The Shadow Wife

Gabriel thanked the woman, and they left the office, gathered their luggage from the car and entered the front door of the inn. At the top of the stairs, they turned right and opened the first of two doors.

The room was small and cozy, with a white iron double bed and a view of the bluffs. Lisbeth set her suitcase down and walked over to the open window, its white, gauzy curtains wafting into the room on the soft breeze. She could see the dark-suited throng walking away from the cliff, some of them with their arms around one another.

“I think this room is mine,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him in surprise. “Why don’t we look at both of them before we decide who gets which?” she suggested.

“All right.” He set his own suitcase on the floor. “Let’s look at the other one,” he said, walking back into the hall.

She was first to enter the room and her gaze instantly fell on a wedding dress hanging from a hook on the closet door. “Oh,” she said, drawing back quickly. “This must be someone else’s room.”

Gabriel stood right behind her, preventing her from exiting. “No,” he said, his lips against her ear. “I think it’s yours.”

Lisbeth felt a chill run up her spine. That dress. She suddenly recognized it as the dress she had tried on two years earlier when shopping for Carlynn’s wedding dress with her. She could never forget that magnificent arrangement of satin and lace.

“I…I don’t understand, Gabe,” she said.

He turned her toward him, smiling at her. “Will you marry me?” he asked. “Here? Tomorrow? Out there?” He nodded toward the view outside the window. “On the bluff overlooking the ocean?”

For just an instant, she felt torn, thinking of the wedding she’d long dreamed about, where she and Gabriel would be surrounded by family and friends. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that she would become Gabriel’s wife. Tomorrow night, they’d be able to share a hotel room for the first time. She would be Lisbeth Johnson.

She threw herself into his arms. “Yes, of course I will!” she said. “How on earth did you know about the dress?”

“Does it matter?”

“No…except that I’m thinner than I was when I last tried it on.”

“It will fit,” he promised. “And I’ll find someone here who can take pictures of you in it, so you can show everyone back home how beautiful you looked.”

The minister was to meet them on the bluff at eleven the following morning, and at ten, Lisbeth put on the dress and styled her hair, which would probably fall flat once she was out in the damp, cool air above the ocean. But she didn’t care. There was no full-length mirror in her room, but she knew the dress fit perfectly, and the beauty of wearing it was more in the feeling than in the seeing. Carlynn had something to do with this, of course. How else would Gabriel have found the right dress, in the right size for her? She had no flowers, though, and her hands felt a bit awkward, with no place to rest. Gabe had probably not given a thought to flowers.

At ten of eleven, Gabriel knocked on her door. She pulled the door open, and Gabriel’s eyes glistened behind his glasses when he saw her. “You are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “And you look beautiful yourself.” He was wearing a white tuxedo she had never seen him in before, a red carnation in his lapel.

He put his hands on her arms and looked into her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” he said. “I wanted it to be a surprise, but I know how sad you must feel that Carlynn’s not here with you. So, I’m going to tell you that she is.”

Her mouth dropped open. “She is? Where?”

“She and Alan will meet us on the bluff, okay?”

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Thank you so much, Gabe.”

“And she has flowers for you,” he added.

She laughed, slipping her hand through the arm he offered her.

It took them a few minutes to get down the narrow stairs of the inn. Her dress was perfectly tailored with a narrow cut that hugged her slender body, but Gabriel had to carry the long train in his arms to prevent them both from falling headlong down the stairs.

They started walking toward the cliff overlooking the water, Lisbeth searching for three people—Carlynn, Alan and the minister—but she was distressed to see another crowd on the bluff, as there had been the day before. Probably another scattering of ashes, she thought, and it was only as they neared the throng of people that she began to make out faces. Carlynn. Alan. Lloyd Peterson and his wife. Gabriel’s mother and sister, aunts and uncles and cousins from Oakland. Their boating friends. All of them standing there on the bluff, grinning at the stunned look on her face.

Gabriel clutched her hand where it rested on his arm.

“Surprise, baby,” he whispered to her. “We’ve been planning this for months.”