taking parenting advice from him, the plan seemed to be working. He hadn’t heard from Sheila again about the matter in the two weeks since their conversation.
His phone rang, and he quickly logged off the internet and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” It was Joelle’s voice, and he felt the return of anger in a rush.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“I spoke with Carlynn Shire about Mara, and—”
“Why? You’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of Carlynn Shire,” he said, truly bewildered by Joelle’s behavior. “Your parents—”
“I can’t explain it,” Joelle interrupted him. “I just wanted to talk with her about the situation, and when I did, she thought she might be able to help. I didn’t think it would hurt to at least let her meet Mara.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re the one who’s always saying she’s probably a quack, that she didn’t really save your life.”
“I know. But what if I was wrong?” Joelle asked. “Mara believed so strongly in the power of the mind to heal the body. You know that. Don’t you think she would have wanted us to try everything we could?”
“Mara
“Mara hasn’t asked for
She was right, of course, but that didn’t stop him.
“I don’t want you bringing
“Didn’t you notice Mara seemed a bit more alert when you were there?” Joelle asked.
He scowled into the phone. “No, I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I think she was completely worn out from her visit with you and Carlynn Shire. She didn’t touch her, did she?”
“She massaged her hands with baby lotion.”
Why that seemed like such an invasion, he couldn’t say. He felt as he had when Sheila told him she’d spanked Sam. Mara was as trusting and vulnerable as a little child, ignorant of everything going on around her, and she would smile through any assault.
“She thinks she can help, Liam.”
“That’s totally ridiculous.”
“You may be right, but she’s a nice woman and maybe she can do something we don’t understand. What would it hurt to let her try? She wants to see Mara again. And she asked that you be there, as well.”
“The answer is no, Joelle,” he said. “No, I won’t be there, and no, you may not bring her to see Mara. Don’t ask me again. I have enough to deal with right now.” He hung up the phone without saying goodbye.
He walked from the den to the bedroom, still angry, and with an added sense of having escaped from a great threat. If he yelled at Joelle, he was safe. That aching longing he had for her, the love and admiration, didn’t exist when he was chewing her out. And he thought now that he would be able to sleep tonight.
Around three in the morning, though, he woke up with a start, feeling much as he had the night after they’d made love, when he’d turned away from her with the hope of saving himself.
LISBETH WAS TERRIFIED. DR. PETERSON HAD BORROWED GABRIEL Johnson’s tennis racket the day before and now wanted her to return it to him at San Francisco General. That was why she was locked in the stall in one of the first-floor ladies’ rooms at the hospital during her lunch break. The tennis racket rested against the tiled wall while Lisbeth stared at herself in the mirror, trying to get her breathing under control.
What would she say to him? She’d never had a problem talking to him over the phone, and lately their conversations had grown even longer. But over the phone her voice did not give away her size.
She thought about Gabriel often when she was in bed at night, and she talked to him in her head all the time when she was alone. She told him everything about herself, which made it hard for her to remember that he did not actually know her as well as she felt he did.
A few weeks ago, he’d suggested she call him Gabriel instead of Mr. Johnson.
“I’d feel strange calling you by your first name,” she’d said.
“I want you to,” he’d answered in that deep voice that she loved. He had this way of making her feel like his equal, as though that was very important to him. As though the chief accountant of a big hospital and a medical secretary were on the same level.
“Okay, Gabriel.” She’d smiled, relieved, actually, since she called him that in her imagination all the time and was always afraid she’d slip while talking to him on the phone.
Her fantasies of Gabriel had become so intense, such a glorious part of her quiet existence, and she feared they would come to an end once he saw her. Touching up her makeup in the ladies’-room mirror, she pressed powder to her forehead and nose and rubbed a circle of rouge onto her cheeks. She didn’t want to look as though she’d made herself up especially for this meeting, so she skipped a fresh application of lipstick. She patted her petal curls into place. It was a stylish haircut, but what did it matter when the face that it framed was as round as a bowling ball? In her fantasies, she would meet Gabriel Johnson after losing sixty or seventy pounds. When, exactly, that would be she didn’t know. In the past six months, she’d added another ten pounds to her two hundred, and she was beginning to have difficulty finding a uniform for the doctor’s office that fit her.
