At the end of the meal, Delora looked across the table at Franklin, and he knew she was asking him if they should remain in the dining room to tell the girls about Presto. He mouthed the word library, and Delora stood up.

“Let’s go into the library, girls,” she said. “Your father and I want to talk with you.”

Franklin led his family across the foyer into the library, dreading the conversation he knew was coming.

Delora and Carlynn sat on the love seat near the window, while Franklin and Lisbeth opted for the wing chairs. The girls looked apprehensive. They were rarely invited to participate in family discussions such as this.

“You tell them, Franklin,” Delora said.

Franklin looked from one daughter to the other. “Presto is very sick,” he said.

Both girls glanced in the general direction of the kitchen, where they knew Presto slept by the stove. Neither of them spoke.

Clearing his voice, Franklin continued. “I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

“No!” Carlynn cried, instantly in tears, and Delora pulled her close, trying to smooth her unsmoothable hair.

“Hush, darling,” she said. “It will be all right.”

Lisbeth’s hands were locked on her lap and she sat motionless, quiet. But her eyes glistened.

“Tomorrow,” Franklin said, “we will take him to the veterinarian to have him…put down.”

“Killed?” Carlynn wailed. “Please don’t, Daddy. Mommy?” She looked at her mother with hope.

“He’s suffering, Carlynn,” Delora said. “He’s having trouble breathing, and you know how he can hardly walk these days.”

“He’s nearly blind,” Franklin added. “And we want to end his misery, Carly. It’s not fair to make him go on like this when we can help him die, so he doesn’t have to be in pain any longer.”

Carlynn nestled against her mother’s breast, sobbing quietly now, and Franklin saw the tears in Delora’s eyes. She was not an insensitive woman, just limited in her capacity to love. Lisbeth’s mouth was downturned and quivering, as though she was struggling to control her emotions, and a fat tear spilled from each of her eyes. Franklin walked over to the ottoman in front of her chair and sat down on it. Leaning forward, he covered her hands, still folded in her lap, with his own.

“Are you all right, Lizzie?” he said.

Lisbeth nodded, biting her quivering lip. She was brave. Stoic. He felt a lump in his throat. No one appreciated this child except him.

But that was not exactly true. Carlynn drew away from her mother to see the pain in her twin sister’s face. Jumping up from the love seat, she ran across the room to hug her. “I won’t let them do it, Lizzie,” she said, as though she had forgotten she was only a child.

But Lisbeth knew the limitations of a seven-year-old. She nodded, as if she was humoring her sister, but Franklin saw that the sorrow never left her eyes.

That night, Carlynn slept on the kitchen floor, her arms locked around Presto’s failing body. Franklin and Delora tried to force her to come upstairs to bed, but she wouldn’t budge from the dog’s side.

“Let’s let her be,” Franklin finally said to his wife. “Let her have one last night with him.”

Delora agreed. She watched as Franklin covered the little girl with a comforter, squatted down to kiss the top of her head, and stroked Presto’s side. Then he and Delora went to bed.

The dog’s rasping breaths could be heard throughout the mansion. Carlynn spent the night whispering words to him, of comfort or love, or pleading, no one really knew, but the fur on his neck grew wet from her tears.

In the morning, everyone in the house awakened to the sound of Presto’s barking. They came downstairs to find him sitting up next to Carlynn, his breathing even and strong. Carlynn put her arm around the dog’s broad shoulders.

“Presto’s hungry,” she said simply, and Lisbeth ran over to embrace first the dog, then her sister.

The vet would later say that he must have misdiagnosed Presto’s condition, that he had judged it to be far more serious than it actually was. Maybe that was so.

And maybe it wasn’t.







7






THE CALL CAME JUST AS JOELLE WALKED IN THE DOOR OF HER condo that evening. Dropping her purse and appointment book on the kitchen counter, she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“I’m trying to reach Shanti Angel.” It was the voice of an older, possibly even an elderly, man—a deep, rich voice with an edge of refinement.

“This is Shanti,” she said.

“I’m calling you for Carlynn Shire,” the man said. “She got a message that you would like to meet with her?”

“Yes,” she said, “I would.”

“And you have some special connection to her?” he prompted, and she repeated the story of her birth to him.

“Well, Dr. Shire said that if you’d be willing to come over to the house, she’d be happy to talk with you.”

“Does she remember me?” Joelle asked.

“She says she does.”

Joelle couldn’t help but smile. “I’d be happy to come to her home. Just tell me where and when.”

“She could see you next Tuesday at noon.”

That would be right in the middle of her workday, but she didn’t dare ask for a different time.

“That will be fine,” she said. “What is the address?”

“Are you familiar with the Seventeen Mile Drive?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Everyone knew the Seventeen Mile Drive. The Carmel entrance was not that far from her condominium. She’d only been on the drive a few times, though, since there was a fee for the privilege of entering it. It was visited mainly by tourists who wanted to view the wonder-filled coastline of the Monterey Peninsula—and by the residents lucky enough to live along the route.

He gave her the address, telling her the house was near Cypress Point. This would be no simple “house,” she thought.

“When you turn into the driveway,” he continued, “you’ll need to press the buzzer on the column to your left. You’ll see it. I’ll open the gate to let you in.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and just let the fellow who takes the toll for the Seventeen Mile Drive know that you’re coming here, to the Kling Mansion,” the man added. “I’ll let him know to expect you. You won’t have to pay.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That will be great.”

