She stood under the wonderful flower-draped arch, aware that there were voices, some of them loud and most of them men's, coming from the back yard. She couldn't see anyone; the privacy hedge that extended out from each side of the house was doing its job. Was one of the voices Jimmy's? She stood completely still, straining to pick his out from among the rest. She heard one that ... yes? No? Maybe? She couldn't tell, not for certain.
She continued to stand there, paralyzed by the possibilities—unwilling to pursue, unable to run. She did not want to know the truth, after all. That was her final, overwhelming decision: she didn't want to know. She loved her brother too much, and this was her last, best chance to hang on to that emotion.
I have to get out of here.
She was turning to leave when the door opened and a man, about her age and still laughing at something he'd heard, stepped out onto the landing of the set-in entry. A little startled by her appearance so near, he said in friendly recovery, "Hi. Are you here for the party?"
Breathless now with panic, Zina blurted, "No! How can I be?" Even as she said it, she realized that she was wearing what any reasonable person could construe as summer-party clothing: a pale blue linen sundress and little strappy sandals. Her effort to look as pretty as she could was coming back to bite her.
The man cocked his head. His dark eyes were fixed on her curiously, as if he thought she were someone he ought to know. "But you did come to see someone?"
"Jim?" It came out as a question, an admission of her own abiding confusion. "I think that's his name."
"Ah. He's out back, manning the grill."
"Oh. I didn't know ..." she stammered. "Maybe I'll come back some other time."
He was watching her even more curiously now and trying to reassure her with a gentle smile; he must have seen how near to tears she was. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked in a coaxing, sympathetic way.
Giving him a timid, mournful smile in return, she shook her head. He really did seem kind, and it was hard for her to break away from that.
He asked, "Would your business take long?"
"Two seconds," she murmured. "Just ... to see if he's the person I knew."
"Ah-h. You're someone from the old days," he said, cocking his head in appraisal of her. He was shutting down, becoming more cautious. "Jim's had a lot of people looking him up, ever since he became a ... celebrity."
He meant "millionaire"; Zina understood that and resented his implication. "No, no, I'm not one of those," she said with spirit. But her indignation evaporated right after it appeared. Obviously she was behaving suspiciously. What else could he think?
He looked at her intently again, this time with a kind of studious frown, as if she were a painting in a gallery and he were trying to decide what she was all about and whether she was worth buying. Finally, he said, "I'll walk around to the back with you. My name's Dave Ferro," he added, extending his hand.
"I'm ... Zina Hayward," she replied in a trance.
She let him shake her hand and was struck by how very civilized it all was. How hard could it be, she wondered as she accompanied this courteous, kindhearted man around the side of the house, to look at his Jim and decide for herself? She was so close. After twelve years, she was so close.
If Dave's Jim wasn't her Jimmy, she was making a vow on the spot to give up her endless, hopeless, consuming search for him. She would divorce Jimmy Hayward in absentia or whatever it was called, or have him declared dead—which he would be to her, for all intents and purposes.
She would soon know.
****
Zack was apoplectic.
He was stuck on Route 195, waiting with everyone else for an accident ahead to be cleared up. He wasn't that far from the crash site—he could see the flashing strobes of emergency vehicles from where he sat in a fury of apprehension—but he may as well have been in the middle of the Atlantic in a raft without oars.
His sister was in Providence. God in heaven, Zina was headed for Jim. The Titanic and the iceberg were a more suitable match!
Stopping in earlier at the shelter, Zack had received the news from Sylvia herself: apparently Zina had asked to be relieved of her watch because she had urgent business in Providence.
He'd nearly burst a blood vessel when he heard that. "Business? What the hell business?"
Sylvia hadn't liked his tone and had answered, "Your sister didn't say, and I did not ask."
Her tone had implied that if Zack were a halfway decent brother, he'd already know the reason.
