Sand Castles

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Head low, the boy slunk past her in a full-body pout. The woman turned to watch him go, and that's when she saw Zack with what had to be a fierce look of attention on his face, because she did a double take, and her cheeks flared up in a very flattering way. She marched right over to the windows and slid one of them up.

  "Good morning," she said, a little tersely. It sounded exactly like, "What's it to you?"

  Zack gave her a sheepish hint of a smile and said, "Mawnin'."

  "You're new here. I'm Wendy Hodene."

  "Zack," he said in minimal response.

  It was a weird sensation, having her talk to him through the double glass of the thrown-up window while from the shoulders down they were open to the breeze. He had an impulse to drop low and do his talking through the opened part of the window, but he resisted it and instead walked away. He wanted no more to do with the possible second victim of the Hayward-Hodene fiasco than he did with young Tyler—arguably its third victim.

  Seething all over again at the risk of the carnage to come, Zack began pulling off some siding farther away from the windows as he waited for the man of the house to make an appearance downstairs. He was aware that his heart had begun pumping harder and his adrenaline to flow in anticipation of the imminent meeting, and it infuriated him. He wanted to be calm. Collected. Merciless. Above all, satisfied.

  He worked, and he waited.

  After a while, Pete returned with another compressor hose, and they replaced the leaky one and began work on the second-level floor. Zack knew, everyone knew, that the first priority was to get the shell enclosed and the addition watertight. It had been a wet spring so far, and there was no reason to assume that the pattern would change.

  The three of them worked quickly and with little conversation, which was fine with Zack. The less said about himself, the better. In the meantime, he kept his eye on the big blue Expedition parked on the street. He'd figured out that the monster SUV belonged to her husband, the Taurus to the wife. Wendy, yeah. She looked like a Wendy, somehow. A nice, normal, unaffected mom who obviously hadn't let that mind-boggling jackpot go to her head. With any luck, Zack would be in and out of her life without her missing a beat.

  And if it turned out differently than that ... if it all blew up in their faces ...

  That's the breaks. If she dumped the bigamist, so be it. At least she'd still have half—after the adjustment for Zina—of the winnings. And she'd have her son. Which is more than Zina had the chance to have, damn it.

  His thoughts plunged back to that horrifying day when he drove his sister, bleeding profusely, to the emergency room. It still amazed him, how something so normal as having a baby could go so agonizingly wrong. He beat back the memory for the thousandth time, but immediately another, even more horrific one rushed in to fill the void: blood everywhere, on the floor, against the windows, in his eyes, over her, blood.

  His parents, bloody and broken.

  "Hey. Zack. You listenin'? I said sixty-five inches, not fifty-five."

  Pete was holding up the too-short two-by-four that Zack had just cut, and the look on his face was no longer harried but pissed.

  "Agh, sorry," Zack said.

  "You okay?" Pete asked. "You look a little green around the gills."

  "Not at all. Green's my natural color," said Zack, unwilling to take it to a personal level.

  "Yeah, well, okay then. Let's get on the ball. Like I tell the boys, wood don't grow on trees."

  "Measure twice, cut once. I know," Zack quipped, but the reprimand stung. He was used to working within millimeters of accuracy, and he'd just blown a cut by a full ten inches. Jesus, man, focus. You lose this job, you lose your entrée.

  Of course, Zack could've just shown up at the Hodenes' door, but he wanted, if possible, to avoid destroying innocent lives. He turned to his work with a vengeance, and when he looked up again, it was lunch break. The Taurus was still there, parked on the street where it had been all morning—but, hell and damnation, the Expedition was gone.

  Pete and Billy took off in different directions, leaving Zack on his own. He wasn't savvy about the best place to grab a quick meal, but he'd noticed a little café on Wickenden Street called Hurry Curry that might fit the bill. It. was a warm day, despite the threat of rain, and he remembered that the eatery had a couple of outdoor tables. He'd been holed up in his workshop for months—except, of course, for the necessary foray out for casual sex—and sitting outside for a few minutes, watching the flow of humanity pass back and forth, would be just the lift he needed right now. He was feeling tense and down in the dumps.

