I’m not sure why,” Carlynn said. “I remember my sister saying she felt drawn to Joelle when she was an infant, and I felt drawn to her, too.” She tapped her fingers against Quinn’s bare chest. “Are you worried that I told her?” she asked.

  Quinn chuckled, and she loved how the sound resonated through his body beneath her ear. “I’m an old man,” he said. “You know I stopped worrying years ago. Just don’t tell Alan that you told her.” He hesitated. “Did you tell her about Mary, too?”

  “I had to,” Carlynn said. “When I told her the truth about us, she said she felt sorry for Alan, so I just had to tell her that Alan has had a wonderful soul mate and lover for the past fifteen years. I think that shocked her more than anything.” Carlynn smiled at the memory of Joelle’s response.

  “I thought Mary was a housekeeper,” Joelle had said, stunned. “And I thought Quinn was a gardener.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Carlynn watched the light of a plane move slowly across the dark sky until it disappeared behind the frame of the window. She had never felt so tired, and she knew her exhaustion marked a change in her body. She had so few nights left to sleep next to her husband.

  “Do you regret our ruse?” Quinn surprised her with the question, and she lifted her head to look at him.

  “In more than twenty years, you’ve never asked me that,” she said.

  “I think I was afraid of the answer,” Quinn said, stroking her arm with his hand. “I knew you felt coerced in the beginning. Alan and I were operating out of grief and madness, I think, and you had no real choice but to go along with it.”

  “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

  JOELLE KEPT HER GAZE GLUED TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD IN FRONT of 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.”