Sand Castles (41 page)

Wendy looked away. She utterly despised him.

Seconds later, she stopped in her tracks, and so did her heart: ahead of her she saw Zina and Tyler, each of them clutching a
Del
's frozen lemonade, each of them walking with a stiff and zombielike gait. Between them walked a monster with hairy arms and a round face. She didn't need to have known that his hair was black or that his skin was blotchy, or that his neck was short and thick.

She knew without those details that he was the one. She'd know him anywhere.

Zina and Tyler were frozen with fear, and only in a second wave of comprehension did Wendy know why: the thug had a weapon inside the fist that was jammed in his pocket
.  A gun, without a doubt.

Jim turned around to see why she'd stopped. It must have shown in her face, because he swung his head back to confirm what she was looking at. "Ah
, shit
,"
he said, and then, like a horse out of the gate, he took off and ran in the opposite direction, leaving Wendy to face the three others alone.

Did the brute recognize her? It didn't matter, because her son did. His face broke out in a rash of different emotions, chief among them, relief. Wendy couldn't bear it. Without thought, she broke into a run at him, her shoes sliding in the loose sand and making her progress unbearably slow. He was so close; he was so far.

Before she could reach him, her son was knocked down, fallout from the force that hit the monster from behind: Zack had hurled himself like a cannonball at the man, knocking him sideways into Ty. While Wendy gathered up her son and while Zina screamed uncontrollably, Zack and the monster locked forces, rolling around in the sand, swinging and punching, eventually fighting their way to the nearest castle and knocking down one tower after another, flattening walls and filling in moats, drawing real blood on a make-believe battlefield.

All around them, children screamed and parents ran with them for cover. A lifeguard with a zinc-covered nose was first to try breaking up the melee; his white nose got instantly bloodied. The monster landed a huge blow to Zack's chin, flattening him before taking off. Horrified, Wendy fell to her knees at Zack's side, but he staggered to his feet after the man, who was well down the beach, incredibly fast for someone his size. Wendy watched him scramble over the rocks and then over the beach wall and run up the hill, with Zack behind.

In anguish, Wendy clutched her son and tried to comfort Zina as the figures on the walkway got smaller and disappeared. Sounds replaced sights: Zina's cries and children's screams; a plane overhead, a boom box nearby. And on the boulevard feeding the beach, a pack of motorcycles leaving town. Among all of it, Wendy was able to pick out the sound of one motorcycle revving up and taking off, one motorcycle roaring out of the parking lot, one motorcycle crashing into something bigger than it was.

Soon there were more sirens, many sirens, of ambulances and fire trucks and rescue vehicles, the paraphernalia of a city used to crazy behavior
and reckless bravado, even on an early summer
afternoon. Some of them stopped at the entrance of Cliff Walk, and some of them kept on until they reached the pavilion. All of them had lives to try saving.

****

Wendy sat in the soaring
, skylit
Courtyard in the east wing of
Newport
Hospital
and thought,
How in keeping with a city of mansions.

She was still shell-shocked, and Tyler, too; but they had been left standing. They were the only ones. Zina had been admitted for observation. Zack was being stitched up and his kidney was about to be scrutinized in an MRI. The thug—a just-released con whose name was, improbably, Hallowell Hix—was in surgery having multiple bones put right after being peeled off the rocks at the bottom of Cliff Walk.

And Jim, whose name was not Hodene or even
Hayward
, but Hix—Jim would never walk or talk or even think again.

"I don't know who will make the decision to remove him from the respirator," Wendy told Dave in an undertone. She was a little ways away from her son, keeping her gaze locked on him as he nestled in his grandmother's arm on one of the benches nearby. "I'm not his wife. Zina's in no condition, even if she were his wife: there may be someone else out there between Hix and
Hayward
. I really don't
... know who will do it," she said, still coming to terms with it all.

"That's an issue for the medical staff," her brother said, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close for comfort. "Don't worry about it, Wen. It's not today's problem."

Wearily, she said, "They've stopped the bleeding in Zack."

Dave smiled and said, "I know. You've told me. Twice."

"It wasn't as bad as they'd feared. Did I tell you?"

"Yes," he said, putting his other arm around her. "Twice."

"Thank God," she murmured into her brother's shirt. She began to shake again. "Thank God."

"That Mizzner seems like a good guy," Dave said, undoubtedly to reroute her thoughts.

Wendy straightened, nodding emphatically. "He is. He is." She smiled and said, "Why
am
I repeating everything I say?"

"Because you know I'm thickheaded," quipped Dave.

"You aren't; I am. To have lived with Jim so long
.
.
.."

"Hey, we all were taken in. He was good at living lies. He'd had plenty of practice, even before he met you."

"I'm glad you were there when Detective Mizzner explained it all. I'm hazy about parts of it. Why didn't Hix come after Jim right after we won the money?"

"He was still in jail in
Massachusetts
. Wasn't much he could do. It had to make his blood boil, doing time while his brother—the one who'd actually pulled the trigger and
wounded
the
store clerk
—had not only
got away
but was enjoying such dumb blind luck. We're lucky Hix rented a car instead of stealing one; it made Mizzner's job easier. Hallowell Hix: what an ijit," Dave said, shaking his head in wonder.

"I still can't believe that Jim would let himself be pushed into doing all those robberies by a brother. A
brother,
Dave."

"Half brother, I expect; their mother was a hooker, don't forget. Anyway, you've seen Hix up close and personal; he's the proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla."