So how had Zina figured it out? Everything was going so well. What had tipped her off? She had her cats, she had her cause, she seemed to be completely preoccupied. Where the hell had things gone wrong? He wasn't going to come up with the answer to that question, not sitting in traffic twiddling his thumbs. His only hope was that when Zina went to the house on Sheldon Street—and he had no doubt that she'd been able to find the address—the crew would already have left.
How bitterly fortunate that he had offered to work on Saturday in exchange for taking the afternoon off. What if he'd been at the house, blithely building an addition for her bigamist husband? The thought was so horrific that it was almost laughable.
Would she ask a neighbor where she could find Jim? Zack didn't think so. His sister belonged to a more reticent era when women were—well, more reticent. She had the soul of a handmaiden, and it amazed him, simply amazed him, that she had decided to have urgent business in Providence.
Chapter 14
Dave led Zina through an arch carefully carved out of a ten-foot hedge and into a scene filled with happy people. The trail of barbecue smoke sifting through the scent of lilies was evidence, if evidence were needed, that an idyllic beach party was in full swing. Guests were sitting, eating, milling, moving around. A group of children, seated at a long table covered in a blue-checkered cloth, were chattering noisily as they waited for food. Behind them all, an arc of white beach framed the picture-perfect moment.
Zina was so intimidated by the scene that she froze in her tracks. Sensing a newcomer, a graying Irish setter wandered up to her, sniffing her dress and finding cat. The guests themselves were more discreet. Some of them must have been observing her, surely, but Zina couldn't have said which ones; she was too frightened, too shy, too completely focused on picking out Jim from among them. She scanned unseeing past the women in her search for the man. She tried to tell herself that if Jim were there, she had every right to know it, but the sense that she was intruding was both profound and mortifying.
"Boy, he was here a minute ago," Dave said to her as he looked around. "Frank!" he called out. "Where's Jim?"
A man who looked a beefier version of Dave and who was wearing an apron that read Sue the chef, I'm just the sous-chef, said, "He went in the house for more supplies. You havin' surf or turf?"
"Steak for me."
Frank held up a thick slab speared on a fork. "The usual? Just past raw?"
"You bet."
With great fanfare, Frank slapped the filet mignon on the grill. Flames flared up around it dramatically as Frank wiggled the raw meat back and forth for no apparent reason that Zina could see. Suddenly she couldn't stop staring at the grill; it seemed the safest place to look.
"Ah, here's my sister," said Dave. "Hey, sis! C'mere and meet Zina."
Zina turned to see a very beautiful, very pregnant woman, wearing a maternity top in a shade of mauve that flattered her black hair and dark eyes, approaching them with a smile.
'This is Charlotte, my big—and I mean, big—sister," Dave said by way of an introduction.
Compressing her lips in mock anger, Charlotte swatted his shoulder and said, "Knock it off, or I'll sic John on you." She turned her very curious gaze on Zina. "Nice to meet you," she said, holding out her hand. "Are you with this clown?"
Dave said chivalrously, "I wish. We met out in front."
"Oh!" said Charlotte.
It was clearly Zina's cue to explain why she was there.
<
br /> If she could have clicked her heels three times and returned home, that's what Zina would have done. This was so not the time, so not the place, to look for a lost husband. Her breathing was becoming quick and shallow; she glanced at the back door one last time in desperation. Jim didn't emerge; a woman did.
Dave called out, "Wendy! Where's that no-good husband of yours?"
"Husband?" Zina murmured, and then she went woozy.
"Coming right behind me, I think."
The screen door opened again and Dave cried out, "Yo! Jim. Over here."
The man had a cluster of beer bottles locked in the fingers of each hand; he was edging through the door backward, pushing it open with his butt. "What's up?" he said as he swung around.
Zina was face to face with the one man, the only man, that she had ever loved.
He saw her—of course he saw her, how could he not see her, she hadn't been present a minute ago—but there was no shock of recognition, no bolt of fear, nothing but a look of mild curiosity.
"Jim? It's me. Zina," she said, dizzy from her multiple shocks.
