Sand Castles (20 page)

He meant "millionaire"; Zina understood that and resented his implication. "No, no, I'm not one of
those,"
she said with spirit. But her indignation evaporated right after it appeared. Obviously she was behaving suspiciously. What else could he think?

He looked at her intently again, this time with a kind of studious frown, as if she were a painting in a gallery and he were trying to decide what she was all about and whether she was worth buying. Finally, he said, "I'll walk around to the back with you. My name's Dave Ferro," he added, extending his hand.

"I'm
... Zina Hayward," she replied in a trance.

She let him shake her hand and was struck by how very civilized it all was. How hard could it be, she wondered as she accompanied this courteous, kindhearted man around the side of the house, to look at his Jim and decide for herself? She was so close. After twelve years, she was so close.

If Dave's Jim wasn't her Jimmy, she was making a vow on the spot to give up her endless, hopeless, consuming search for him. She would divorce Jimmy Hayward in absentia or whatever it was called, or have him declared dead—which he would be to her, for all intents and purposes.

She would soon know.

****

Zack was apoplectic.

He was stuck on Route 195, waiting with everyone else for an accident ahead to be cleared up. He wasn't that far from the crash site—he could see the flashing strobes of emergency vehicles from where he sat in a fury of apprehension—but he may as well have been in the middle of the
Atlantic
in a raft without oars.

His sister was in
Providence
.
God in heaven
, Zina was headed for Jim. The
Titanic
and the iceberg were a more suitable match!

Stopping in earlier at the shelter, Zack had received the news from Sylvia herself: apparently Zina had asked to be relieved of her watch because she had urgent business in
Providence
.

He'd nearly burst a blood vessel when he heard that. "Business? What the hell
business?"

Sylvia hadn't liked his tone and had answered, "Your sister didn't say, and I did not ask."

Her
tone had implied that if Zack were a halfway decent brother, he'd already know the reason.

So how had Zina figured it out? Everything was going so well. What had tipped her off? She had her cats, she had her cause, she seemed to be completely preoccupied. Where the hell had things gone wrong? He wasn't going to come up with the answer to that question, not sitting in traffic twiddling his thumbs. His only hope was that when Zina went to the house on
Sheldon Street
—and he had no doubt that she'd been able to find the address—the crew would already have left.

How bitterly fortunate that he had offered to work on Saturday in exchange for taking the afternoon off. What if he'd been at the house, blithely building an addition for her bigamist husband? The thought was so horrific that it was almost laughable.

Would she ask a neighbor where she could find Jim? Zack didn't think so. His sister belonged to a more reticent era when women were—well, more reticent. She had the soul of a handmaiden, and it amazed him, simply amazed him, that she had decided to have urgent business in
Providence
.

Dave led Zina through an arch carefully carved out of a ten-foot hedge and into a scene filled with happy people. The trail of barbecue smoke sifting through the scent of lilies was evidence, if evidence were needed, that an idyllic beach party was in full swing. Guests were sitting, eating, milling, moving around. A group of children, seated at a long table covered in a blue-checkered cloth, were chattering noisily as they waited for food. Behind them all, an arc of white beach framed the picture-perfect
moment
.

Zina was so intimidated by the scene that she froze in her tracks. Sensing a newcomer, a graying Irish setter wandered up to her, sniffing her dress and finding cat. The guests themselves were more discreet. Some of them must have been observing her, surely, but Zina couldn't have said which ones; she was too frightened, too shy, too completely focused on picking out Jim from among them. She scanned unseeing past the women in her search for the man. She tried to tell herself that if Jim
were
there, she had every right to know it, but the sense that she was intruding was both profound and mortifying.

"Boy, he was here a minute ago," Dave said to her as he looked around. "Frank!" he called out. "Where's Jim?"

A man who looked a beefier version of Dave and who was wearing an apron that read
Sue the chef, I'm just the sous-chef,
said, "He went in the house for more supplies. You havin' surf or turf?"

"Steak for me."

Frank held up a thick slab speared on a fork. "The usual? Just past raw?"

"You bet."

With great fanfare, Frank slapped the filet mignon on the grill. Flames flared up around it dramatically as Frank wiggled the raw meat back and forth for no apparent reason that Zina could see. Suddenly she couldn't stop staring at the grill; it seemed the safest place to look.

"Ah, here's my sister," said Dave. "Hey, sis! C'mere and meet Zina."

Zina turned to see a ve
r
y beautiful, very pregnant woman, wearing a maternity top in a shade of mauve that flattered her black hair and dark eyes, approaching them with a smile.

'This is
Charlotte
, my big—and I mean,
big
—sister," Dave said by way of an introduction.

Compressing her lips in mock anger,
Charlotte
swatted his shoulder and said, "Knock it off, or I'll sic John on you." She turned her very curious gaze on Zina. "Nice to meet you," she said, holding out her hand. "Are you with this clown?"

Dave said chivalrously, "I
wish.
We met out in front."

"Oh!
" said
Charlotte
.

It was clearly Zina's cue to explain why she was there.

If she could have clicked her heels three times and returned home, that's what Zina would have done. This was so not the time, so not the place, to look for a lost husband. Her breathing was becoming quick and shallow; she glanced at the back door one last time in desperation. Jim didn't emerge; a woman did.

Dave called out, "Wendy! Where's that no-good husband of yours?"

"Husband?" Zina murmured, and then she went woozy.

"Coming right behind me, I think."