  Hurry Curry was no more than twelve feet wide, with a take-out counter in the back and three fake-marble-topped bistro tables by the windows, in addition to the two outside. A handful of people were waiting to have their orders filled, and Zack resigned himself to eating his curried chicken sitting on the front seat of his truck back at the house.

  But the customers were all on the run, and Zack was rewarded for his pessimism with one of the two coveted outdoor tables. He sat down with his Sprite and his curry and dug in, savoring the dish, wishing there were more of it. He'd come back the next day and get two.

  He was watching a bouncy young thing—several of them, in fact; probably Brown coeds—when he was addressed from behind.

  "Hi, Zack!"

  Feeling somehow caught in the act, he turned away quickly to face Wendy Hodene. She looked friendly and approachable and—was he mistaken?—maybe contrite for having been curt earlier.

  "I see you've found one of my favorite places," she said with a winning smile.

  He accepted her unspoken apology, if that's what it was, with a pleasantry of his own. "The curry's great. I was surprised. It's such a little place."

  "You should try their tandoori combo next time," she said, still smiling. "You'd love it, even though it's not curried."

  Immediately he began to back away from any chitchat situation. His answering smile was reserved. "I like curry."

  "Oh." Looking abashed, she held on to her own smile long enough to say, "Well, I'm off to work. See you!" And then the smile went away, followed by her.

  He watched her go and was struck again by the natural way in which she carried herself. Her walk—he didn't know how to describe her walk. It was without artifice, not even remotely for show. She didn't carry herself in any provocative way or anything; she walked, basically, to get there from here. For whatever reason, he liked her walk. He smiled to himself as he bussed his own table; he could tell that he'd been alone in his workshop for maybe just a little too long.

  When he got back to the house he saw her Taurus still parked on the street, which made him do a double take until he figured out that she must have been walking to her job. On Wickenden Street, presumably? There were more than enough shops there. What had she been wearing?

  Instantly a picture of her in a clingy, swingy floral-print dress popped up in his mind, a look that seemed downright retro after the all-American jeans and T-shirt outfit of the morning. Where would she be working that required such a dress? Clothing shop? Antique shop? Herbal shop? Pottery? Futon? Ceramics? Doctor's office? Lawyer's?

  Now that he thought about it, why the hell was she going to work, anyway? Even though after penalties and taxes they were worth only a small fraction of the mind-boggling ten or so million that they seemed to have won at first blush, it was still plenty to live on without having to trek to a job in a shop on Wickenden Street. Unless, of course, she owned the shop and loved the work.

  Would he abandon furniture making if he were a multimillionaire? Zack found himself going back and forth on that. His first impulse was to assume that he'd never give up something that brought him such profound pleasure. But money changed things. Money changed people. So he couldn't quite say that he'd keep on creating heirloom pieces that he hoped people and museums would bid on frantically in the centuries to come—but he liked to think that he would.

  And in the meantime, here he was, slavi
ng for a few bucks an hour at work that bored him just so that he could shimmy up to a man he despised and squeeze him until he howled. Pisser! The afternoon wore on, and Zack's mood turned more foul. What had he been thinking? His plan was beyond cockamamie; it was insane. If Zina knew ... God. If she knew. By late afternoon, Zack had resolved to bail out and try some other way to get at Jimmy.

  "Pete, my man," came the shout from the ground. "It's lookin' good, real good."

  Zack, a box of nails on his shoulder, had been coming up the ladder on the north side of the house when he heard the yell from ground-level on the south side of the house. North, south, east, west, it made no difference to him. He'd know the voice if it came from the opposite end of a stadium during halftime at a Super Bowl.

  Careful to keep himself under control, Zack crossed the plywood floor and dropped the box of nails with a thud at Pete's feet. With both hands on the roughed-out sill, he peered at the sidewalk below. He didn't say hi, didn't say boo. He just looked down, as if he were curious about the shouting, and then he straightened up and went back to work.

  But not before letting his brother-in-law have a good, long view of the man who was going to be within spitting distance of his wife and son all day.

