The rest of the kids were divided into two broad age groups. The older ones had had their swims and sails and were now all piled into the attic with their video games, while the younger ones, led by
Tyler
, amused themselves building sand castles, despite the fact that the sand wasn't quite as white and fine as
Tyler
—an expert from way back—would have liked.
Gra
ci
e Ferro's generation was there in quiet force. Wendy's mother had invited three of her dearest friends (all of them older than sixty-five, which may or may not have been coincidence), and they sat in Adirondack chairs on the patio like the
grandes dames
they were, with a steady stream of attendants appearing to ask whether they'd like their drinks refreshed, or a bit more dip.
Wendy's father sought her out. "This is nice. This is very nice, Wenda," he said, using her birth name as he always did when he was pleased with her performance. "The food so far is very, very good. Good snacks. And I'm glad you're making steamers."
"Dad! How could I not?" Wendy asked. "No clams? You wouldn't have come!"
"You know that's not true," he said, looking vaguely shocked. Unlike his wife, Charlie Ferro had no sense of irony at all, which made him all the more irresistible a target to his kids.
"You're right, Dad. I know that's not true," Wendy assured him gravely.
"But listen. Next time—don't plan to grill the lobsters," he said with a discreet warning shake of his head. "They dry out. You leave them on two minutes too long, you got cardboard. Next time, just boil 'em, honey. It's the only way. Believe me."
"You want us to boil yours, Dad? It's no trouble."
"No, no, no," he said, aghast at the suggestion. "How would that look, a special order for me? Just—next time. Okay?"
In the year before he met Gra
ci
e O'Byrne, Charlie Ferro had bought himself a skiff and a bullrake, and he'd spent the spring, summer, and fall on Narragansett Bay, harvesting the oversized clams that Rhode Islanders alone called quahogs, and selling them
to a fish market in old, unre
stored downtown
Providence
. It had been backbreaking, heartbreaking work, and by the end of the year, not surprisingly, he was broke. And in love with Gra
ci
e O'Byrne.
So he sold the rig and
went back to work in a chrome-
plating shop half a mile inland. Nevertheless, his year on the water had been the most profoundly satisfying of his life. All of his kids knew it, because he went back to it over and over in his reminiscences about the good old days. He had loved being in his own boat and plying a trade on the bay. It was as simple as that.
When he married Gracie and went
to work in the fume-
filled plating shop, he gave up a lot more than the joy of harvesting the sea: during the quarter century that he had worked with the toxins, his kidneys had taken a beating, and his health was no longer robust. His early retirement had been proof of the fact.
"Well, Dad, you're the family expert on seafood, and that's all there is to it," Wendy said, and this time she wasn't being ironic but affectionate. Humbled and grateful that her father had done what it took to stay married to Gracie O'Byrne and raise their five kids, Wendy hugged him lightly and said, "You're a good man, Charlie Ferro. What can I get you to eat?"
****
By the time she worked thro
ugh the detour from the closed-
off exit on
Gano Street
, Zina was a nervous wreck; she'd never driven on such harrowing highways in her life. She'd nearly been sideswiped by a merging car, and then when she'd slammed on the brakes to let him squeeze in ahead of her, she'd nearly been rear-ended. Before she drove back to
Worcester
, she was going to have to revisit the map for a back-road route.
It wasn't just the state of the crowded, curving highway that was making her drive so badly; it was the state of her mind. She was upset and angry, disappointed and shocked, and very likely she shouldn't even have been behind a wheel. But there wasn't any other way to find out exactly who Jim Hodene was. Or wasn't. Her brother certainly wasn't going to tell her. Zack couldn't be trusted at all. First her parents, then Jimmy, and now Zack. It didn't seem possible.
How could he
do
that—
li
e to her about Aunt Louise? It took Zina's breath away that he had been able to look her straight in the eye and say that Aunt Louise had just died and had left him an inheritance. Louise Odette had died years ago, Zina now knew, and if she retained any lawyers to disperse her money, their names were not Smith, Reston, and Upton: there was no such firm in
Omaha
. No, if Zack had inherited anything, he would have heard about it long before now.
So where had Zack gotten the money? He hadn't robbed a bank; Zina would have heard it on the news. And he hadn't made that kind of fortune making reproductions of antique furniture, no matter how respected he was at his craft.
