Sand Castles (28 page)

"You're up bright and early," he said, kissing the top of her hair before sliding the sports section out of the
Pro Jo
that lay in front of her on the granite island. "Where you off to?"

She answered lightly, "Where else? Home Depot. And then from there to that big kitchen and bath place off 95. You did say that you'd be home all day, didn't you? Because it's easier if I don't take Ty."

"Shopping? He'd never forgive me if you did. Sure, I'll be around. Until three or so, anyway."

She had no idea where he planned to go, and she didn't ask. "Can you rustle up breakfast for the two of you?"

"Yup," he said, folding his arms over the lower half of the sports section as he scanned the headlines. "Bacon and bacon, our favorite."

"Okay. I'll let him know I'm going and then I'll beat it; I want to get there before the crowds."

"Yup. Have fun
..." he said, thumbing the first page.

It wasn't until she turned north instead of south on Route 95 that Wendy became certain that she was going to go through with her impulsive decision to track down Zina on the Internet. If that Zina was a different woman altogether than the beautiful one in the pale blue dress who had turned everyone's life upside down in less than five minutes, then
... so be it. Wendy would know that Zack was a fraud in cahoots with Zina; that everything he'd told her so far was a lie. She wouldn't rejoice, but at least she would know.

But if the woman Wendy found was the woman she'd seen, then Wendy's world would not be able to be put right side up again, and she had virtually no idea what she'd do next. She tried not to think of it, tried not to work through the misery-inducing "What if?"

One step at a time,
she thought. One step at a time.

With a street atlas in hand, she drove north and then west through a typically bucolic stretch of New England countryside and eventually arrived at a nondescript duplex that was fronted by a circular dirt-and-gravel drive. The house, a dark brown dated affair from the sixties, was flanked left and right by trees of oak and pine, with no neighbors in view. It was an isolated house on a lonely stretch, and Wendy wouldn't have wanted to live there. She was a town girl, unused to eerie quiet and untraveled roads.

A pot with a small red geranium in it sat alone on the banister of the small front deck that spanned both doors, but that side of the house had no car parked in front of it, so Wendy pulled in on the other side behind a vintage Dodge with grand bumpers of pitted chrome, and sat pondering what to do.

She had expected to find a yellow Civic in front of the house, period. The realization completely shook her, and she was still dealing with it when the door opened on the side where she had parked. An older woman, heavyset and with a baggy, wrinkled face framed in gray frizzled hair, clung to her doorknob as she craned her neck to see over the Dodge. It forced Wendy's hand; she got out of her car and came forward, smiling sheepishly.

"Good morning," she said, keeping a nonthreatening distance away. "I'm looking for Zina Hayward."

The woman said, "She's not here. Sundays she goes to the shelter. Right after church, she goes." She glanced back inside her house at something, perhaps a clock, and then said, "Ayuh, she'd be just out of church around now."

"The 'shelter,' did you say?"

"Down the road. It's not marked, though."

"It's not?"

The woman shook her head. "They hang up a sign, before you know it people would be dropping off cats without bothering to come in. And then what happens? Cats would be everywhere, and they go wild. It makes the problem worse. But you'll see the place when you drive by. It's a big farmhouse with peely white paint. Old-fashioned front porch; couple of rocking chairs on it. You can't miss it."

Wendy was about to try to establish whether she in fact had the correct Zina when the woman added, "Just look for a little yellow car parked in front."

****

As she drove to the shelter, Wendy tried to regroup emotionally. Apparently t
he woman who'd shown up in
Bar
rington
had used her real name. What did that mean? Nothing.
Hayward
wasn't Hodene. It would have been quicker and more satisfying to learn that Zina had stolen an identity, of course; but Zina could still be a con.

If only she wasn't a volunteer at an animal shelter. If only she were, say, some psychic at a strip mall. How much more reassured Wendy would have felt.

She parked in front of the farmhouse and took a deep breath, then glanced in her rearview mirror to see that she was all in place. Her hair was okay, but she'd fretted away her lip color. She began a quick rummage through her bag for lipstick, then stopped herself. What was she doing? Trying to compete against Zina for looks? It was not only an embarrassing reaction, but a pointless one; Zina was clearly more beautiful than she.

With a grim smile at her misplaced vanity, Wendy got out of the car and approached the front door. A neatly handwritten note on an index card in the door's beveled window indicated the shelter's hours: at the moment, it was closed to visitors. Wendy knocked gingerly and waited to find out her fate.

Through the window in the door Wendy saw Zina round a corner from a room in the back of the house and then pull up short.

It was like peering at a looking glass and seeing a taller, blonder, paler, and more forlorn version of herself. Were they in fact two women in a duplicate relationship? Wendy couldn't believe that; they were so unlike. She must have looked fierce in her staring, because suddenly Zina turned and fled.

Wendy knocked harder. "Zina!" she called out, startled by the shrillness of her own voice in the Sunday quiet of the country. "Zina, come back here! We have to talk!"

She knocked again and waited. Nothing. She glanced around the wraparound porch, determined to go through a window if she had to; but she didn't have to. After a moment Zina returned and, with a look of dread, admitted her.

They stood in awkward confrontation in the shabbily elegant hall, and then Wendy said bluntly, "I want to hear your story."

"How did you find me?" Zina said, wide-eyed with fear.

"I went to your house. Your neighbor sent me here."

"My house? Did
Zack
give you the address?"

Wendy was distressed by the question, she wasn't sure why. She shook her head and said, "I found it on my own. Where can we—"

She felt something brush lightly against her and jumped: it was a small orange cat, rubbing everything and everyone in reach.

