The Shadow Wife

“To mature the baby’s lungs in case her labor can’t be stopped. Without it—and even with it—a thirty-weeker could have some pretty serious problems.” She picked up a chart and started to leave the nurses’ station. “She’s in room twenty,” she said over her shoulder.

He sat down at the counter and reached for the phone. Pulling the phone book from the shelf under the counter, he looked up the number for the Shire Mind and Body Center and dialed it. A young-sounding woman answered the phone.

“Hello,” he said. “I need to get in touch with Carlynn Shire and I don’t have her home number. Can you tell me how I can reach her? It’s urgent.”

“What is this regarding?” the woman asked.

“It’s about a friend of hers. Joelle D’Angelo. She’s in labor, and I wanted to see if Carlynn could come over here, to Silas Memorial, to be with her.”

“I’ll get that message to her.”

“Right away?” he asked.

“I’ll call her, and if she’s there, she’ll get it. If not, I can’t say when.”

“Try to find her, please. And ask her to call me. Liam Sommers.” He gave her the hospital number. “Have her ask the operator to page me.”

His pager buzzed exactly twenty minutes later, when he was getting up his courage to walk down the hall to room twenty. He picked up the phone.

“It’s Carlynn, Liam,” she said. “I received your message and got a ride to the hospital. I’m in the lobby. Is Joelle all right?”

“I’ll be right over,” he said. “We can talk there.”

She was sitting in the lobby near the windows, balancing her hands on the top of her cane. He sat down in the chair next to hers.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked. “And what on earth happened to you?”

“Joelle was interviewing a battered woman in the emergency room, and the woman’s boyfriend broke into the room and kicked her in the stomach.”

Carlynn’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “Is she all right?”

He shook his head. “She has some cracked ribs and she’s in premature labor,” he said.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Carlynn said. “Not this early. And your face? Your finger?”

“I punched the daylights out of the guy who kicked her,” he said. “And I’m paying for it now.” He held up his throbbing hand.

“Good for you!” Carlynn looked pleased with him. “What’s the prognosis on Joelle, do you know?”

“They’re trying to stop the labor,” he said. “I thought it might help her to have you with her.”

“Why not you?” she asked.

“I’m not a healer.”

Carlynn looked down at her hands where they rested on the top of her cane. “I believe that, right now, you can probably do more for her than I could.”

He felt annoyed. She was always trying to push the two of them together as though Mara didn’t exist. “Do you understand my dilemma, Carlynn?” he asked.

“I understand that you and Joelle are willing to sacrifice your own happiness for someone who doesn’t need you to make those sacrifices,” Carlynn said, and he recoiled from her suddenly forceful tone. “And I’m willing to bet,” she continued, “that if Mara could talk, from all you and Joelle have told me about her, she wouldn’t want you to make them, either. She’d want Joelle to take care of you and Sam the way only a woman who adores you both can do.”

“I thought you were supposedly trying to heal Mara,” he said. “Or have you just been playing with Joelle? Playing with both of us?”

“I’ve been working very hard,” Carlynn said. “But you’re right. It hasn’t been Mara that I’ve been attempting to heal. She doesn’t need my help, Liam, I’ve known that from the start. It’s you and Joelle who need healing. Look at Mara. She’s always smiling. Have you ever seen her appear to be suffering?”

He didn’t respond. They both knew the answer to her question.

He stared out the window, collecting his thoughts. “If I give in to my feelings for Joelle,” he said, “it feels like I’m betraying my wife.”

“You’re not abandoning Mara, dear.” Carlynn’s tone softened. “You and Joelle can’t possibly hurt her by loving each other, and you don’t need to be divorced for you and Joelle to be married in your hearts. The happier you are, the more strength you’ll have to give to Mara. And to your little boy. I believe you have a responsibility to your child…to your children…to live a full and happy life.”

“Children.” He repeated the word more to himself than to her.

“Right now,” Carlynn leaned forward, her arms folded on the table, “you have a choice. You can go be with Mara, who feels very, very little, and who will be smiling whether you’re there or not. Or you can go and be with Joelle, who still feels everything—fear and love and worry—and who is feeling all those things right now as she prays to hold on to your child. You decide who needs you more.”

“Will you go see her?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I will. But I can’t take your place, Liam. Not at her side, and not in her heart.”

He left the lobby, but he didn’t go near the Women’s Wing for fear that someone would corner him to tell him that Joelle was asking for him. There was someplace else he needed to go first.