So where had he gotten the money?
How about a lottery?
It didn't take a degree in math to figure out that a lottery winner would have lots of money to throw around. A lottery winner might not even
miss
a few hundred thousand dollars. So the next question was, why would a lottery winner have thrown so much money at Zack?
Damn you, Jimmy. Damn you, Zack.
Tears began to flow again; she was incapable of stopping them any longer and just let them roll. Street signs blurred in front of her until she wiped her eyes, and then she saw that some of them said, "Fox Point," so she had to be in the right neighborhood. It hadn't been very hard to find at all, even in her distracted state.
Why had she ever let Zack do her legwork for her? If it was to save her some heartbreak, then the mission was a failure. Her heart wasn't just broken now, it was shattered, and she was faint from the pain of feeling each of its million splinters.
She drove slowly past the houses on
Sheldon Street
, reading the numbers, aware that one of the houses coming up was under construction. Pausing in front of that one, she saw that the numbers matched the address that she'd found in the white pages of her library's old
Providence
directory. The six was upside down and hanging by one screw, but, yes, the numbers did match. She parked her yellow Civic behind a deli
very truck in front of the house
and got out.
She approached
it
like a zombie, half convinced that someone else, someone fierce and determined and with nothing to lose, was inhabiting her body. She watched herself go up to two young guys who were helping a d
eliv
eryman unload stacks of wood shingles from the lumberyard truck. She listened to herself ask them, "Do you know where I can find Jim Hodene?"
She was amazed at how clear, how calm, how pleasant she sounded. It was someone else speaking, not her.
One of the guys, bare-chested and stripped down to his baggy shorts, said, "He just moved out last weekend."
"Oh," she said, crushed. "Far?"
The bare-chested guy shrugged and answered, "If you call a ten-minute drive far."
She found herself smiling at him and trying to charm. "Could you give me directions?"
He shrugged again and said, "Nope. All I know is he's renting a place on the beach in
Barrington
."
The other guy said to him, "How could you not know the street? Pete must've mentioned it six times:
Starboard Lane
, for crissake."
"Who listens to Pete?" said the first guy, looking embarrassed.
Zina didn't know who Pete was, and she didn't dare ask.
Instead she said shyly, "Do you think that Jim—Mr. Hodene would be home now?"
"Well, he's not working at a job, that's for sure," the second guy said with a snicker.
"You wouldn't happen to have a street number, would you?" Zina asked. She had no idea how many houses were on
Starboard Lane
, although it didn't sound long.
"Just look for a blue
Expedition
."
The guy in the tank top seemed to regret having spoken and began warning off the o
ther one. "What're you, a frig
gin' tour guide?" he snapped.
His co-worker became defensive. "What's the big deal? Everybody around here knows where he moved." But he seemed to back off after that, and the two of them went back to unloading the shingles.
Zina thanked them—someone thanked them, anyway; the voice was coming out of her body—and then she got back in her car and reached for the street map that was opened on the front seat.
Barrington
really wasn't all that far, and Zina was back on the hellish highway in minutes.
She found
Barrington
, and she found
Starboard Lane
. Now all she had to do was find her husband.
It was a beautiful evening, and the gardeners of the neighborhood were out in force; Zina felt anything but anonymous, driving past them in a yellow Civic while trying not to look lost.
There was only one Ford
Expedition
on the street, and she was dismayed to see that it wasn't alone: it was parked in a driveway that was filled with cars. There were cars parked up and down t
he street in front of the house
as well, and red helium balloons shaped like hearts and flowers were tied to a lattice arch that was weighed down with red roses: Jim Hodene was apparently having a housewarming party.
In some odd way, seeing the balloons gave Zina hope.
No one would tie red balloons to a house if he'd once run away from his pregnant wife. This man, this Jim Hodene,
couldn
't
be her Jimmy Hayward. If she could just see him, she'd know. If this Jim weren't her Jimmy, then Zack was telling the truth and she was being a suspicious fool and everything would be fine.
Except for the fake inheritance.
It was that fake inheritance that made her slam on the brakes and squeeze her Civic between two cars parked out in the lane. It was that fake inheritance that made her get out of her car and approach the house with a fake bounce in her step, as if she were the fake guest of honor and all the balloons, not fake, were really for her.
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 p
erson 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."