The Shadow Wife. Diane Chamberlain
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amazing,” Lisbeth said, shaking her head in quiet wonder.
“Do you remember Presto?” Carlynn asked. “The night before he was going to be put to sleep?”
“Of course.” Lisbeth nodded. Presto had lived for three more years after that night.
“All night long I lay next to him with my arms around him, and I prayed. I just kept hoping and praying he would get well.”
“Is it praying, then?” Lisbeth asked. “Is that what you’re doing?”
“Not always. I’ve sort of experimented with it,” Carlynn admitted. “Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I just think as hard as I can about the person I’m touching. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do. The only thing I know for sure is that, afterward, I’m more tired than you can imagine.”
Lisbeth knew this. She had seen her sister after her visits to Letterman Hospital. It was all Carlynn could do to drag herself upstairs to bed, and she would sleep so deeply that nothing could wake her for hours.
“You must be tired now,” she said.
Carlynn nodded, then rested her head on Lisbeth’s shoulder.
“I wish you could talk more easily to people, Lizzie,” she said. “They won’t bite.”
“Well, I can’t,” Lisbeth said a bit defensively. Then she sighed. “It’s just one more thing you can do better than I can.”
The following day was a glorious clear Sunday, and Franklin invited his daughters to go sailing with him. Only Lisbeth accepted, just as he’d expected. As he’d hoped. He’d observed his less popular daughter at the party the night before and wanted some time alone with her.
They set sail on the bay in his small sloop, and he allowed Lisbeth to take over once they’d motored away from the pier. The sea was calm, a sheet of pale aquamarine glass, but there was a good headwind, and Lisbeth showed real skill as she tacked far out into the open bay.
“You’re getting very good at this, Lisbeth,” Franklin said.
“Not very hard today,” she said. “The water’s so smooth.” But she was smiling at the compliment all the same. She leaned back on her hands, eyes closed, her pretty face turned up to the sunlight.
“Did you enjoy the party last night?” Franklin asked.
“Yes,” she said without opening her eyes.
“What did you like about it?”
She shrugged. “The music, I guess.”
Franklin licked his lips, letting a silence form between them as he tried to think of what he could say next.
“I have the feeling it was not much fun for you, honey,” he said finally, and then quickly added, “And that’s all right. I never much enjoyed parties either when I was your age.”
She opened her eyes to look at him. “You didn’t?” she asked.
He smiled. “I was actually a lot like you, Lizzie. My brother—your uncle Steve—was always the popular one, the one who commanded attention. He was more intelligent than I was, better-looking and far more interesting to the girls. I was the shy one, always afraid to say anything in case I sounded stupid.”
She looked surprised. “But you’re much smarter and nicer than Uncle Steve,” she said, then added, “No offense. I know he’s your brother.”
He laughed. “That’s my point, sweetheart. As I grew up, I got more confident. What I was like when I was sixteen didn’t matter anymore.”
Lisbeth looked out to the vast Pacific, where the air was growing hazy with fog, a crease between her eyebrows.
“You’ll blossom, Lizzie. Someday. It can’t be rushed, and you’ll need to be patient. But you have a lot of happiness ahead of you, and you’ll probably appreciate it more than Carlynn, because she’s known nothing else.”
Lisbeth smoothed her hand across the gunwale. “I don’t really want Carlynn to be unhappy, though.” She looked past the sails at her father.
“It’s not an either-or thing, honey,” he said. “You can both be happy. There’s not a finite amount of happiness to be divided between the two of you, where if you get more, she gets less.” He leaned toward her. “You and Carlynn are so lucky to have each other,” he said. “Other friends will come and go, for both of you, but you’ll always be there for each other.”
“She’s so pretty,” Lisbeth said, fishing, he thought, for a compliment.
“She could use a few more pounds, if you ask me,” Franklin said, taking her bait, and Lisbeth smiled at him.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said and leaned back on her arms to face the sun again.
Lisbeth felt the slight sting of a sunburn on her face as she helped her father moor the boat to the pier. She’d hated to come in, hated to put an end to her time with the one person who seemed to value her more than Carlynn, but the fog was getting closer, and both she and her father knew how quickly it could surround them out on the bay. She walked ahead of him as they made their way over the dunes to the car. A couple of young boys were playing on the dunes, running and jumping and shrieking, and when she heard the thud behind her, she guessed it was just one of the boys leaping from the dune, so she didn’t bother turning around.
“Hey! Girl!” one of the boys cried out.
Still, she didn’t turn, figuring the boys were planning to play some sort of joke on her.
“Girl! Your father!”
She turned at that and saw her father lying several yards behind her, on his back in the sand.
“Daddy!” she cried, racing back to him. Kneeling next to him, she rested her hand on his heart but could feel no beating against her palm. His face was the color of the old ashes in the fireplace. She turned to the boys who were watching, stock-still, from the dune.
“Get help,” she said. “Hurry!”
She rested both her hands on his chest, holding them there, praying to God to save him. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to send her love into her father, but knew she should have questioned Carlynn more about her ability to heal the night before. What had she meant when she’d talked about sending “everything good” inside herself into someone? How did she do that? How?
She held that position, crouched over her father, telling him out loud that she loved him, while his face turned from ash to white. She could hear the sirens in the distance, but by the time the ambulance pulled into the small parking lot, she knew it was too late. Her father, her champion, was gone. It was, in some ways, his own fault, she thought. He had taken the wrong twin sailing with him.
10
JOELLE TURNED OFF HIGHWAY ONE AND QUICKLY FOUND HERSELF in a line of five cars, all of them waiting to enter the gate to the Seventeen Mile Drive. When she reached the tollbooth, she smiled at the young man waiting for her money.
“I’m Joelle D’Angelo,” she said. “I’ll be visiting Dr. Carlynn Shire.”
He checked a list inside the booth, then looked up. “Go ahead,” he said.
She looked ahead of her, but wasn’t certain if she should take the road to the left or the right.
“Which way do I go?” she asked, and he pointed to her left.
“The Kling Mansion is that way,” he said. “Just past Cypress Point.”
“Thanks.” She started driving again. She passed the lodge at Pebble Beach, where the road was clogged with cars and golf carts and tourists, and after a few minutes she came to a spit of rugged land that jutted out into the northern end of Carmel Bay. If she’d had binoculars—and the time to stop—she thought