The Shadow Wife

He’d brought the guitar to two of those meetings with the healer at the nursing home now, and the last time, Carlynn had Mara sit up in her wheelchair. Carlynn was still touching her, holding her hand in both of hers, but the four of them were in a circle of sorts, and if it had felt strange to be singing while Mara lay in her bed, this was even stranger. Mara had stared at his fingers. What was she thinking? Did she remember playing the guitar herself? Did she feel a longing for the music? For him? If you could speak, Mara, what would you say?

If anyone were to observe him and Joelle on those occasions, they would probably think of them as comfortable old friends who could chat easily and regularly with one another, but that was not the case. The safety he felt in that room evaporated the moment he was alone with Joelle or talking to her on the phone. Then he was back to the superficial, businesslike conversations he’d gotten accustomed to having with her over the past few months. How are you? Fine. How was your day? Good. Her belly was growing and he rarely said a word about it. Did she think he had no feelings about the situation? Did she think he didn’t care that he would soon have a daughter and didn’t know what the hell he should do about it?

At twenty-five weeks pregnant, Joelle was like a walking billboard for his infidelity. And no one knew. No one even guessed. No one would ever think such a thing of Liam Sommers and Joelle D’Angelo.

He was pulling a piece of old music from one of the boxes on the sofa when he noticed the flash of headlights shoot across the walls of the living room. A car was pulling into his driveway. Standing up, he walked over to the window and peered outside. Sheila’s car was parked near the carport, and he could see the interior lights come on as she opened her door. What was she doing here at ten-thirty at night?

He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. “Sheila?” he called as she got out of her car. “Is everything all right?”

She walked from her car to his front porch without answering him. At the bottom of the porch steps, though, she looked up at him. “I need to talk to you,” she said. Her blond hair glittered in the light from the porch, and her eyes were cold. He shivered.

“Come in.” He stepped back into the house and held the door open for her, a little unnerved. “Has something happened with Mara?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know.” Sheila didn’t so much walk as plow into the room. She was boiling mad, and he felt his heart rate speed up.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What’s going on?” He moved a pile of music from the sofa. “Sit down.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to sit down.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “I just came from a psychic,” she said.

Liam laughed. “You what?” Between Joelle and her healer and Sheila and her psychic, he was feeling pretty darn conventional.

“I’ve been to her before. She’s very good. She can always tell me things that have happened in my life that there’s no way anyone would know.”

“Okay,” Liam said slowly. “And what did she tell you this time.”

“That you’re the father of Joelle’s baby.”

Shit. Liam laughed uncomfortably. “I thought the psychic knew things about you,” he said. “How can she know anything about Joelle, when she hasn’t even—”

“Shut up, Liam!”

“Look, you’re upset over nothing, Sheila,” he said, moving toward the sofa again. “Please sit down and let’s talk—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you are not the father of Joelle’s baby,” Sheila demanded.

He tried. He truly did. But he couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a second, nor could he make the words come out of his mouth. “You bastard!” Sheila began hitting him with her huge, heavy white leather purse. He held up his hands, trying to protect his face from her assault.

“Bastard! Bastard!” Sheila smashed the purse into his side. “Son of a bitch! Prick!”

“Sheila!” He grabbed her wrist and managed to wrench the purse from her hand, but she still pummeled him with her fist. “Sheila, stop it!” he yelled. “Stop. Stop. You’re going to wake Sam.”

That seemed to do it. She lowered her arms to her sides. Mascara ran down her cheeks, and her blond hair fell in thin strands around her red face.

“How could you do that to my little girl?” she asked, her voice suddenly small and broken, and he surprised himself by taking her in his arms.

“Because,” he said quietly into her hair. “Because I’m human, and I’m…much to my regret, flawed.”

Sheila sniffled. “I’m human and I’m flawed, too,” she said, “but I didn’t sleep with anyone else while Michael was sick.”

“I know,” Liam said. “You were incredibly strong. But…and forgive me for this, Sheila. You weren’t thirty-four years old, and you weren’t grieving every day, every minute, with a member of the opposite sex who also happened to love your spouse as much as you did.”