Praise for the novels of

DIANE CHAMBERLAIN



“As Chamberlain examines myriad forms of love, her complicated novel will bring tears to her readers, but they won’t regret the experience.”

—Booklist on The Shadow Wife (formerly Cypress Point)

“A fast-paced read that…explores the psychological complexity of a family pushed to its limits.”

—Booklist on Secrets She Left Behind

“A shattered chronology that’s as graceful as it is perfectly paced…. Engrossing.”

—Publishers Weekly on Before the Storm

“Diane Chamberlain is a marvelously gifted author! Every book she writes is a real gem.”

—Literary Times

“Chamberlain has penned another compelling women’s novel with characters who become real through their talents, compassion and indiscretions.”

—Booklist on Her Mother’s Shadow

“Here, as in previous offerings, Chamberlain creates a captivating tale populated with haunting characters.”

—Publishers Weekly on Summer’s Child

“The story…unfolds organically and credibly, building to a touching denouement that plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Bay at Midnight

“The story offers relentless suspense and intriguing psychological insight, as well as a satisfying love story.”

—Publishers Weekly on Breaking the Silence







Also by DIANE CHAMBERLAIN

THE LIES WE TOLD

SECRETS SHE LEFT BEHIND

BEFORE THE STORM

THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES

THE BAY AT MIDNIGHT

HER MOTHER’S SHADOW

KISS RIVER

KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

CYPRESS POINT

THE COURAGE TREE

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Watch for Diane Chamberlain’s upcoming novel

THE MIDWIFE’S CONFESSION

Coming May 2011 from MIRA Books.




DIANE CHAMBERLAIN



The Shadow Wife





















Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Epilogue

Acknowledgments







Prologue






Big Sur, California, 1967



THE FOG WAS AS THICK AND WHITE AS COTTON BATTING, AND it hugged the coastline and moved slowly, lazily, in the breeze. Anyone unfamiliar with the Cabrial Commune in Big Sur would never know there were twelve small cabins dotting the cliffs above the ocean. Fog was nothing unusual here, but for the past seven days, it had not cleared once. Like living inside a cloud, the children said. The twenty adults and twelve children of the commune had to feel their way from cabin to cabin, and they could never be sure they’d found their own home until they were inside. Parents warned their children not to play too close to the edge of the cliff, and the more nervous mothers kept their little ones inside in the morning, when the fog was thickest. Those who worked in the garden had to bend low to be sure they were pulling weeds and not the young shoots of brussels sprouts or lettuce, and more than one man used the dense fog as an excuse for finding his way into the wrong bed at night—not that an excuse was ever needed on the commune, where love was free and jealousy was denied. Yes, this third week of summer, everyone in the commune had a little taste of what it was like to be blind.

The fog muffled sound, too. The residents of the commune could still hear the foghorns, but the sound was little more than a low moan, wrapping around them so that they had no idea from which direction it came. No idea whether the sea was in front of them or behind.

But one sound managed to pierce the fog. The cries came intermittently from one of the cabins, and the children, many of them naked, would stop their game of hide-and-seek to stare through the fog in the direction of the sound. A couple of them, who were by nature either more sensitive or more anxious than the others, shuddered. They knew what was happening. No secrets were ever kept from children here. They knew that inside cabin number four, Rainbow Cabin, Ellen Liszt was having a baby.

In the small clearing at one side of the cabin, nineteen-year-old Johnny Angel split firewood. The day was warm despite the fog, and he’d taken off his Big Brother and the Holding Company sweatshirt and hung it over the railing of the cabin’s rickety porch. Felicia, the midwife, was inside with Ellen, boiling string and scissors on the small woodstove, and he told himself they needed more firewood, even though he’d already chopped enough to last a week. Still, he lifted the ax and let it fall, over and over again, mesmerized by the thwack as it hit the logs. Every minute or so, he stopped chopping to take a drag from his cigarette, which rested on the cabin railing, and he could feel his heart beating in his bare chest. The hand holding the cigarette trembled—from the strain of chopping wood, he told himself, but he knew that was not the complete truth. He winced every time a fresh shriek of pain came from the cabin’s rear bedroom, and he was quick to pick up the ax again, hoping that the chopping would mask the sound.

When would it be over? The labor pains had started in earnest in the middle of the night, and as he and Ellen had planned, he’d run—stumbling in the darkness and the fog—to the Moonglow Cabin to awaken Felicia. Felicia had grabbed her bag of birthing paraphernalia and returned with him to Rainbow, and she’d held Ellen’s hand, speaking to her in a calming voice. It had shocked him to see Ellen in the glow of the lantern. She looked terribly young, younger than eighteen. She looked like a frightened little girl, and he felt unable to go near her, unsure of what to say or how to touch her. How to help. Her face was sweaty and she was gulping air. Johnny was afraid she might throw up. He hated seeing anyone throw up. It always made him feel sick himself.

He’d left the two women together and walked outside to the woodpile. But he hadn’t known it would take so long. How many hours had passed? All he knew was that he was on his second pack of Kools, and the menthol was beginning to make his throat ache.

Felicia had asked him if he wanted to be in the room with Ellen, and he’d stared at her, wild-eyed with surprise at the question. Hell, no, he didn’t want to be in that room. So he’d left. Now he felt like a coward for declining the offer. He knew that some men were fighting for the right to be in the delivery room these days, and that two of the men here at Cabrial had stayed with their women while they delivered. But he was not like those men. He couldn’t imagine being any closer to Ellen’s pain and fear than he was right now. Besides, that was no delivery room Ellen was in. She was lying on the old double mattress on the bare floor in the tiny bedroom they had shared for the past six months, her butt resting on newspapers, which Felicia claimed were made sterile by the printing process. Felicia was no obstetrician. She was not even a real midwife, merely the mother of four kids who were, right now, playing hide-and-seek in the fog.

When he and Ellen had first talked about it, the idea of Felicia delivering their baby had sounded fine, even appealing; after all, women used to help other women deliver babies all the time. But now that it was happening, now that Ellen’s screams made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, many things about the commune that had previously sounded appealing seemed ludicrous. His parents had rolled their eyes in disgusted resignation when he told them that he and Ellen were moving into a Big Sur commune. He told them about the large stone cabin that housed a common kitchen and huge dining room, where the commune residents took turns cooking and cleaning up and doing all the other tasks that were part of living together in a group, and his mother had asked him why he never bothered to help her cook and clean up. His parents scoffed at the names of the cabins— Rainbow, Sunshine, Stardust—and they showed real alarm when he told them there was no phone on the commune. Then they threatened him: If he dropped out of Berkeley and moved into the commune, he could expect no more money from them for school or for anything else, ever. That was fine, he said. There was little need for money in the commune. They would live off the land. They would take care of each other.

Right now, he would give just about anything to have his mother with him. She had no idea he was about to become a father. Wouldn’t she be mortified to know that her first grandchild was being born this way, far from medical care, not to mention out of wedlock? Johnny could only imagine what she would say about the ritual that would follow the birth, when Felicia would take the placenta and bury it somewhere on the commune grounds, planting a tree, a Monterey cypress, above it, tying the baby’s spirit to this beautiful place. Johnny loved the idea, despite the fact that he had not even known what a placenta was before moving here.