The Shadow Wife

“Right, and she’ll never be any the wiser. We’ll say I’m new to the area and in need of someplace to live. You and Alan will tell her that you want me to live there at the mansion so that the three of us can do center work even at home. Your mother will like that. And with the money she’s contributing, I’ll be able to afford to leave my job here—at SF General—and work full-time for the center.”

Lisbeth closed her eyes. “This is so crazy,” she said.

“I know it sounds that way, Liz. If I just woke up after a month and heard all of this, I’d think so, too. But Alan and I have lived with the idea for a couple of weeks now, and—”

“I can’t do it, Gabe,” she said. “There’s no way I can be Carlynn.”

“Think through the alternative, baby. If you tell the world that you’re really—”

“How did you find out that it was me lying here and not Carlynn?” she interrupted him.

Gabriel leaned away from her. “Oh, Lizzie,” he said, “it was awful.”

“How?”

“The police brought over your rings and Carlynn’s rings. They were labeled in plastic bags. And your rings were in the bag labeled with Carlynn’s name, and vice versa. The cops gave the bags to Alan first, and he tried to tell them they’d made a mistake. Then it dawned on him, poor guy. Can you imagine? We still weren’t sure, so he and I came up here, and…well, we looked at your…you know how you have that little heart-shaped mole on your breast?”

Lisbeth closed her eyes. “So that’s how you found out I was alive, and Alan found out he’d lost his wife.” She turned her head to the side, crying again. “Oh, Carly.”

Gabriel smoothed his hand over her hair, and she could feel the tension in his fingers.

“You can have her life, Liz. Not her husband, though.”

She heard the hint of a smile in his voice and turned to look at him. He was smiling at her. They were not feeling the same thing right now. Gabe had already moved past the grief that was weighing her down. “Alan would be your husband in public, of course,” Gabriel said, “but you would be mine when we’re alone. Then, in all other ways, you can have Carlynn’s life. The mansion at Cypress Point will one day be yours. And you can live there forever. With me. Money will never, ever be a problem for any of us or for the center.”

Cypress Point, Lisbeth thought. She could live there, share it with Gabe.

“What would Carlynn want me to do?” she asked.

“What do you think?” Gabriel asked her.

“She’d want me to have everything she did,” she said, knowing that was the truth. “But not this way.”

“Is there another way?” Gabriel asked.

“It’s insane, though,” she said. “I can’t heal anyone. I’m not a doctor.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said. “Alan and I will work out the details. We just need the world—and your mother—to think that Carlynn Shire is still alive. We can always say that the accident somehow altered your healing ability. It doesn’t matter. The center is really about research,” he said. “And we can change the shape of that research. We can attract other known healers to the center, and they can become subjects for study.”

The door opened, and a nurse walked in followed by Alan, who looked nothing short of panic-stricken at being unable to keep the woman out of the room a moment longer. The air vibrated with tension as the nurse took Lisbeth’s blood pressure and pulse and slipped the thermometer beneath her tongue.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked Lisbeth once she’d removed the thermometer.

“The hospital,” Lisbeth said.

“And do you know what year it is?”

Lisbeth had to think for a moment. “Nineteen sixty-seven?” she asked, not completely certain.

“Very good,” the nurse said. “And you know these gentlemen? Which one is your hubby?”

Lisbeth swallowed hard. Carly, Carly, Carly. What do you want me to do? She glanced at Gabriel, then turned her face toward Alan.

“That one,” she said.

38

LIAM WOULD HAVE STAYED WITH JOELLE WHILE THEY EXAMINED her, but he was being treated in another curtained-off cubicle of the E.R. himself. He’d broken the index finger on his right hand, and Bart was now injecting something into his jaw to numb it, so that he could stitch the jagged cut Liam had no memory of receiving.

He’d never hit another human being in his entire life. Not even as a kid. But, it had felt so natural to him. So right. He wanted to beat that bastard to a pulp. The image of him kicking Joelle into the wall was embedded in his mind forever.

He knew where she was. Three cubicles down from him. For a while, he could hear her crying. The police had been questioning him at that time, and he’d asked them to let him go to her, but they said she was being well cared for.

“And you’re bleeding all over the place, besides,” one of the cops had added.

“Do you know how Joelle is?” he asked Bart now, as the doctor sat down next to him and began working on the laceration on his jaw.

“They’ve taken her to the Women’s Wing,” he said.

That’s why he was no longer hearing her cry, Liam thought. “Is she okay?” he asked.