It was happening again: another pregnancy, another child of his, being born into tragedy. And he cared—he truly did—about that baby. But just then, he cared far more what happened to Joelle.

“Is Joelle okay, though?” he asked again. “I mean…besides the labor?”

“She has a couple of cracked ribs, I think,” Bart said, leaning back from his work. “And if you keep talking, Liam, this will take all day.”

After Bart had finished stitching his jaw, Liam threw away the bloody shirt and pants he’d had on and borrowed a pair of blue scrubs to wear for the rest of the day. He left the E.R. and headed toward the Women’s Wing, but stopped off in the men’s room to see what had been done to his face. His image in the mirror shocked him. The cut on his chin was bandaged, as was his splinted aching finger, but there were bruises on his face that he could not remember receiving. He’d told the police he’d done all the hitting, yet that was obviously not the case, and he imagined the cops probably had a good laugh at his expense after they’d finished questioning him. Suddenly, he was very tired. He leaned against the tiled wall in the restroom and closed his eyes.

Joelle had to be terrified, he thought. She knew too much about what could go wrong with a pregnancy. Just like Mara did.

He felt a little sick to his stomach as he walked out of the men’s room and down the corridor. He would visit Joelle as her fellow social worker, her friend, the guy who’d also been involved in the altercation that caused her injury. No one would think anything of it.

He found Serena Marquez at the nurses’ station in the Women’s Wing.

“How’s Joelle?” he asked.

“Oh my God,” Serena said, when she saw him. “I heard you beat up the guy that kicked Joelle. It looks like it was the other way around.”

“How’s Joelle?” he repeated, not in any mood for banter.

“Rebecca’s trying to stop her labor,” Serena said.

“Can she?” he asked. “I mean, how is it going?”

“Don’t know yet,” Serena said. “But her membranes have ruptured, so that’s not great.”

“Can I see her?” he asked.

Serena looked at the clock. “Give her about twenty minutes or so,” she said. “Rebecca’s examining her. She’s starting her on some betamethasone and antibiotics.”

“What’s the beta…whatever for?”

“To mature the baby’s lungs in case her labor can’t be stopped. Without it—and even with it—a thirty-weeker could have some pretty serious problems.” She picked up a chart and started to leave the nurses’ station. “She’s in room twenty,” she said over her shoulder.

He sat down at the counter and reached for the phone. Pulling the phone book from the shelf under the counter, he looked up the number for the Shire Mind and Body Center and dialed it. A young-sounding woman answered the phone.

“Hello,” he said. “I need to get in touch with Carlynn Shire and I don’t have her home number. Can you tell me how I can reach her? It’s urgent.”

“What is this regarding?” the woman asked.

“It’s about a friend of hers. Joelle D’Angelo. She’s in labor, and I wanted to see if Carlynn could come over here, to Silas Memorial, to be with her.”

“I’ll get that message to her.”

“Right away?” he asked.

“I’ll call her, and if she’s there, she’ll get it. If not, I can’t say when.”

“Try to find her, please. And ask her to call me. Liam Sommers.” He gave her the hospital number. “Have her ask the operator to page me.”

His pager buzzed exactly twenty minutes later, when he was getting up his courage to walk down the hall to room twenty. He picked up the phone.

“It’s Carlynn, Liam,” she said. “I received your message and got a ride to the hospital. I’m in the lobby. Is Joelle all right?”

“I’ll be right over,” he said. “We can talk there.”

She was sitting in the lobby near the windows, balancing her hands on the top of her cane. He sat down in the chair next to hers.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked. “And what on earth happened to you?”

“Joelle was interviewing a battered woman in the emergency room, and the woman’s boyfriend broke into the room and kicked her in the stomach.”

Carlynn’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “Is she all right?”

He shook his head. “She has some cracked ribs and she’s in premature labor,” he said.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Carlynn said. “Not this early. And your face? Your finger?”

“I punched the daylights out of the guy who kicked her,” he said. “And I’m paying for it now.” He held up his throbbing hand.

“Good for you!” Carlynn looked pleased with him. “What’s the prognosis on Joelle, do you know?”

“They’re trying to stop the labor,” he said. “I thought it might help her to have you with her.”

“Why not you?” she asked.

“I’m not a healer.”

Carlynn looked down at her hands where they rested on the top of her cane. “I believe that, right now, you can probably do more for her than I could.”

He felt annoyed. She was always trying to push the two of them together as though Mara didn’t exist. “Do you understand my dilemma, Carlynn?” he asked.

“I understand that you and Joelle are willing to sacrifice your own happiness for someone who doesn’t need you to make those sacrifices,” Carlynn said, and he recoiled from her suddenly forceful tone. “And I’m willing to bet,” she continued, “that if Mara could talk, from all you and Joelle have told me about her, she wouldn’t want you to make them, either. She’d want Joelle to take care of you and Sam the way only a woman who adores you both can do.”

“I thought you were supposedly trying to heal Mara,” he said. “Or have you just been playing with Joelle? Playing with both of us?”

“I’ve been working very hard,” Carlynn said. “But you’re right. It hasn’t been Mara that I’ve been attempting to heal. She doesn’t need my help, Liam, I’ve known that from the start. It’s you and Joelle who need healing. Look at Mara. She’s always smiling. Have you ever seen her appear to be suffering?”

He didn’t respond. They both knew the answer to her question.