  Jimmy recognized him; there was no mistaking the stunned look on his face. His brow lifted and his mouth actually went a little slack. He was the kind of opportunist who was always scanning the company around him anyway, on the hunt for someone it might be useful to know. And Jimmy never forgot a face—unlike Zack, who only remembered the ones of those he loved and those he hated.

  Zack allowed himself a grim smile of satisfaction. He would remember that face, that look, for the rest of his life.

  They were ready to raise the east-wall framework. It was heavy work, but Billy was built like a linebacker and Pete had strength out of proportion to his compact size. Compared to them, Zack was out of shape: carving wood was a lot less rugged work than building a house from it. Huffing from the effort, he supported his end of the wall while Pete braced it.

  "No point in starting the next one this late; we'll knock off for the day," Pete announced after the wall was secure. Zack remembered how his own men used to love to hear those words when he had been the boss. Now that he was the help, he felt—irony of ironies—bitterly disappointed. All it had taken was that one exchange of stares. It had convinced Zack to stick with the job, stick with the plan.

  Pete took off to check progress at the other site, leaving Billy and Zack to clean up for the day. The younger man swept while Zack coiled the air hose and the electric cords. They covered the table saw, then climbed down the ladder to store the portable gear in the basement. Pete had a thing about keeping a site clean, Billy explained, which earned him a nod of approval from Zack. It was demoralizing to work in chaos, whether the help understood that or not.

  Laden with coils of air hose and cords, Billy led Zack across the torn-up yard, through a small mud shed, and into the basement, with Zack carrying the compressor behind him.

  The new part of the basement had been commandeered as a storage area for the construction crew. New windows, still in their crates, were stacked against the wall six deep. The lady really liked windows, though Zack couldn't understand why: all the views were of neighbors' houses. She must have been after the sunshine.

  Why not in the country? he wondered. Or on the shore?

  He was struck all over again by the strangeness of the Hodenes' decision to add on when they could so easily buy bigger. It was a puzzle that Zack considered important to solve.

  "Hey. Later," said Billy when they were done. He was ready to fly.

  Zack wasn't. Zack wanted to bump into the owner. Zack wanted to see phase two of the look of shock on the owner's face.

  He tried to stall by saying pleasantly, "So how long you been workin' for Pete?"

  "Coupla years," Billy said. He looked unhappy that Zack was detaining him by even so much as two words.

  "What's he like?"

  "Good," he said, glancing at the mudshed door. "Good guy."

  "Overcommitted?"

  Billy shrugged. "He can't seem to say no. Well—gotta go."

  "Sure."

  He bolted, and a few seconds later, Zack heard rubber peeling on the street in front of the house. He smiled: all young crews, all over the country, ran like hell at the end of the workday.

  He had been young and in a hurry once, but that was a long time ago. He looked around the basement and decided that, by golly, the place probably hadn't had a thorough sweep in a good long time. Humming a languid tune, he took up a broom and got to work. All the while, he kept his ears cocked for the sound of footsteps on the basement stairs.

  A few minutes later, he heard someone descending. The steps were too slow to be a kid's, too heavy to be a woman's. Zack sucked in a lungful of air and let it out as a whistled tune; it was one way of controlling the pound of his pulse.

  "Still here?" came the voice behind him.

  Ripped by contradictory emotions, Zack turned around slowly. "You bet," he said, returning the steady look with one of his own. "I want to make an impression."

  "Oh, you're doing that, all right."

  "That's the whole idea," Zack drawled. He stood there holding his broom, looking as benign as a farmer with a hoe in Kansas. Only his eyes, blazing with contempt, were at odds with his manner.

  His brother-in-law blinked, then looked past him at the stacked-up windows, as if he were counting to make sure they were all still there. He snorted, God only knew why, and said to Zack, "Pete mentioned that he'd been looking for more help."

  "He found it."

  "So I see. He tells me you're new to the area. Where you from?"

  "Up north," Zack said dryly.

  "Canada?"

  Very funny. "Worcester area. We moved there after Summerville."

  "We?"

  You son of a bitch. "Zina and I."

