Sand Castles (30 page)

"Sorry," she said, looking down. She turned back to the cleaned cage and closed the door, then stared blankly inside it. Something was different.

It had no cat. "Oh! Walter," she murmured, and turned back to gather him up from Wendy's lap.

But Wendy had put Walter down on the floor and was facing Zina. She looked as if she were in a trance. No, that wasn't the right way to describe her. She looked as if she were a battlefield, and enemy armies were marching on her.

Wendy began to say something, stumbled, tried again.

"I shouldn't have put you through that," she said, searching Zina's eyes but then looking away. A huge battle was going on, Zina could see.

She smiled wanly. "All my life, Zack has looked out for me," she explained, even though Wendy had to understand that now. "Before. Then. Since. See?"

Wendy nodded and said in a strained voice, "Too well."

Zina didn't say anything after that, because she couldn't imagine what else Wendy would want to know. All she knew was that the cats were hungry and needed their cages cleaned. She was becoming anxious, as she always did when the creatures she loved were being denied. "Would you like to see the marriage certificates or anything?" she asked awkwardly. "Because otherwise—"

But Wendy was shaking her head and, Zina could see, trying not to cry.

"There
is
something I'd like," Wendy finally said, "and that's to take Walter home. He's available for adoption, isn't he?"

****

Wendy had been determined not to put Walter back in the cage. He had become too important to her, too intimately bound with a life-altering event. It had taken a call to the director of the shelter—and a generous check—to spring him on a Sunday, but Wendy had got great value for her money: a feather toy, a doughnut-shaped bed, a cardboard carrier, a bag of
li
tter, and an overweight, scared, but hopefully someday contented cat.

He didn't look very happy in the cramped carrier, so Wendy pulled over, took him out, and set him in his doughnut.

He still didn't look happy.

He will be, she vowed. She understood full we
ll
that the imprisoned cat had become important in a symbolic way: he was a material witness in her transformation from Wife in Denial to Seeker of Truth.

Had
she just heard the truth? She didn't see how it could be anything else. Zina would have to be a world-class actress to have managed a performance like that. Besides, Wendy instinctively felt that con artists were good at faking sympathy, not at needing it.

Zina might be deluded. She might be living in a fantasy world. There was that possibility. But it was so remote that Wendy brushed it aside, and that brought her to Zack. Obviously he had to be telling the truth, as well—either that, or he was equally deluded. And what were the odds of that?

The fact remained that Zack was at best a blackmailer with a loyal heart and a horrific childhood. But he was still someone who had sauntered up to the bubble of Wendy's existence and had rammed a spear through it, and it was hard—impossible—for her to get past that. She was bitterly dismayed by him, and for a multitude of reasons, some of which bewildered her.

She turned onto Route 195, where traffic was heavy—headed for the
Cape
and points beyond; headed, perhaps, for Plimouth Plantation. The thought of the tourist attraction particularly bothered her, she wasn't sure why. It was like a hangnail. She wanted to tear it away, never mind the pain.

By the time she pulled up to the beach house
in
Bar
rington
, Walter had relaxed enough to curl up into a light and wary doze.

Catnap, she thought with a smile. She could use one herself; any brief respite from the relentless pounding of emotions would do.

It wasn't yet three and Jim's car was gone. He had warned her, but where was Ty? Obviously with him, but where? She carried her new and nervous pet, the first she'd ever had of her own, inside and set him down, then retrieved his belongings and arranged them in the sunniest room of the house, a wide, heated breezeway between the garage and the family room. Near the French doors, a couple of painted wicker chairs with fat cushions flanked a small table; Walter went up to one of the chairs and blithely began sharpening his claws on it, tearing through the paint.

Oh, shit
, she thought, remembering too late the no-pets clause in her lease. She would have to straighten that out with the agent. And get a few scratching posts.

"Hey, you," she said softly to her new charge. "This is not the way to make a good impression." She dropped down into a crouch and rubbed her fingers together, and fat, lonely Walter came over and butted her hand. She smiled again, reveling in the simple bond between them, and vowed to send another check to the shelter, and tried not to think of the agonizing confrontations that lay ahead of her.

The cat's purr resonated in the empty house but then became drowned out by a drone on the bay that increased to the roar of a tornado before abruptly dying to an irritating and still earsplitting glug: another hot-rod boat was tearing up the waters of
Narragansett Bay
. Wendy hated the things. Muscle boats, Ty had sa
id they were called—noisy, gas-
guzzling pleasure boats that, as far as Wendy could tell, brought pleasure to absolutely no one within hearing distance of them.

Annoyed, she glanced out the bay window above the kitchen sink where she was filling a water bowl for Walter. The purple and banana-yellow boat was tied to a mooring directly off their beach. At the helm was her husband
... the man who might be her husband
... the man who used to be her husband. He was bare-chested, sickly white and with a spread of pink, as was Ty, who was in the boat with him. They were laughing, they were loud. Wendy could feel the blast of their adrenaline from where she stood.

She squinted hard and stared unbelieving at Jim, seeing him for the first time and stunned to realize that she didn't have a clue who on earth he was. It had nothing to do with the boat—God knew, she was used to his insane impulse buys—and everything to do with the fact that he was apparently a bigamist.

Still, the contrast between the loud, garishly painted boat and the image of Zina in the quiet of the shelter was great enough that it kicked Wendy out of her confusion and into a state of mounting fury. Everything seemed to be pointing to his guilt.
Everything.

And yet.