She hung up the phone and wrote down the appointment time in her book. It would be interesting to meet Carlynn Shire, if nothing else, and it would be fascinating to hear her side of the dramatic story of her birth. She would tell Carlynn about Mara and see what she had to say. But she wouldn’t tell Liam what she was doing. He would think she’d gone off the deep end.

And, she thought, he might be right.

The following day, Joelle found herself sitting at the nurses’ station in the maternity unit next to Rebecca Reed, the perinatologist in charge of the department, as they both wrote notes in medical charts. Joelle wished she could tell Rebecca about her pregnancy. From the corner of her eye, she watched the doctor’s slender hand move across the page as she wrote, her handwriting far neater than most of the other physicians’ in the hospital. Even when she wrote, Rebecca had an air of confidence, of taking charge. She was thirty-nine and beautiful, her long blond hair pulled back from her face with a clip at the nape of her neck.

Rebecca had helped Joelle find a fertility specialist when she and Rusty were going through their failed attempts at conception, but, although Rebecca was a skilled and respected physician, she possessed little warmth. She was not a nurturing sort of doctor, not a hand-holder. Joelle would have loved it if, right then, as they were sitting side by side, she could have confided in the doctor. She couldn’t bring herself to talk with her that easily, though. Joelle could converse with almost anyone, but she’d never felt completely comfortable around Rebecca. The few times they’d been at parties together, small talk had been awkward and difficult.

Still, until she moved away, which she had definitely decided to do, she wanted Rebecca to be her obstetrician. Her plan was to tell the doctor when she was twelve weeks pregnant, at the end of her first trimester. Joelle, herself, would have scolded any woman who waited that long for a first prenatal appointment, but she simply didn’t want to let anyone in on her pregnancy until it was absolutely necessary.

Rebecca’s pager went off, and she took the time to close the medical chart in which she was writing and carefully cap her pen before removing the pager from the waistband of her skirt to check the display. Reaching for the phone on the counter, she glanced at Joelle.

“It’s the E.R.,” she said, and Joelle nodded.

Writing her own notes, Joelle listened to Rebecca’s end of the phone conversation, wondering if the case might be something in which Liam would need to be involved. She couldn’t tell, since Rebecca was doing more listening than talking.

Rebecca hung up the phone. “Have to run,” she said, standing up. She smoothed her skirt with both hands, then picked up her notebook and pen. “They’re paging Liam, Joelle, but you might eventually need to be involved in this. A car accident’s coming in. A pregnant woman, thirty-eight weeks, and her husband. Husband’s okay, but the woman isn’t expected to make it. I’ll have to meet them in the E.R. to see if we can save the baby.”

“Let me know if the baby ends up coming here,” Joelle said. If the child survived, it would most likely be rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit, and the case would certainly become hers.

Right now, though, it was Liam’s. She pictured Liam trying to handle a situation in which a wife dies, a baby lives, and a husband grieves. Standing up, she closed the medical chart and rested it back on the lazy Susan. Too close to home for him, she thought. This would kill him. She headed down the hall in the direction of the emergency room.







8






LIAM WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE E.R. TO HEAD UP TO THE CARDIAC unit when Rebecca Reed whisked past him. She touched his arm as she rushed by.

“Don’t go yet,” she said. “We’ll need you.”

“What’s going on?” He heard the sirens outside the doors of the E.R., but Rebecca didn’t stop to answer him. Typical Rebecca.

One of the nurses who had overheard their conversation stopped briefly near Liam as she headed toward the front door.

“It’s a car accident,” she said, glancing in the direction of the ambulance. “Husband is all right, but the wife went through the windshield and died on the way in.” She started walking again, then added over her shoulder, “And she’s pregnant.”

Liam stood near the corridor that led from the E.R. to the rest of the hospital and felt the numbness come over him. This happened to him every once in a while. It was not an emotional numbness, although he supposed that was part of it. Instead, it was a literal paralysis that started in his feet and rose to his chest until he could barely pull any air into his lungs. He stood there feeling thick and stupid and wanting to escape. He could leave and pretend he had not been caught in time to handle this case, to deal with the husband who was “all right.” That husband would never be all right again.

Unable to move, he watched as they wheeled the woman into the E.R. toward one of the treatment rooms. Except for one streak of dried blood on her temple, her injuries were strangely invisible, and her belly was huge. Her husband walked next to the gurney, limping, perhaps from an injury suffered in the accident, and clutching his wife’s lifeless hand. They were both in their thirties, Liam guessed.

One of the nurses left the side of the gurney to step over to Liam. “Take care of the husband, okay?” she said, and he wondered if she could see the panic in his eyes. “He’s physically fine, but emotionally—”

“I’ll do it.”

Liam turned at the sound of the voice behind him. Joelle.

“I heard what was happening,” she said, touching his hand, then quickly drawing her fingers away. “Since the baby will eventually be in my unit, I thought I’d come down and take over. If that’s all right with you, Liam.”

He doubted his face could mask the gratitude he felt. She knew. She’d heard about the case, and she knew he would not be able to handle it. And she’d come.

“Thanks,” he said, or tried to say. His mouth was too dry to get the word out, but Joelle had already moved past him.