The Shadow Wife by Diane Chamberlain Read Free Book Online Page A

Asilomar State Beach. It was viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment and with total credibility by California’s alternative practitioners.
    “Yes,” her mother said, “but they didn’t call it that back then. What was it called?”
    Her father looked out toward the new birdhouse for a moment. “The Carlynn Shire Medical Center,” he said.
    “Right,” said her mother. “It was just getting off the ground then. Penny Everett showed up at the commune one day, without a voice. She came there to get away from stress, because her doctor said that was what was causing her hoarseness.”
    “She went on to be in Hair, ” her father added.
    “Who did?” Joelle was getting confused. “Carlynn?”
    “No, Penny,” her mother said. “And she knew she couldn’t get a part in Hair if she had no voice. She’d been an old friend of Carlynn’s, and so she called Carlynn and asked her to come heal her voice. Carlynn dropped everything and came down to the commune.”
    “Of course,” her father added, “we always believed some other force brought her there right at that time, because it was just the day after she arrived that you were born. If she hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”
    The thought made her shudder despite her skepticism.
    Her father continued. “So, she’d been there a few days when—”
    “A whole week,” corrected her mother. “That’s why Alan Shire and her sister were so freaked out.”
    “Whatever,” her father said. “She’d been there a while, and of course we had no phone or any way for her to reach her family without leaving the commune, so I guess her husband and sister got worried about her and drove down to Big Sur to find her.” He looked at his wife. “What was the sister’s name?” he asked her.
    “Lisbeth.”
    “Oh, right. Alan Shire and Lisbeth, the sister, got a cabin over near Deetjen’s Inn—remember Deetjen’s?”
    Joelle nodded quickly, wanting him to get on with the story.
    “They checked into the cabin,” he said, “then started looking for the commune. We weren’t the only commune in Big Sur, as I’m sure you remember, and they probably didn’t know where to start looking. It was dark, I guess, by the time they got to the right one.”
    “Actually, it was only Alan who got there,” her mother said. “The sister had stayed behind in the cabin.”
    “That’s true. And Carlynn was in Penny’s cabin then, but she’d been in our cabin just an hour or so earlier. Rainbow.” He grinned. “Remember it?”
    “Sure.” She smiled at the memory of the small, dark cabin. She could smell it right at that moment—the scent of ashes mingled with the earthy, musky odor inevitably present in a wooden cabin surrounded by trees and fog. What a strange existence she’d had for the first ten years of her life!
    “We’d had her come over to Rainbow a couple of days after you were born because we thought you were running a fever,” her father continued. “ You thought she had a fever,” her mother corrected him.
    “I still think she did,” her father said. “I think it disappeared as soon as Carlynn touched her.”
    Even Joelle’s mother shook her head at that, but Joelle felt moved. Her father had always been a nurturer, and she liked to picture him, a kid of nineteen, skinny little Johnny Angel, aching with worry over his baby girl.
    “Well, anyhow,” her father said, “she went back to Penny’s cabin after curing you—” he winked at her “—and Alan Shire showed up and spirited her away without letting her even say goodbye.”
    “And the next day, Carlynn and her sister were driving on Highway One, looking for a phone or a market or something, and they didn’t know the roads, and they flew off the side ofthe cliff in the fog. The sister, Lisbeth, was killed, and Carlynn nearly died herself.”
    “Scared the shit out of us because we knew that could happen to any one of us on those roads,” her father said. “Those