She looked at Ty, looked at Jim, and couldn't believe that a man who loved his son could have so much contempt for women. It was impossible—still—for her to believe. She needed absolute proof.

She walked outside, determined to keep her fury under control, and waited with fists planted firmly on her hips as her son scrambled over the side of the boat and waded ashore.

The boy was in a state of rapture. "Mom, Mom!" he yelled happily as he forced his spindly legs through the resisting water. "It's ours, look! It's way past cool! And it's ours! Dad just bought it in
Newport
. It's ours! He let me
drive
it," the boy fairly screeched. "It'll do eighty, ninety miles an hour. Oh, man, you should
feel
it! And it's ours! I can't believe it!"

He turned around on the beach and waved at his father, who was still on the boat, shutting it down. The sudden silence was a mercy, but it made Ty's declaration all the more audible.

"Woo-woo!" Ty shrieked, pumping his arms in the air. "Dad, you're the
best.
You're the
best
!
"

On Monday morning, Zack showed up with the rest of the crew, drank coffee with the rest of the crew, and strapped on his tool belt with the rest of the crew. It was a risk, going back to work after Wendy had dismissed him, but only to his ego. He knew her well enough by now to feel fairly sure that she wouldn't give him the boot in front of the others. His hope was that she wanted to be done with the house more than she wanted to be done with him.

Nonetheless, he was so unnerved by the sight of her car pulling up that he tripped on the staging plank on which he was poised outside the second floor, a first in his career as a housebuilder.

Christ
almighty
, I'm going to get myself killed
.

It would solve one problem, anyway: the growing and entirely mystifying feelings he had for her. It had been forty-eight hours now since she'd sent him away, and he'd thought of almost nothing and no one but her. Granted, part of that was because Zina had mournfully forgiven his deception (although she'd begged him not to call her for a little while to give her time to get over it). For better or worse, ending the charade with his sister had left his emotions free to roam—and they hadn't had far to go.

It was all so new. Him! Zacharias Stanford Tompkins, dedicated to the proposition that all women are created equal and, give or take their talent in bed, should be treated that way. He did not—he did not—want one of them stepping forward and compelling a closer inspection. He did not, especially, want
this
woman stepping forward. The chances were so good that it would be with a bat in her hand.

From outside the second-floor window he noticed that
Tyler
was sitting in the front seat of the Taurus. He saw the boy wince when Wendy slammed the door with extra ferocity as she emerged from the car. Zack was convinced that he'd been spotted, but, no; she was apparently just mad on her own.

When Scottie yelled up from ground level, "Hey! Zack!" that's when she saw him. She looked in the direction that Scott was looking; her eyebrows first went up and then went down.

"Zack?"

"Yessum," he called down with ironic sheepishness.

Her jaw dropped enough for him to notice it from up there. She recovered and said tightly, "Can I see you a moment? Down here?"

"Yessum," he drawled.

She went inside, slamming the screen door probably off its hinges.

From inside, Pete stuck his head out the window. "What the hell was that all about? Why does she want to see
you
?”

Climbing back inside the house, Zack said blandly, "Da
rn
ed if I know."

She hadn't ordered Pete to send him packing. She had expected that Zack would just drift away like the con artist she believed him to be. Interesting, how she was assuming that he'd do the right thing for the wrong reason. And way off base, of course: he was still determined to do the wrong thing for the right reason.

He found her in the kitchen. She was wearing slacks and a tailored white blouse, so she wasn't there to work. In a frigid undertone she said, "I did not expect to see you back here."

"And yet here I be."

He wasn't really worried that she'd make good on her threat to call in the cops; she hadn't looked confident enough for that. Sooner or later she was going to put all the pieces together and figure it out. He wanted to be there in case she was missing some elements of the puzzle. In a way, he was on a death watch of a marriage. It didn't particularly fill him with joy.

Her color was high with emotion as she said, "Have you spoken to your—Zina?"

"Yes. Why?"

She looked confused by that. "Well, I'm sorry it had to happen, and I'm still not
... I need to
...
why
are you here?" she asked in obvious distress. "If it's for money—"

"I'd be sitting on Jim. You know why I'm here." A rush of exasperation whisked away caution and he said, "Because of you. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

He saw the look he was giving her singe her consciousness, and then he saw her blink and look away. "I have to go," she said, almost in a plea.
"You
have to go. I'll figure out what I figure out," she added incomprehensibly.

"For God's sake, Wendy, if you need proof, if you refuse to believe me, then hire yourself an investigator. I'll pay for the guy!"

She hushed him and looked around, askance. "What, and have some sleazy PI sell the story to a tabloid? Are you insane?"

"You think the world would care? If Jim were Elvis or you were Madonna—maybe.
Believe
me, nobody cares. Nobody but you, me, and my sister. Even Jim doesn't care! If he did, he'd be punching my lights out, he'd be—"

"Stop! Shh, stop, oh, please," she said, surprising him by clamping her hand over his mouth. "Ty's in the car. I don't want this to come out until I
know—"

If it were anyone else, Zack would have slapped away the hand—but it was Wendy, and, God help him, he fell under the spell of her scent. He decided to wait for her to calm down mostly so that he could relish the nearness of her, the contact of her flesh and his.

The pleading look she gave him tumbled into confusion as she removed her hand and suspended it, tentative and shaking, inches away from his lips.

"You
have
to go," she urged in a whisper. "I'm begging you, Zack. Just
... don't be here when I get back. Please. I'm begging you."