The screen door opened again and Dave cried out, "Yo! Jim. Over here."

The man had a cluster of beer bottles locked in the fingers of each hand; he was edging through the door backward, pushing it open with his butt. "What's up?" he said as he swung around.

Zina was face to face with the one man, the only man, that she had ever loved.

He saw her—of course he saw her, how could he not see her, she hadn't been present a minute ago—but there was no shock of recognition, no bolt of fear, nothing but a look of mild curiosity.

"Jim? It's me. Zina," she said, dizzy from her multiple shocks.

The woman named Wendy said sharply, "Zina who? Jim, who is she? What does she—"

"I've waited so long, Jimmy," Zina said in a soft wail. "I couldn't wait any—"

And that's all that she was able to get out before her world, already whirling around her at warp speed, went blissfully black.

****

Wendy stood by as Dave lowered the recovering woman onto a cushioned chaise under a tree. All around her people hovered, murmuring their concerns and dismay.

She felt like a paramedic, keeping her siblings and especially her mother at bay and shooing the kids away—but in the meantime she was fighting wave after wave of suspicion and jealousy. It was so obvious—despite Jim's lack of concern—that the pale blond woman and Jim shared a history. She had seen it in the woman's face.

It was now brutally clear to Wendy what Jim's secret was. Zina was the sin that he hadn't been able to own up to, hard as he had tried. He'd had an affair after all, despite his shocked denial when Wendy had posed the question to him.

Was he in the middle of the affair still?

Bastard
.

Wendy's cheeks were on fire. Her head thrummed with the sound of her raging pulse, and her breath became locked in her body. Those anguished protests by Jim, those sudden wild bouts of lovemaking—they weren't about him and Wendy at all, they were about
her,
the woman lying in the chaise longue right under Wendy's nose. Why else would she have chosen this occasion, this gathering of everyone Wendy loved, to publicly force the issue between Jim and her?
Obviously
they'd been having an affair. They still were, which is why she'd known about the party. My God, the woman was outrageous, and Jim was a—

Bastard!

"I'm... so... sorry," Zina said, looking only at Jim.

Jim looked at her, looked at Wendy, looked back at her. He
looked
completely baffled.

And so did everyone else. Everyone was waiting for a simple explanation. Clearly
no
one thought the woman was sorry because she had fainted in the middle of their birthday party. Wendy saw it all: saw her mother and Charlotte exchange a look; saw her brother Frank glance resignedly back at the filets mignon he'd abandoned on the grill; saw Dave, still crouched at Zina's side, glance up at Jim with a stiff, dawning look on his face.

It was Wendy who was forced to break the unnerving silence. In a voice tight with fury, she said to the woman, "Are you all right?"

Zina sat up and gave Wendy a wobbly, full-lipped smile. Her paleness, coupled with her blond hair and blue eyes, gave her an ethereal look that made Wendy wonder whether perhaps she hadn't jumped to a horrible conclusion. The woman didn't look
... lusty enough, somehow, to go after someone else's husband. She was truly beautiful, there was no question about that—the stares she was getting weren't just from curiosity—but mostly the woman looked miserable and very possibly ill.

Maybe it was all a mistake. "Can we get you some water?" Wendy asked, less unkindly now. "Or orange juice?" The woman was so pale. Could she be diabetic?

"Thank you
... a little water, maybe," Zina answered in a whispery croak.

Dave jumped up and hurried back to the house to perform the errand, and Wendy decided that whatever it was that Zina had to say, it shouldn't be to the gathered horde.

"We can use some air here. Will everyone
please
go back to what he or she was doing, please, I'm begging you,
please
?" she said with fierce politeness. "We don't want the lobster to be dry, and I smell burning
steak,"
she added with a particularly icy glare at her brother Frank, who had pushed his bulk up to the front of the crowd.

Everyone moved off with the exception of Jim and her mother.

Wendy gave Grace Ferro a verbal nudge, which was all she dared. "Mom, please," she said in quiet anguish. "This isn't your concern."

"Of course it is," her mother said. Turning to Zina, she said in a completely matter-of-fact voice, "Why have you come here?"

People had to answer Grace O'Byrne Ferro; she rarely left them a choice. Zina lowered her gaze, and Wendy was not surprised to see a tear roll out.

"To see if Jim Hodene is who I thought he was."

"And is he?"

Zina nodded. Another tear rolled out. Wendy didn't know what to think. Zina apparently wasn't having an affair
with Jim at the moment; so when had it been?

"Who, exactly, do you think he is?" Wendy's mother asked gently.

For an answer, Zina looked up at Jim and said, "Oh, Jimmy—how could you?"

Alarm bells went off for Wendy everywhere at once. "Stop asking questions," she commanded her mother, taking her roughly by the arm. "Stop it right now."

Scandalized, Grace yanked her arm free of her daughter's grip. "Don't you dare grab me that way! I'm your
mother
and don't you forget it."

Zina staggered to her feet and tried to intervene. "No, please don't fight, not because of me! I didn't know, I didn't know that he'd married again—"

" 'Again'?" Wendy said, whirling around on the pale beauty. "What are you talking about?"
She turned boggle-
eyed toward her husband. "Jim, what's she saying? That you were
married
before?"

"What're you, nuts?" he said to Wendy. He looked completely at sea. "I'm married to you."

"Then what's she
doing
here?"

"How should I know?" he said, exasperated. "Ask
her."

Grace intervened. "What's your name—Zina? Zina, you're coming with me inside."