Sand Castles (27 page)

"Well, obviously you're bored," Wendy suggested, trying to lighten his mood. "Do you want to take the little dinghy out for a sail with me?"

"You don't know how to sail." He declined to mention that he didn't, either.

"I know a bit about it," Wendy said. "Enough to get us out and back."

"No."

"Granted, we wouldn't win any races, but—"

"Mom, I said
no,"
he said, flashing an upturned palm at her.

"Okay; no, then." She sighed, exasperated and uncertain how to reassure him without unnerving him more.

She stood there, mindlessly watching him level the fortress and then Zamboni the sand smooth.

"Could I still be an altar boy?" he asked without looking
up.

"Still be—if what?" she said uneasily.

"If you and Dad weren't, you know: married." He glanced up at her. "Would God allow me?"

"What a question! Your dad and I
are
married!"

"I know, but—would He?"

"Yes," she said, looking down at her son with an aching smile. "He wouldn't have any problem with you, either way. Ask Grandma, if you don't believe me; she knows all the rules."

Tyler
stood up and slapped the sand off his shorts. "I was just wondering," he explained offhandedly; but he looked relieved.

Wendy wanted to brush off the granules of sand still stuck to his knees, but she didn't dare. All she could do was swear to him that she was married.

And offer him lunch. "Since Dad's off to the airport, how about if you and I go out for pizza?" she volunteered, despite having two refrigerators jam-packed with food.

"Yeah. Pizza. Good idea."

They plodded over the sand to the house together, and Wendy yielded to her impulse to reach an arm around her bookish and introspective son. She saw evidence of her genes in him, after all: in the way he mulled and assessed and chewed
on
life as if it were a leather bone. For better or worse, she was in him, too.

Tyler
didn't slip his arm under hers, as he once might have done freely; but he didn't pull away, either. In Wendy's present mood, that was no small comfort.

****

When Jim got back from the airport, Wendy was in the process of wrapping two dozen raw beef filets in aluminum foil and stacking them in the Sub-Zero pull-out freezer. They had enough food left over to survive a nuclear war.

"Have you eaten?" she asked her husband automatically.

"Thanks; I had something at the airport."

With all this
stupid
food?
she wanted to scream. It wasn't a good sign, the instant hostility she felt.

She kept her voice calm as she said, "We have to talk, Jim."

"Not about yesterday," he warned. "The subject's over and done with."

"Not exactly. There's been a new twist."

"What, are we ratcheting up from the bizarre to the surreal?" he said, going to the fridge and pulling out a beer.

Wendy followed his movements, looking for signs, she didn't know of what. Fear? Amusement? Indifference?

"Call it what you like: Zack Tompkins dropped a bombshell on me earlier today."

"Zack? Was
he
here? What is this, Grand Central Station?" He set the bottle on top of the fridge and decided to take out a plate of cold shrimp, after all. "Do we have any cocktail sauce left?"

"In the door."

He was completely unperturbed. Wendy regarded his casual grousing, his predictable appetite, and his halfhearted attentiveness as life buoys floating around her in the sea of her uncertainty. She began to believe that she was going to live; she was going to survive.

More hopefully now, she said, "Zack showed up at the house this morning. He said he was there to make up some time, but I had the feeling that he came because he figured today was his best chance of catching me alone; he could count on my being there to check on their progress. Anyway, it turns out that he and Zina are in on this thing together."

Jim had half raised the Heineken to his lips when he stopped. His eyes got big. "You're shitting me.
Zack?"

"And no other. He told me that Zina was his sister, no less. He told me—" She interrupted herself to pose a question. "Did he try to get money out of you? Because that was my theory. I figured that he did, and you blew him off—although I
wish
you had told me—and yesterday was just their way of upping the ante."

"Huh."

His look went blank, which made Wendy feel as if she'd grabbed for a life ring and missed. She tried again to reach that place where she could feel safe.

He rubbed his chin as if he'd missed a spot shaving and said, "You know, now that you mention it, he did confront me once in the basement and begin babbling something about his sister. He never used her name, or I would have made the connection by now. I thought he wanted me to find her a job or something. I wasn't sure
what
he was driving at, to be honest."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I guess I didn't think it was important enough to bother mentioning. How's that for dense? You're assuming that he was shaking me down? Boy, I'm going to have to think about this."

Jim carried the plate of shrimp to the granite island but left the beer and the cocktail sauce behind. He sat on one of the high, backless stools, batting his fist softly against his chin, seeing nothing, blinking occasionally. The sun was pouring through a bank of windows and shining in his eyes; Wendy couldn't understand how he was managing not to squint. He simply looked
... blank.

After a while he shook his head. "Nope. I still don't see how I was supposed to figure out that he was trying to blackmail me. Christ," he said dryly, "the guy could have been more clear about it."

He blew out air in a pent-up sigh and said, "We'll call the cops, of course."

"Will we?" Wendy took a seat on the other side of the island so that she was eye to eye with him.

"Yeah,
we will," he said, surprised. "You have a better idea?"

Wendy was stunned to find herself wishing that she did. She simply wasn't ready, despite the evidence pointing to Zack's guilt, to drop a net on him
yet
.

So she hedged. "We have no idea who he is, what his real name is, or where he lives," she pointed out. "Apparently he's taken a small apartment somewhere around here that rents by the week; he was very vague when the subject came up. It's probably a good bet that he's disappeared—with Zina—by now. Do you truly think the police can do anything?"

