The Shadow Wife

“Okay, then,” Carlynn said. “So, dear, when shall we see your friend?”

15

CARLYNN FOUND ALAN SITTING AT THE TABLE ON THE TERRACE, his feet up on one of the other chairs, a book in his lap, although he was not reading. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the gardeners working in the side yard.

She sat down on the other side of the table, and Alan glanced at her, then nodded in the direction of the yard.

“Crazy old man,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “Who?”

“Quinn,” he said.

She followed his gaze to one of the taller cypress trees, and saw the elderly man standing on a ladder, his head buried somewhere beneath the branches of the tree. She could see his weathered dark hands working the pruning shears. She shook her head.

“He can’t hold still, can he?” she said with a smile. “Quinn!” she called. “Come down from there. You’re going to kill yourself.”

He didn’t respond, and she knew that he had either not heard her or was going to pretend that he had not. She knew Quinn would rather die by falling out of a tree than by the slow, miserable route she seemed compelled to endure.

“I need to talk with you, Alan,” she said, shifting her gaze back to the terrace.

“Should you be out here in the sun?” Alan turned to ask her, his eyes masked behind his sunglasses.

“I don’t plan to be out here long,” she said. “I just wanted to understand why you would talk to Joelle D’Angelo behind my back.”

“Who?”

“You know who. The social worker who wanted me to see her friend. Why are you interfering in my business?”

“I think it’s my business, too, don’t you?” he asked. The sunlight on his head made the thick shock of his hair even whiter.

“Not really,” she said.

“Well.” He closed his book and set it down on the table. “I went to see her because A) you’re not well, and B) you’re not thinking straight.”

“I know I’m not well,” she said, “but there’s nothing wrong with my thinking.”

“There has to be if you’re willing to take on a healing,” he said. “For the last ten years I haven’t had to worry about you. I don’t want to start that up all over again.”

“You’re operating out of fear, Alan,” she said. He always had. “I know your intentions are good and that you’re trying to protect me. To protect all we’ve built together. But this girl— Joelle—needs me.”

“And without you, what will happen to her? Will she explode? Die? What? You’re not going to heal her friend. There’s nothing in the universe that can be done to help a woman that brain-damaged. You’re just giving Joelle false hope.”

“It’s not her friend I’m interested in.” She looked down at her hands. They were not so yellow today, or perhaps it was the sun that made them look a bit less like the hands of a woman dying from hepatitis. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my sister lately,” she said. “I may be going to see her soon.” She smiled, knowing she would irk Alan with that sort of talk. She’d always liked the open-ended nature of spiritual questions, while Alan, ever the physician, had no patience for them.

“Well,” Alan said, “if you see her, send her my regards.”

Carlynn leaned toward him across the table. “I’m not particularly proud of the life I’ve led, Alan,” she said. “I need to find a way to set it right.”

“And this is it?” he asked. “Helping the social worker’s friend?”

“Yes,” she said, rising to her feet. She rested one hand on his shoulder and bent low to buss his temple. “Please don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be very careful. I promise.”

16

JOELLE SLOWED HER CAR TO SKIRT A GOLF CART PARKED AT THE side of the road. She and Carlynn were driving north along the Seventeen Mile Drive, heading toward Pacific Grove and the nursing home. “Was Alan upset about you coming with me today?” she asked as they passed the pricey and beautiful Inn at Spanish Bay.

“You have to forgive Alan,” Carlynn said, without answering the question directly. “He’s very overprotective of me.”

“Has he always been that way?” Joelle took her eyes from the road to glance at the older woman.

“Not in the beginning,” Carlynn said. “But once people began going to great lengths to try to see me, hoping I could heal them, he really worried that I was either overdoing it, or that some loony person might try to kidnap me or heaven knows what.”

Joelle smiled to herself. It was funny to hear someone who claimed to be a healer refer to anyone other than herself as loony.

“Are you…forgive me for prying,” Joelle said. “Is your illness very serious?”

Carlynn nodded. “I have hepatitis C,” she said. “Apparently I contracted it thirty-four years ago, when I was hospitalized after the accident and needed a transfusion. But it was silent until a couple of years ago.”

Joelle remembered that hepatitis C was serious, but knew little more than that. “What about treatment?” she asked.