Zina scooped up the young cat and said, "I'm cleaning cages. Come in the back."

They entered a room with two double rows of cages, all but one of them filled with cats. The cages ended at a wall on which hung
a large sepia photograph
of a dour-looking woman in turn-of-the-century dress and holding a cat on her lap. No question,
the woman in the photo
was watching everything that moved, cats and women alike.

"That's Florence Benson," Zina explained, following Wendy's startled gaze. "She left the house and her fortune, such as it was, to be used to shelter abandoned cats. She wanted the shelter to be called Flo's Cat House—pretty wicked humor for someone who looked like that, we all think."

Without smiling, Wendy took in the cracks in the walls and in the ceiling. She saw a pair of capped-off wires dangling from where a chandelier had once hung. Clearly the shelter wasn't above selling its assets.

"How long has this been a shelter? It looks as if you're on lean times."

"You could say that," Zina acknowledged.
"
The endowment's not very large. But we have lots of fund-raisers: bake sales and quilt raffles and, this year, a walkathon. We're hoping that next year the walkathon can possibly make a
greater
profit."

She placed a bowl of water and one of dried food in the cage, then picked up the orange cat to put it back. The cat had different ideas: a young
Garfield
in training, it splayed out its limbs, declining to go in meekly. Zina gathered
it
into a more compact version of itself and with soothing words soon had the cat locked up again. Ignoring the food, the playful cat began immediately to rub up against the bars of its cage; it so clearly wanted its freedom back.

Looking somehow guilty, Zina said, "They don't get to stay out as much as they need. The young ones especially. We're shorthanded this morning, or I'd let this guy stay out longer."

Wendy nodded, studying Zina as she went on to the next cage and released its inmates, a pair of black-and-white kittens who were obviously siblings. The woman's movements were gentle and fluid, her voice soft and shy. Everything about her projected a sense of fragility.

She's as innocent as rain. She loved Jim madly and, I'm willing to bet, still does. Even
after yesterday. Even though he
abandoned her when she was young and vulnerable and pregnant—

Zina was no longer young, obviously not pregnant; but oh, how vulnerable she seemed.

Without looking at Wendy, Zina said, "You like cats?"

"We couldn't have pets when we were kids," Wendy admitted. "There were too many of us in a very small house. But
... yes, I like cats," she said, picking up one of the kittens. It was a few months old and in that frisky, squiggly stage. There was a world to see, and it only had a few minutes available to
check it out.

Ty had been like that when he was two: a squiggler.

Impulsively, Wendy rubbed the little ball of fur against her cheek before putting it back down on the floor, where it scampered off under the table and out of sight.

Resisting a mother's pull to follow the kitten, Wendy said, "Tell me about Jim."

Without pausing in her chores, Zina answered in a voice that had not a trace of bitterness in it, "Why would you want to know? To find out if I'm lying, or to find out if Jim is?"

Taken aback by her candid response, Wendy said, "One of you is."

"I'm telling the truth," Zina said, glancing up from the cage she was cleaning. "We're married to the same man."

"No, you
think
we're married to the same man," said Wendy. She simply could not be more generous than that.

"My brother thinks so, too."

"That's only two. Are there any more of you? Family, friends, a mailman or a papergirl?"

"From back then? I wouldn't even know, anymore," Zina said, removing a chewed-up section of newspaper that had lined the cage and stuffing it in
to
a trash bag.

"You're saying that there's absolutely no one who can corroborate that you were married to
... to my husband twelve years ago?"

Zina moved the bag to the next cage. "Zack and I have always kept pretty much to ourselves," she explained.

I'll bet.
"Do you have a marriage certificate? A wedding photo? Anything at all?"

"Of course I have," Zina said with more spirit than Wendy had seen so far. "I have a marriage license from City Hall in
Springfield
, and one from
St. Joseph
's." She added with a faraway smile, "I really wanted to be married in church. But we didn't go on a honeymoon the second time."

"Where did you go the first?"

"You'll laugh: Plimouth Plantation."

Well, of course she'd say that, thought Wendy. It went with the doctored photo.

"I suppose it was an unusual place to go," Zina admitted. "Jim wanted to go to
Bermuda
. But I just love American history. And besides, we didn't have much money. We were so young."

Wendy was knocked back a little by the revelation about Jim until she remembered that she herself was the one who had revealed the fact of
Bermuda
—to Zack. So
Bermuda
didn't prove a thing.

But, God, they were quick. Her next question to Zina was posed less gently. "Why did you wait twelve years to find him? Why did you wait until he'd won a lottery?"

"Because I didn't know his name," Zina said, blinking her blue eyes in wonder at the question. "He changed it."

Ah. Right. It was hard for Wendy to keep that alleged fact in mind, no doubt because she had been calling herself Hodene for so many years. Annoyed at her own lapse in investigative expertise, she said, "Why didn't you divorce him after a while? For Pete's sake, you could have had him declared dead by now!"

Nodding in agreement, Zina blinked back tears. "I was sure he'd come back. I really was."

Wendy had to steel herself to keep up the interrogation. "Why did he leave in the first place?"

The shrug of Zina's thin shoulders could have been heartbreaking—but Wendy was trying particularly hard to stay heartless just then.

Zina said with a sigh, "Zack thinks that Jimmy just wasn't ready to settle down."

Hard as she was making herself, Wendy could not follow up with questions about failed pregnancies. She herself had gone through the utterly heartbreaking experience. Twice.