The Shadow Wife

Gabriel Johnson was Dr. Peterson’s tennis partner. He usually called Dr. Peterson on Tuesdays and Thursdays to make sure their schedules would allow them to meet on the doctor’s private tennis court for a game after work. Of course, Lisbeth was always the one to answer the phone, and lately, Gabriel had been keeping her on the phone for a while. One time, for thirty minutes! He asked her questions about herself and seemed genuinely interested in her answers. He told her he’d heard about her reputation as an “office manager,” and she’d loved that he used that term instead of “secretary.” She was so much more than a secretary, and he seemed to know that. Although she’d never met him, sometime in the last few months she’d started fantasizing about him, wondering what he looked like. She pictured him looking like Rock Hudson, although his voice was deeper. Or maybe he was blond, like James Dean, his hair sun-streaked from the tennis courts.

The last time he called, Gabriel had asked her if she played tennis.

She’d looked down at her lap, where her white uniform stretched across her soft thighs. “No,” she’d said. “I did when I was a child, but not in years.”

“I’ll have to get you out there someday,” he said. That was the closest he’d come to actually suggesting a date between the two of them, and it both elated and troubled her. How could she ever let him see her?

“Maybe,” she’d said.

“What do you like to do for fun?” he asked.

I eat. That would be the honest answer.

“Oh, I like the water,” she said. “I used to like to sail.” She hadn’t sailed since that fateful day with her father, but it was something she missed.

“Aha!” Gabriel said. “Did Lloyd mention that I have a sailboat?”

She was embarrassed. She did recall Dr. Peterson mentioning that fact, perhaps as long as a year ago. Would Gabriel think she was hinting at a commonality between them? She would never know, because right at that moment Dr. Peterson had walked into her office, and she’d had no choice but to turn Gabriel over to him, saving her answer to his question for the next time he called.

Now Dr. Peterson stepped into her office again and picked up Richie Hesky’s chart.

“Let him take off his shoes,” Lisbeth whispered to him, and Lloyd Peterson smiled his understanding at her. “Are you playing tennis tonight?” she asked, trying to sound casual, hoping it was not obvious to him that she was yearning for Gabriel to call.

“Not tonight,” he said, leafing through Richie’s chart. “Gabe’s tied up in meetings.” He poked his head around the corner of her office into the waiting room.

“Richard? Come with me, son.”

Well, darn. No chance to talk to Gabriel today. She was being ridiculous, anyway; she was hardly in his league. Gabriel was the chief accountant at San Francisco General. He was certainly older than she was, maybe by many years. And the truth was, if she had an opportunity to meet the man, she would turn it down. That meeting, she knew, would put an end to their long phone conversations.

At twenty-six years of age, Lisbeth weighed two hundred pounds. Although she had a few girlfriends who worked for other doctors in the area, she still found most of her solace in food. She’d given up trying to emulate Carlynn’s style of dress, and she wore her short blond hair in petal curls she set with bobby pins every night before going to bed.

Carlynn, on the other hand, was the same one hundred and fifteen pounds she’d been when she graduated from high school, and just last week she’d started wearing her long hair in a new do called a French twist, which she said kept it out of her way when she was working. She looked, Lisbeth thought, sophisticated and beautiful, and there were times, mostly in private, when Lisbeth had difficulty keeping her jealousy of her sister in check.

At eleven forty-five, Lisbeth left the office and walked the few blocks to the deli where she was to meet Carlynn. She was first to arrive, as usual, and as she carried two ham and cheese sandwiches from the deli counter to one of the small tables by the window, she hoped her sister would show up. Carlynn’s hospital schedule was not often predictable, and on a couple of occasions Lisbeth had watched the hands on the clock above the deli counter tick by as she gave up on her sister and ate lunch alone.

Today, though, Carlynn arrived at ten after twelve, and she was breathless, probably having run from the hospital.

She kissed Lisbeth’s cheek, then took a seat across the table from her.

“I talked to Mother last night,” Carlynn said, pulling one of the sandwiches to her side of the table.

“Is her eyesight any better?” Lisbeth asked.

“She said it’s still fuzzy. I gave her the name of a doctor to see in Monterey. I wish I could be there to go with her, but I really can’t get away.”

Delora had been complaining about problems with her vision, asking Carlynn to come home and “heal” her. Carlynn didn’t have time to breathe, much less make the trip to Cypress Point, but Lisbeth supposed it was only a matter of time before her twin would go, and she would have to decide if she wanted to accompany her or not.

Lisbeth always had mixed feelings about going home and rarely dared to go alone, needing Carlynn to serve as a buffer between Delora and herself. Delora would always shake her head in disgust as soon as Lisbeth walked in the front door of the mansion, and she’d badger her constantly about her weight, insulting her in front of the servants and anyone else who happened to be present. Lisbeth usually brought hidden food home with her because she didn’t dare eat as much as she wanted to at mealtimes, when Delora watched her every mouthful from across the table.

Yet there was nowhere in the world that stirred Lisbeth’s heart more than the setting of her childhood home. In spite of the strong pickle-and-coleslaw smell of the delicatessen, it took her only a second to conjure up the scent of the sea and the cypress trees and the way the air felt when a blanket of fog rolled over the house. Cypress Point was as familiar to her as her own face—and far better loved. She knew she would accompany Carlynn if she decided to go home. Spending a few days at Cypress Point was worth any humiliation her mother might dish out.

“So.” Carlynn swallowed a bite of her sandwich and smiled at her. “How are you? You’re hair looks pretty.”