"Probably not," he admitted, then added, "What did he want from
you?"

"Oh, money, no doubt about it. I don't think he cares if it's from you or me or us."

"You're sure that's what he wants," Jim mused. "I don't know. This just doesn't feel like blackmail.
Her, s
howing up in front of e
veryone yesterday? Him, g
oing to my wife
after
the fact?"

If I am your wife.

The thought came and went like a shooting star, leaving Wendy struggling through the dark, murky waters of her uncertainty.

"It's pretty incomprehensible," she admitted. "You're not President of the
United States
, after all; he can't be concerned about launching a story that, true or not, might be able to bring you down."

"I'm a nobody," Jim agreed with a shrug and an amiable smile.

Ignoring the quip, Wendy said flatly, "Here's another idea. What if Zack believes he can get money
... because he's telling the truth?"

She had once read that when people lied, they tended to look either up and to the left, or down and to the right. She couldn't remember which direction, now, but it hardly mattered; Jim was able to look her straight in the eye as he said, "He's
not
telling the truth. He's lying. Maybe blackmail's his game and maybe it isn't—but he's lying."

It was hard for Wendy to believe that Zack was lying, but it was impossible for her to believe that Jim was. Nonetheless, like some scientist trying to arrive at the truth, she said next, "He showed me a photo."

Jim blinked. "Of?"

"You with your arm ar
ound Zina. It was taken at Pli
mouth Plantation, where he claims you two went for your honeymoon."

Jim's laugh was loud and hearty. "Plimouth Plantation! Give me a break! I'd rather spend my honeymoon in a potato field in
Maine
. Where's this photo?"

"I didn't think to ask for it," she admitted, flushing.

He frowned and said, "Too bad. It'd be evidence." He walked around to where she sat and stood next to her, his jeans grazing her bare leg. He leaned both forearms on the polished granite of the island and, after a sigh, glanced back over his shoulder at her.

"C'mon, Wen," he said softly. "We have to get past this. Winning the lottery hasn't been half the strain on us that this ridiculous concoction has. If you'd rather not call in the cops, then fine. Just
... let's do whatever it takes to put this behind us."

He pushed himself into a standing position and turned to her, first hesitating, then daring to brush a lock of hair away from her face. "Please, Wen," he whispered from under pulled-down brows. "I love you. It's killing me to have us be this way. I can't ask you to forgive me—because I haven't done anything wrong this time. I feel so helpless. What can I do? What will it take?"

"I don't know," she said in agony. "I don't
know.
I wish I could turn back the clock. I don't want the money; I truly don't. If we didn't have the money, he wouldn't have shown up in our lives."

"Him?" Jim said shakily.
"Her."

Wendy bowed her head, closed her eyes, felt his arm slip gently around her shoulder. "Where's Ty?" he murmured.

"Across the lane, with the Doppler boys. They came and asked him to watch videos with them. They look like nice kids. Ty was willing, so I let him go."

"Good. Come to bed with me, Wen," he said, drawing her up from the stool. "This has all been such a strain
... come. Let's act like the husband and wife that we are. I want us to be close again."

It had been too long. She f
elt an aching solitude, a painfu
l disconnection from love and trust and everything that she held dear. She let him guide her into their vast new bedroom. As he drew the curtains, she undressed. As he undressed, she climbed into bed. She lay on his pillow, not hers, and inhaled his scent. The touch of him, the feel of him
... she needed them all. She was entitled to them all.

She was his wife.

Her first sensation was of his leg lying over hers, pinning her with sticky warmth. Wendy opened one eye. The sun was high, pouring through the big bay window. But it was June; the morning had barely begun.

She listened to Jim's rhythmic, satisfied snore. He'd been wildly pleased that they had made love not only on the previous afternoon, but again in the middle of the night besides. He'd wanted proof that she believed him, and she had offered it. She could still hear his muffled groan of release in her ear and his breathless—and unsettling—murmur afterward:

I've missed this so much. You haven't been very interested ... not since the addition began. I know, I know: we were surrounded. But still. I've missed this. I've missed you.

His gentle reproach had wounded her when he said it, and she had fallen asleep feeling misunderstood. But in the back of her mind, where unformed thoughts eddy and whirl, a new and uneasy realization was beginning to take shape that her husband was right: her drift away from desire had begun around the time that the crew had shown up.

But not just any of the crew.

Troubled by the thought and urged on by another one, Wendy slid her leg out from beneath Jim's and eased her upper body out from under his embrace. She remained silent at his half-asleep query about the time and was relieved when he rolled over, away from the sun, and burrowed into his pillow.

Without stopping to make herself coffee, she crept down the hall into the birch-paneled study and turned on the computer that Jim had set up there. With nervous glances over her shoulder, she clicked her way into the pages of an online phone directory and in less than minute found information that left her feeling both exhilarated and somber: a Zina T. Hayward was listed in
Hopeville
,
Massachusetts
, a stone's throw from
Worcester
.

The question for Wendy was, did the name really belong to the fair-haired woman who had crashed the birthday party, or had she stolen it from some unsuspecting nurse or teacher or little old lady in Hopeville?

Wendy was determined to find out She showered and dressed and ate, and by the time that Jim, sleepy-eyed and smiling, ambled over to the coffeemaker, she was ready to move.