The Shadow Wife

another room, working out different songs, teaching each other their favorites. By one o’clock, they’d put down their guitars and were deep in conversation. Everyone else had left, so I just closed the door to the room they were in, while Rusty and I cleaned up and went to bed. They were gone in the morning, but that was the start of their relationship.”

Liam and Mara had thanked her over and over again once they realized her role in bringing them together. They’d never stopped thanking her.

“I’m telling you way too much,” Joelle said.

“No, honey, you’re not.” Carlynn moved a bit closer and took her hands, holding them on her knees. The older woman’s hands were delicate and bony, with a yellowish cast to the dry, warm skin. “Tell me about their wedding,” she said.

“Well,” Joelle said, feeling only a bit awkward with the new intimacy between herself and the healer. “They were married a couple of years later, on the beach at Asilomar. I was their matron of honor.” She recalled her happiness at seeing her two friends together, a happiness that was tinged with envy because she knew she and Rusty would never have the sort of relationship Mara and Liam enjoyed. “They started playing together at clubs then. They called themselves Sommers and Steele, and they had a real following.”

Occasionally, she would be in the audience at a club where they were performing, and they would play the song they’d written for her—a funny, poignant song of teasing gratitude for fixing them up—that would make her blush and the audience laugh.

“Mara didn’t want to have children, as I mentioned. It was the one thing we were always in disagreement about, because I wanted children so badly and Rusty and I couldn’t seem to get pregnant.” For a moment, the sense of fullness in her belly teased her, but she tried to ignore it. “Mara was afraid. I mean deeply afraid. She had dreams that things would go wrong if she got pregnant or that she’d inadvertently harm her baby because she couldn’t take good care of it. Her work focused on everything that could go wrong with pregnancy and childbirth. Day in, day out, that’s what she dealt with, so naturally, that affected her. Plus—” Joelle looked through the arched window at the cypress trees “—she really wasn’t crazy about kids to begin with. We’d be someplace, the mall or somewhere, and I’d be oohing and aahing over a toddler or a baby, and she’d look right through them. If you talked to her about her goals, they would all be oriented toward her career. But Liam wanted children, and I know it was a source of tension between them, because I’d get dragged into it from time to time.” She looked apologetically at Carlynn. “I’m really rambling,” she said.

“That’s good.” Carlynn gave her hands a squeeze. “Keep on rambling.”

Carlynn might not be able to heal anyone, Joelle thought, but she certainly had the patience of a saint.

“I saw Mara socially,” she continued, “even after she was married. We still got together a couple of times a week. We took an aerobics class, and later on, yoga. We went out to dinner or lunch, and I would hear her side of the having-children issue, her fears and concerns. Then at work, Liam would tell me how much he longed for a child. I have to admit, I could relate to Liam’s longing more than I could to Mara’s fear, although I certainly understood it, given the work she did.”

Joelle stopped talking for a moment, looking out the arched window again, where the old gardener was sweeping the terrace.

“I think,” she said finally, “that I pushed her too hard.” She looked at Carlynn. “I’m afraid I talked her into it. To getting pregnant.”

“It’s not talking that gets one pregnant,” Carlynn said with a smile.

“But I kept telling her that everything would be all right. That she could go to Rebecca Reed, the best OB in town, and that she would love her own child, even if she’d never cared about other peoples’ children. Liam and I both pushed her. And she loved Liam so much…” Her voice cracked, but she got control of herself quickly. “She wanted to please him. So she finally got pregnant, and her pregnancy turned out to be really easy, and I think she was actually starting to look forward to the baby. And, partly because I work in the maternity unit, and partly because I was a very close friend to both of them, they invited me to be in the delivery room with them when the baby was born. They were going to be in the family birthing room, which is a very homey environment.”

Carlynn nodded.

“Everything was fine at first. But as things progressed, Mara suddenly started screaming that her head hurt. She was grabbing her head.” Joelle’s tears started again at the horrific memory, and she removed one of her hands from Carlynn’s to pull another tissue from the box. “It was terrible,” she said, not bothering to raise the tissue to her eyes. “She had a convulsion, and then she was unconscious. Liam and I didn’t know what was going on. They rushed her into the operating room and performed a C-section, then they took her upstairs to X ray to get an MRI or a CAT scan, I don’t remember which. We were hoping, Liam and I, that she had just passed out from the pain, but deep down we knew it was something more. Something terrible. I think we both knew that Mara’s worst fears were coming true.”

“How terrible for all of you.” Carlynn clutched her hand, her smile completely gone.

“I feel guilty,” Joelle said. “And Liam feels even worse. He’s lost a wife, her son has no mother. I’ve lost my dearest friend, and her patients have lost their doctor. One of them committed suicide when she learned that Mara was never coming back to her practice.”

“Were you ever able to get pregnant yourself?” Carlynn asked. “Do you have children?”

Joelle shook her head. “No, and it finally split my husband and me up. We were divorced two years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Carlynn said.

Joelle waved away her sympathy with her free hand. “We were never a good match,” she said. “The infertility just brought us to the end of our marriage sooner than we would have reached it otherwise, but I don’t think children would have saved our marriage.”

“And do you have a boyfriend now?”

The question seemed far off the subject, but she shook her head, anyway. “No.” She smiled weakly. “I’m just taking things one day at a time.”

“And now Mara is…what sort of condition is she in?” Carlynn asked.

“She’s in a nursing home because they gave up on her in rehab. She can’t do anything, really, and they never expect her to be able to. She can use one arm and move her head, but that’s about it. The thing is, she smiles a lot. She smiles more than she did when she was…” She almost said alive, but caught herself. “Than she did before.