“Not right now,” her father said, and Carlynn was grateful that he understood what she’d meant and what she was intending to do. “Come on, fellas, let’s give Carlynn some room.”

Penny understood, too. On one occasion, she had accompanied Carlynn and Delora to Letterman Hospital and had seen with her own eyes the marvels Carlynn could achieve.

As the boys moved back to join the others, Carlynn slipped her hands beneath Penny’s skirt, unhooked her stocking from the garter belt and pulled it from her leg, while Penny winced with pain. Resting her hands on the skin above Penny’s knee, Carlynn looked into her eyes.

“Is this where it hurts?” she asked.

Penny nodded. “Yes, but a little more to the side.”

Carlynn shifted her hands slightly, and Penny nodded. “That’s it,” she said. “I think I heard it crack when I fell, Carly. Ugh.”

“Does it hurt a great deal?” Carlynn could already feel the area beneath her hands growing warm from her touch, and she knew that was a good sign.

“It’s horrid,” Penny said.

“And just what were you and Jinks doing on the terrace?” Carlynn asked with a grin.

“You mean—” Penny managed a smile “—this is God punishing me?”

“You never know,” Carlynn said. “You are the rowdiest of my friends—do you know that, Pen?”

“But you love me anyway.”

“Yes, I do. Very much.” She looked earnestly into Penny’s eyes. “Even though you’ve probably gotten me into big trouble with my father.”

“Sorry.” Penny giggled, the lightness of the sound encouraging to Carlynn’s ears.

She continued talking with her friend, keeping her hands on her leg, for another fifteen minutes. Finally, Penny said, “This is so strange. It’s not hurting. At least not while I’m lying still.”

“Move it then, with my hands still on it. Slowly. See if you can bend your knee.”

Penny bent her leg. “My God, Carlynn, it doesn’t hurt. Just feels a little stiff.”

“Do you think you can stand on it?”

She helped Penny to her feet and accepted the grateful hug she offered. The guests cheered from behind them, as though they were witnessing an injured player rise from the ground on a football field.

“Can you walk?” Carlynn asked. Penny began to carefully move toward the house, leaning against Carlynn, just in case. “Now,” Carlynn said as they neared the rear door, “we really should get some ice on it. No point in getting too cocky about all this.”

After the party, Carlynn and Lisbeth sat on the edge of the cold stone terrace, their legs dangling over the side, bundled up in jackets against the chill. Behind them, in the house, they could hear the tinkle of glasses and clatter of plates as Rosa and the other servants cleaned up. Fog was rolling in over the Pacific, but they could still see the lights of a boat that must have been quite close to shore.

“We shouldn’t be out here,” Carlynn said. “We’re both going to get sick, sitting on the terrace in the cold.”

“You can heal us, then,” Lisbeth said, and Carlynn looked at her quizzically.

“That sounded snide,” she said. “Did you mean it that way, Lizzie?”

It was a moment before Lisbeth answered. “Sorry,” she said. “I just…it still amazes me, that’s all. How do you do it?” She turned to her sister. “How did you fix Penny’s leg?”

It was not the first time Lisbeth had asked Carlynn about her healing skills, but this time the tone of her voice was marked more by envy than curiosity.

“I don’t understand any more than you do, Lizzie,” Carlynn said. “Maybe Penny’s leg wasn’t really broken. Maybe she just scared herself when she fell.”

“I saw it. It was twisted up.”

Carlynn gently let one of her feet touch one of Lisbeth’s. “I have to be touching the person,” she said. “At least I know that much. But other than that, what I do doesn’t seem like anything special. I’m not a magician. It’s just that when I’m touching a person, I think only about him or her. I try to send them all my love, everything good that’s inside me. I concentrate really hard.”

“It’s amazing,” Lisbeth said, shaking her head in quiet wonder.

“Do you remember Presto?” Carlynn asked. “The night before he was going to be put to sleep?”

“Of course.” Lisbeth nodded. Presto had lived for three more years after that night.

“All night long I lay next to him with my arms around him, and I prayed. I just kept hoping and praying he would get well.”

“Is it praying, then?” Lisbeth asked. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Not always. I’ve sort of experimented with it,” Carlynn admitted. “Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I just think as hard as I can about the person I’m touching. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do. The only thing I know for sure is that, afterward, I’m more tired than you can imagine.”

Lisbeth knew this. She had seen her sister after her visits to Letterman Hospital. It was all Carlynn could do to drag herself upstairs to bed, and she would sleep so deeply that nothing could wake her for hours.

“You must be tired now,” she said.

Carlynn nodded, then rested her head on Lisbeth’s shoulder.

“I wish you could talk more easily to people, Lizzie,” she said. “They won’t bite.”

“Well, I can’t,” Lisbeth said a bit defensively. Then she sighed. “It’s just one more thing you can do better than I can.”

The following day was a glorious clear Sunday, and Franklin invited his daughters to go sailing with him. Only Lisbeth accepted, just as he’d expected. As he’d hoped. He’d observed his less popular daughter at the party the night before and wanted some time alone with her.

They set sail on the bay in his small sloop, and he allowed Lisbeth to take over once they’d motored away from the pier. The sea was calm, a sheet of pale aquamarine glass, but there was a good headwind, and Lisbeth showed real skill as she tacked far out into the open bay.

“You’re getting very good at this, Lisbeth,” Franklin said.

“Not very hard today,” she said. “The water’s so smooth.” But she was smiling at the compliment all the same. She leaned back on her hands, eyes closed, her pretty face turned up to the sunlight.