Bitter now, she said, "Baloney. Frank doesn't make you go around robbing and
shooting
people."

"Frank's a teddy bear, not a gorilla."

It was true. She reflected a moment and then said with a wince, "Do you think Jim did anything like
... that
... while he was living with
me?"

Dave shook his head. "By then he'd ditched his brother. The crime spree, that was before Zina and of course during Zina. Even Zack wasn't on to Jim's double life. The guy really was good; look how we all bought into that childhood history of his. In Jim's own pathetic way, he was trying to clean up his act once he met you. He just didn't know how. He was pretty much a lost cause by then."

Shuddering, she said, "We talk about him as if he's gone."

"He is, Wendy
. H
e is. And you have your whole life ahead of you now."

****

She touched her fingertips tenderly to the sling that held his bandaged arm, unwilling, still, to think of him lying at the edge of Cliff Walk and bleeding profusely, both inside and out.

"How
many stitches?"

"Ah, in the forties, give or take," said Zack, brushing off the idea.

"You'll have a scar," she said, distressed.

He gave her a crooked smile. "Will you mind?"

"Oh, Zack."

She slipped her hand under his good one; he held it tight, reassuring her with his strength.

"I was sure he had a gun
," she said.
"
I never imagined a knife."

"I think that in his twisted way, Hix was trying to stay out of reach of the law," Zack said. "I'll bet he would have been perfectly happy to take Jim's money and retire to
Boca Raton
."

There it was again: the money. Wendy pulled her chair closer to Zack's bed and said in a low whisper, "That money is cursed. Look at the pain it's caused. Zack, I'm afraid of it."

His smile faded. Alarmed, she shut up—she just wanted, really, to hold his hand and look at him for the few minutes that she had left with him—but he had something
he wanted
to say.

"I don't think there will be any money," he said, "not after all the lawsuits are resolved. From what I hear, a couple of those teens that got mowed down by
Jim's
skidding bike were badly hurt. Then there's the woman in the car he hit. I'm sorry, Wendy."

"Why?" she asked, genuinely bothered by his sympathy. "I told you that I was afraid of
the money
. I've always been afraid of it."

"I was part of your pain," he said, dropping his head back on the pillow. He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry for that."

She studied his face, this strong, silent, completely loyal man who had taken her off-kilter life and righted it for her.

"You might have been part of my pain," she acknowledged. "But now you're my cure, and my only hope. I love you, Zack," she said softly. "I love you."

He was drifting off, but with a smile. She sat there, her hand in his, until the nurse came and removed her gently but firmly from the room.

Dave Ferro pulled up the hood of his jacket against the driving snow and waited on the darkened porch of the duplex, wondering whether Zina had got his message.  She wasn't answering the door, though her little yellow Civic was parked in the drive, covered in snow.  He rang the bell again.

Nothing.

Great
.  And his cell phone was in the car, parked at the bottom of the drive because he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to squeeze past the Civic in the drifting snow.

And him in deck shoes.  With no socks.  Just to look cool.

Great.

He sighed.  Planning ahead had never been his strong suit, but this time he thought he'd done well, allowing a ridiculous amount of time because of the weather, and even running into a Stop and Shop en route and buying a bunch of red carnations wrapped in crinkly cellophane
—
and bound with a sprig of mistletoe, an unexpected but welcome bonus.

And now she wasn't home?  How was that possible with the snow and with her car in the drive?  He hoped she hadn't gone off to the shelter with some pal who owned an SUV, because Wendy would have his head on a platter for not having confirmed the pickup with Zina personally.

The fact was, around Zina he felt awkward and shy, a totally unique experience for him.  Talking to her on the phone would have been painful in the extreme.  It had been so much easier to leave a message.

Thirty-one, going on twelve
, he thought, disgusted with himself.

He was going to have to trudge back to his car for the phone and try calling her. Short of breaking in, he didn't know what else he could do. He turned, and at that moment the adjacent porch light went on and an older woman poked her head through the cracked-open door.

"
Bell
's busted.  Just
knock
, for Pete's sake," she said, and headed back to her blaring TV program.

"Oh, okay, sure," Dave said, feeling stupid.  He knocked, and when Zina still didn't come to the door, he became a little alarmed.  She seemed to have come a long way since the multiple traumas she'd endured, but there was always an unspoken concern about her.  It was hard, even for Zack, to predict how his sister would react to any given event.

  Dave had tried to make conversation with her on the two or three occasions that their paths had crossed, but it was always an uphill climb.  She was shy, he, shyer, the times they were face to face.

He pounded harder on the door, and after a moment Zina swung it open to a gust of wind and a rush of snow.  It took her by surprise, and she staggered behind the force of the door.  Laughing at her own unexpected frailty, she said, "Dave!  Why are
you
here?  In this weather?"

"You didn't get my message a couple of days ago?"

"That you would pick me up on Thursday for a tree-trimming evening at Wendy's house?  Oh, yes.  You said to call if there was a problem, but there was no problem.  So I didn't."

"Thursday!  No, I said Wednesday."

"No you didn't.  Thursday.  Come listen."

She led him through a cozy and colorful living room to an answering machine that sat on a counter in the small kitchen.  Nearby was a sewing machine set up on the kitchen table, where she was working on a huge quilt that spilled over the table and draped down to the floor.  She looked happy and still half-immersed in her labor of love.  She didn't even ask about the carnations he was clutching.  So much for making an impression.  What had he been thinking?