The Shadow Wife

“I started working as a social worker at Silas Memorial ten years ago, when I was twenty-four, just out of graduate school. I was pretty green. The opening they had was in the maternity unit, so that was where I landed. The second day that I was there, I was given this difficult case.” Joelle smiled to herself. “At least, it seemed difficult to me back then. It was a woman who had lost a baby and was slipping into severe postpartum psychosis. I needed to get a psychiatrist in for a consultation. Someone recommended I contact Mara Steele, so I called her, and she came in to see the patient. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her. That she was an M.D., I mean. She was only twenty-six years old, but she was one of those kids who just flew through high school and college and then on to medical school.”

Carlynn nodded. “She already sounds quite special,” she said.

“Yes,” Joelle agreed. “Her expertise was in working with maternity issues—pregnancy loss, infertility, neonatal intensive care, that sort of thing. She was drawn to that type of work, even though she never wanted a baby of her own.

“Anyhow, it was late in the day after she’d seen the patient, and she suggested we get something to eat and discuss the case over dinner. Dinner lasted four hours.” Joelle smiled at Carlynn with the memory. She and Mara had talked about the patient, yes, but that conversation had segued into everything else under the sun. Joelle told her about Rusty, whom she had married only weeks before. How she had met him in graduate school, how he had dropped out to pursue a career in computers. He was making more money than she would ever make as a social worker, and she knew it had been the right move for him: he’d never been cut out for working with people. Rusty and machinery were a far better fit. She’d been attracted to his intelligence, and perhaps, as she later admitted to herself, to the fact that her parents thought he was completely wrong for her. She should have listened to them.

Mara had talked about her lack of a social life. The previous years had been dedicated to her education and to getting a private practice off the ground, and she’d had little time for men. Joelle knew that Mara would have trouble finding a man who was not threatened by her intelligence, education and beauty. Back then, Mara had worn her shimmery dark hair to her shoulders. She had intense, large, dark brown eyes, clear fair skin, and was undeniably extraordinary-looking. Sitting with Mara in the restaurant that night, Joelle had felt physically small, girlish and simple, although Mara did nothing to intentionally cause that feeling in her. She treated Joelle as a peer, and by the end of the evening, they had made a date to go hiking together over the weekend.

“We hiked for hours that Saturday, and we got so close, closer than I’ve ever been with another friend,” Joelle said to Carlynn. “I knew I could tell her anything. I really admired her and held her up on a pedestal, but as time went on, our friendship became much more of an equal partnership. She was like a sister. I’d never had a sister, and Mara met that need for me and then some.” Joelle hoped that the mention of a sister would not bring back bad memories for Carlynn, but it was the truth. The forever bond that sisters possessed best described what she’d had with Mara.

She noticed, with embarrassment, that she had twisted the tissue into a long rope, and she set it down on her lap. Did Carlynn really want to hear all this?

“Have I told you enough?” she asked the older woman, who shook her head.

“You’re just getting started,” Carlynn said.

That pleased her, because she was finding an unexpected comfort in this telling.

“I fixed her up with her husband,” Joelle said. “There was this guy who started working in the social work department a few years after Mara and I had become friends. His name is Liam. He’s attractive, smart and just a nice guy—” she felt her cheeks growing hot and quickly continued “—and he played folk music semiprofessionally at some of the clubs in town. Mara was also into folk music. She played guitar and she sang, but just as a hobby. I knew Liam was single and hoping to meet someone, but he seemed resistant to being fixed up. So I had a party and invited both of them. I told everyone to bring musical instruments, even if it meant a comb with tissue paper over it, which it did in my case.” Rusty had hated the idea. He’d endured the get-together rather than enjoyed it. Remembering how poorly he’d fit into her social scene made her cringe.