“Did you enjoy the party last night?” Franklin asked.

“Yes,” she said without opening her eyes.

“What did you like about it?”

She shrugged. “The music, I guess.”

Franklin licked his lips, letting a silence form between them as he tried to think of what he could say next.

“I have the feeling it was not much fun for you, honey,” he said finally, and then quickly added, “And that’s all right. I never much enjoyed parties either when I was your age.”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “You didn’t?” she asked.

He smiled. “I was actually a lot like you, Lizzie. My brother—your uncle Steve—was always the popular one, the one who commanded attention. He was more intelligent than I was, better-looking and far more interesting to the girls. I was the shy one, always afraid to say anything in case I sounded stupid.”

She looked surprised. “But you’re much smarter and nicer than Uncle Steve,” she said, then added, “No offense. I know he’s your brother.”

He laughed. “That’s my point, sweetheart. As I grew up, I got more confident. What I was like when I was sixteen didn’t matter anymore.”

Lisbeth looked out to the vast Pacific, where the air was growing hazy with fog, a crease between her eyebrows.

“You’ll blossom, Lizzie. Someday. It can’t be rushed, and you’ll need to be patient. But you have a lot of happiness ahead of you, and you’ll probably appreciate it more than Carlynn, because she’s known nothing else.”

Lisbeth smoothed her hand across the gunwale. “I don’t really want Carlynn to be unhappy, though.” She looked past the sails at her father.

“It’s not an either-or thing, honey,” he said. “You can both be happy. There’s not a finite amount of happiness to be divided between the two of you, where if you get more, she gets less.” He leaned toward her. “You and Carlynn are so lucky to have each other,” he said. “Other friends will come and go, for both of you, but you’ll always be there for each other.”

“She’s so pretty,” Lisbeth said, fishing, he thought, for a compliment.

“She could use a few more pounds, if you ask me,” Franklin said, taking her bait, and Lisbeth smiled at him.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said and leaned back on her arms to face the sun again.

Lisbeth felt the slight sting of a sunburn on her face as she helped her father moor the boat to the pier. She’d hated to come in, hated to put an end to her time with the one person who seemed to value her more than Carlynn, but the fog was getting closer, and both she and her father knew how quickly it could surround them out on the bay. She walked ahead of him as they made their way over the dunes to the car. A couple of young boys were playing on the dunes, running and jumping and shrieking, and when she heard the thud behind her, she guessed it was just one of the boys leaping from the dune, so she didn’t bother turning around.

“Hey! Girl!” one of the boys cried out.

Still, she didn’t turn, figuring the boys were planning to play some sort of joke on her.

“Girl! Your father!”

She turned at that and saw her father lying several yards behind her, on his back in the sand.

“Daddy!” she cried, racing back to him. Kneeling next to him, she rested her hand on his heart but could feel no beating against her palm. His face was the color of the old ashes in the fireplace. She turned to the boys who were watching, stock-still, from the dune.

“Get help,” she said. “Hurry!”

She rested both her hands on his chest, holding them there, praying to God to save him. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to send her love into her father, but knew she should have questioned Carlynn more about her ability to heal the night before. What had she meant when she’d talked about sending “everything good” inside herself into someone? How did she do that? How?

She held that position, crouched over her father, telling him out loud that she loved him, while his face turned from ash to white. She could hear the sirens in the distance, but by the time the ambulance pulled into the small parking lot, she knew it was too late. Her father, her champion, was gone. It was, in some ways, his own fault, she thought. He had taken the wrong twin sailing with him.







10






JOELLE TURNED OFF HIGHWAY ONE AND QUICKLY FOUND HERSELF in a line of five cars, all of them waiting to enter the gate to the Seventeen Mile Drive. When she reached the tollbooth, she smiled at the young man waiting for her money.

“I’m Joelle D’Angelo,” she said. “I’ll be visiting Dr. Carlynn Shire.”

He checked a list inside the booth, then looked up. “Go ahead,” he said.

She looked ahead of her, but wasn’t certain if she should take the road to the left or the right.

“Which way do I go?” she asked, and he pointed to her left.

“The Kling Mansion is that way,” he said. “Just past Cypress Point.”

“Thanks.” She started driving again. She passed the lodge at Pebble Beach, where the road was clogged with cars and golf carts and tourists, and after a few minutes she came to a spit of rugged land that jutted out into the northern end of Carmel Bay. If she’d had binoculars—and the time to stop—she thought she might be able to see across the bay to her condominium from there. Damn. How could she possibly leave Monterey?

She could probably hide her pregnancy until she was four or five months along, she thought. She’d seen young women come into the maternity unit who had hidden their pregnancies right up until the end, not wanting their families to know, so surely with some loose clothing and by keeping more to herself, she should be able to pull it off. She wanted to hold out as long as she could and keep working, because she doubted she’d be able to find a job as a five-or-so-month-pregnant woman, and she’d need every cent she could hang on to when she moved.

She didn’t think she could handle living with her parents for more than a week or so. They were wonderful people, but they would drive her crazy long before the baby was born. If she could afford an apartment in proximity to them, though, that might work. She’d thought of her friends who lived in different parts of the country, wondering if living near one of them might be feasible. Her college roommate lived in Chicago and had two little kids, so she would be a great resource. But Chicago? After Monterey? She was going to have to let go of her need to live someplace perfect. That could not be her priority right now.