  "I'm sorry? Zina is ...?"

  "Ah, Jesus!" Despite his resolve and knowing he was being goaded, Zack still ended up lunging at him, catching a handful of shirt in his fist as he said with pent-up fury, "Zina: my sister. Innocent. Naive. Trusting. Betrayed. And. Still. Waiting." With a shudder of loathing, he shook the fabric out of his hand as if he'd grabbed someone's entrails by mistake, and said, "Get the picture, asshole?"

  Jimmy let his shoulders slump back to normal, gave his neatly pressed shirt a little yank at belt level, and kept on looking baffled. Obviously choosing his words carefully, he said, "You seem to have a lot of concern for your sister. Maybe you shouldn't be working down here in Providence. I used to be in real estate. I know for a fact that there's a boom going on in your neck of Massachusetts. Maybe you should be looking for work closer to home. Maybe that would be the best thing for your sister."

  "Yeah, right," Zack said, infuriated that Jimmy was continuing the pretense of being Jim. "You asshole," he repeated, kicking the broom over to the side and out of his way. He was aching to inflict some kind of physical punishment; the broom for now would have to do.

  Instantly he realized that he shouldn't have kicked the broom. He could see that Jimmy was heartened by the act; that he understood that Zack wasn't going to beat him bloody if Zack could avoid it.

  Hell! He shouldn't have kicked the broom.

  He tried to recover. "Get this straight. I'm not going—"

  A car door slammed and Jimmy jerked his head; it obviously was a car door he knew. He said hurriedly, "The best advice I can give you is to go back to your family, to your sister."

  "Oh, I will. Eventually."

  "The sooner the better. For her, I mean. Look, give me your number. Maybe I can give you some help, pull some strings, do something for you."

  "I'm open to suggestions ... Jimmy."

  It was a body blow, and Jimmy buckled under it. "Sorry, you must have got that wrong," he insisted. "It's Jim."

  "Sure... Jim. Whatever you say, Jim."

  A woman's voice called out above t
hem. "Jim? Wendy? Anybody home?"

  Family or a close friend, without a doubt. Either way, the lady upstairs had Jimmy Hayward running scared. He said in a low hiss, "Christ, will you just get out of here?" He just about stamped his foot.

  Aware that he'd regained the momentum, Zack smiled and said, "Sure, Jim. See you tomorrow. Jimmy."

  Chapter 7

  "You've talked to him, yes?"

  Zack swallowed hard and lied. "No, Zee, I haven't. I'm going to need more time."

  "More time! Zack, why?" She sounded as if she'd been trapped underwater; he could hear her gasping for air.

  "Because he's gone," Zack explained, piling it on. "I saw him load a carry-on bag into his car. I assume he was on his way to the airport." In a lame attempt to keep it light, he added, "Who knows? Maybe he's off pricing villas in Europe."

  His sister's voice came back little more than a heartbroken whisper. "This is so disappointing."

  "It's frustrating, Zee, I know."

  "It's beyond that. Zack ... I think about Jimmy constantly. I can't eat, I can't sleep. It's worse now than it was that day I came home and saw that his clothes were gone. At least then I went straight into shock. At least then there was that blessing. And I had to eat, to sleep, for the baby's sake." She let out a single, sad sigh. "So there was that."

  And now there wasn't.

  As far as Zack could tell, he had two choices. One, he could tell his sister the truth, that the bastard who married but never bothered to divorce her was now rich, re-wed, and a father—and risk the consequences. Or, two, he could stall until he was able to squeeze Jimmy for enough money to enable Zina to move far away to a happier place.

  Zack pictured his sister in sunny California, running her own program for abandoned critters. There was a kind of gentle poetry in the notion of the abandoned caring for the abandoned. He clung to that vision, because the image of a happy-at-last Zina was profoundly, incredibly moving to him.

  So, yeah, damn right he was going to stall. He would tell tender lies at this end, and he'd slash and burn at the other end—whatever it took to make the world a better place for a fragile, utterly compassionate child-woman who deserved better than the stinking luck she'd been handed so far.