The woman named Wendy said sharply, "Zina who? Jim, who is she? What does she—"
"I've waited so long, Jimmy," Zina said in a soft wail. "I couldn't wait any—"
And that's all that she was able to get out before her world, already whirling around her at warp speed, went blissfully black.
****
Wendy stood by as Dave lowered the recovering woman onto a cushioned chaise under a tree. All around her people hovered, murmuring their concerns and dismay.
She felt like a paramedic, keeping her siblings and especially her mother at bay and shooing the kids away—but in the meantime she was fighting wave after wave of suspicion and jealousy. It was so obvious—despite Jim's lack of concern—that the pale blond woman and Jim shared a history. She had seen it in the woman's face.
It was now brutally clear to Wendy what Jim's secret was. Zina was the sin that he hadn't been able to own up to, hard as he had tried. He'd had an affair after all, despite his shocked denial when Wendy had posed the question to him.
Was he in the middle of the affair still?
Bastard.
Wendy's cheeks were on fire. Her head thrummed with the sound of her raging pulse, and her breath became locked in her body. Those anguished protests by Jim, those sudden wild bouts of lovemaking—they weren't about him and Wendy at all, they were about her, the woman lying in the chaise longue right under Wendy's nose. Why else would she have chosen this occasion, this gathering of everyone Wendy loved, to publicly force the issue between Jim and her? Obviously they'd been having an affair. They still were, which is why she'd known about the party. My God, the woman was outrageous, and Jim was a—
Bastard!
"I'm... so... sorry," Zina said, looking only at Jim.
Jim looked at her, looked at Wendy, looked back at her. He looked completely baffled.
And so did everyone else. Everyone was waiting for a simple explanation. Clearly no one thought the woman was sorry because she had fainted in the middle of their birthday party. Wendy saw it all: saw her mother and Charlotte exchange a look; saw her brother Frank glance resignedly back at the filets mignon he'd abandoned on the grill; saw Dave, still crouched at Zina's side, glance up at Jim with a stiff, dawning look on his face.
It was Wendy who was forced to break the unnerving silence. In a voice tight with fury, she said to the woman, "Are you all right?"
Zina sat up and gave Wendy a wobbly, full-lipped smile. Her paleness, coupled with her blond hair and blue eyes, gave her an ethereal look that made Wendy wonder whether perhaps she hadn't jumped to a horrible conclusion. The woman didn't look ... lusty enough, somehow, to go after someone else's husband. She was truly beautiful, there was no question about that—the stares she was getting weren't just from curiosity—but mostly the woman looked miserable and very possibly ill.
Maybe it was all a mistake. "Can we get you some water?" Wendy asked, less unkindly now. "Or orange juice?" The woman was so pale. Could she be diabetic?
"Thank you ... a little water, maybe," Zina answered in a whispery croak.
Dave jumped up and hurried back to the house to perform the errand, and Wendy decided that whatever it was that Zina had to say, it shouldn't be to the gathered horde.
"We can use some air here. Will everyone please go back to what he or she was doing, please, I'm begging you, please?" she said with fierce politeness. "We don't want the lobster to be dry, and I smell burning steak," she added with a particularly icy glare at her brother Frank, who had pushed his bulk up to the front of the crowd.
Everyone moved off with the exception of Jim and her mother.
Wendy gave Grace Ferro a verbal nudge, which was all she dared. "Mom, please," she said in quiet anguish. "This isn't your concern."
"Of course it is," her mother said. Turning to Zina, she said in a completely matter-of-fact voice, "Why have you come here?"
People had to answer Grace O'Byrne Ferro; she rarely left them a choice. Zina lowered her gaze, and Wendy was not surprised to see a tear roll out.
"To see if Jim Hodene is who I thought he was."
"And is he?"
Zina nodded. Another tear rolled out. Wendy didn't know what to think. Zina apparently wasn't having an affair with Jim at the moment; so when had it been?
"Who, exactly, do you think he is?" Wendy's mother asked gently.
