Sand Castles

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  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, showing up in front of everyone yesterday? Him, going 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 around Zina. It was taken at Plimouth 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 felt an aching solitude, a painful 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.

  Chapter 20

  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 th
e 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.

  "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 the woman who'd shown up in Barrington 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.