He stared out the window, collecting his thoughts. “If I give in to my feelings for Joelle,” he said, “it feels like I’m betraying my wife.”

“You’re not abandoning Mara, dear.” Carlynn’s tone softened. “You and Joelle can’t possibly hurt her by loving each other, and you don’t need to be divorced for you and Joelle to be married in your hearts. The happier you are, the more strength you’ll have to give to Mara. And to your little boy. I believe you have a responsibility to your child…to your children…to live a full and happy life.”

“Children.” He repeated the word more to himself than to her.

“Right now,” Carlynn leaned forward, her arms folded on the table, “you have a choice. You can go be with Mara, who feels very, very little, and who will be smiling whether you’re there or not. Or you can go and be with Joelle, who still feels everything—fear and love and worry—and who is feeling all those things right now as she prays to hold on to your child. You decide who needs you more.”

“Will you go see her?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I will. But I can’t take your place, Liam. Not at her side, and not in her heart.”

He left the lobby, but he didn’t go near the Women’s Wing for fear that someone would corner him to tell him that Joelle was asking for him. There was someplace else he needed to go first.

Mara was sleeping when he went into her room at the nursing home. He closed the door behind him, wanting privacy with his wife.

“Mara?”

Lowering the railing on her bed, he sat next to her as she opened her eyes. She smiled at him, let out her squeal, and he leaned forward to kiss her.

“I need to talk with you, honey,” he said. He reached across her body for her right hand, the hand that would feel his presence. “I’m struggling, Mara,” he said. “I love you. I’d give anything to make you whole again. You’ve been so wonderful for me. You’ve given me so much joy.” He ran his free hand over her too-long hair. “And a beautiful son,” he said. “The years we spent together were truly the best years of my life. But they’re over now, and I need to let go of them.” He smiled sadly. “You’ve already done that, in your own way, haven’t you?”

She was staring at him, her eyes huge and riveting, but her smile had not changed.

“I’ve fallen in love with Joelle, Mara,” he said. “We have one really huge thing in common, and that’s you. We both love you. We both want to take care of you. And I want you to know that I’ll always be here for you. I’ll never stop visiting you, no matter what else happens in my life.”

He ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “But I’m having a hard time letting go of you,” he said. “I don’t want to feel as though I’m betraying you. I love you so much.” He looked hard into her eyes. “I wish you could give me a sign, somehow. Squeeze my hand. Blink your eyes. Let me know it’s okay for me to move on.”

He studied her, and she smiled at him with the same vacuous smile that meant nothing other than the corners of her mouth were upturned. It was the only sign she was able to give him, and the only sign he needed.

Letting go of her hand, he brushed a strand of her hair back from her face. “Thanks, honey,” he said. Then he leaned forward to kiss her goodbye.







39






“ONE THING YOU’VE GOT GOING FOR YOU,” LYDIA, THE NURSE who was taking care of Joelle, said as she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from her arm, “is good blood pressure.”

Joelle nodded from the bed in one of the antenatal rooms, but didn’t open her eyes. If she opened her eyes, the room would start spinning again.

Carlynn was at her side, holding her hand, and she was grateful for the stabilizing force of that gentle grip.

“It’s 7:00 p.m.,” Lydia said. “Am I correct in assuming you don’t want anything to eat?”

Joelle nodded again, but this time with a smile. “You’re correct,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll want anything to eat ever again.”

The magnesium sulfate made her feel hot and sick, as she knew it would, but she welcomed the drug into her veins because it gave her baby a chance to stay inside her longer. The monitor strapped to her belly let her know the baby was still all right; she could hear the comforting sound of the heartbeat, the whooshing reminding her of the underwater sound of whales or dolphins trying to find their way home.

“You don’t have to stay here,” she said to Carlynn without opening her eyes. “I’m pretty boring.”

“I’m not here for the entertainment,” Carlynn said, and Joelle managed another smile.

She was trying hard to stay calm. That seemed important, somehow, as though her calmness could prevent her cervix from dilating one more centimeter. Three or four centimeters would be “the point of no return” in a woman experiencing premature labor, Rebecca had said. She would be delivering her baby, then, ten weeks early, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. They’d given her a first shot of betamethasone, just in case, but that would take time to have any effect on her baby’s lungs.

She should call her parents, but she didn’t want them to worry or to come down to Monterey just to watch her lie in bed with a monitor strapped to her belly. If it looked as though she was going to have to deliver, then she’d have someone call them, but not before.

Even though she knew every nurse in the unit, and each of them had come in to see how she was doing, she still felt lonely. And no one—not her parents, not the nurses, not even Carlynn sitting next to her—could take the place of the person she was longing for.

Joelle could hear Lydia moving around the room, and she imagined the nurse was checking her monitor and the IV bottle. Suddenly she heard a voice at the door.

“May I come in?”

Liam. Her eyes flew open, and the room gave a quick spin before settling down again. Liam was poking his head in the open door, and she felt tears burn her eyes, she was so happy to see him there.

“Sure,” Lydia said, heading for the door. “Buzz me if you need me, Joelle.”

Liam walked into the room, and Carlynn let go of her hand and stood up.

“Since Liam’s here, I’m going to take a break and get a cup of tea, dear, all right?” Carlynn asked her.

“Of course, Carlynn,” she said. “Thanks for being here.”

Liam held the door open for Carlynn, then walked around the bed to sit in the chair she had vacated.

“Hi,” he said.