For an answer, Zina looked up at Jim and said, "Oh, Jimmy—how could you?"
Alarm bells went off for Wendy everywhere at once. "Stop asking questions," she commanded her mother, taking her roughly by the arm. "Stop it right now."
Scandalized, Grace yanked her arm free of her daughter's grip. "Don't you dare grab me that way! I'm your mother and don't you forget it."
Zina staggered to her feet and tried to intervene. "No, please don't fight, not because of me! I didn't know, I didn't know that he'd married again—"
" 'Again'?" Wendy said, whirling around on the pale beauty. "What are you talking about?" She turned boggle-eyed toward her husband. "Jim, what's she saying? That you were married before?"
"What're you, nuts?" he said to Wendy. He looked completely at sea. "I'm married to you."
"Then what's she doing here?"
"How should I know?" he said, exasperated. "Ask her."
Grace intervened. "What's your name—Zina? Zina, you're coming with me inside."
"No she's not," Wendy snapped, turning on her mother again. "This is none of your business, Mom. Butt out."
"Wendy, for God's sake, what is wrong with you?" her mother said in a low hiss. "Consider where you are. You're embarrassing me! At least let's go inside until we straighten this out."
"This is my affair, Mom. Mine and mine alone!"
"Obviously not; take a look around you," Grace shot back.
Wendy measured her audience in one regal sweep: everyone was completely transfixed. Shit. If that wasn't just like her family. Her sister-in-law was probably going to slap the whole episode up on her Web site. God, how she hated them all just then.
Who was this woman? Just another gold digger? Then why didn't it seem that way?
She turned back to Zina, who'd sat back down on the side of the chaise, apparently too weak or disinclined to leave.
"Jim?" Wendy asked through gritted teeth. "Would you like to have the floor?"
"To say what?" he answered, angry and offended. He didn't bother glancing at Zina as he added, "You can't possibly be taking this seriously."
Be that as it may, Wendy was taking it very seriously, indeed. There was just something about the past couple of weeks.
"How long were you supposedly married to my husband?" she demanded to know from Zina. In her mind she was thinking. She would have to have been a child. She still looks like a child. A weekend in Vegas, a hangover, and a quick divorce to undo the damage: is that what this was all about? Or was it all just a lie?
In a downtrodden voice, Z
ina murmured, "We've been married for ... twelve years."
Wendy rolled her eyes and said flatly, "That's ridiculous. You're not that old." She tried to do the math; in her present distracted and suspicious mood, it hurt her head to let in raw logic. Twelve years for Zina, plus twelve years, with dating, for Wendy, and assume the bare minimum of eighteen years old when Zina claimed to have gotten married ....
"You're not saying that you're, what, forty-two or even older, are you? Because that's ridiculous. Jim's not that old. You are definitely not that old," she added, hating to concede the fact. "Try to make some sense, would you? God! I can't understand you at all. You show up here, you make ludicrous statements, you ruin my party—really, I should just call the police! I might just do that, you know?"
Wendy was doing little more than filling the air with the sound of her voice—stalling, pure and simple—because somewhere deep, deep down, she'd heard something that had sounded wrong, something that didn't make sense, and she was afraid to go back and pick over the sentences and discover what that something was. She was genuinely, profoundly terrified to go back and review.
As it turned out, she didn't have to; her mother did it for her.
Grace said gently to Zina, "You mean, you were married for twelve years. Because you said, 'We've been married for twelve years,' and that implies that you still are. And you didn't mean that."
Zina bowed her head. And then she nodded forlornly.
"Yes I did."
Now it was Wendy's turn to feel paralyzed. The sheer boldness of the claim had left her speechless.
Her mother stared. Jim said softly, "Wow. Now I've heard everything."
In a flat, controlled voice, Wendy said to Zina, "You're saying—what? That you're still married. Is that it?"
Again Zina nodded.
"I see." Wendy turned to Jim and said, "Which would naturally mean: we're not."
Jim didn't bother to respond to her but only shook his head incredulously.
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