Sand Castles (26 page)

"Yes."

"And are you pleased with the results?" she asked in a scathing tone.

"What do you think?"

"I think you're the most—"

She got herself back under control and backed up a few thoughts. "Let's go back to why you're here now. Today. I want to know that."

"I told you: to keep an eye on Jim," Zack said.

"This isn't the most logical place to pitch your tent anymore if you want to see Jim," she said, making no effort to hide her contempt for his answer.

Zack may have been being truthful, but he wasn't being completely forthcoming. He said, "Okay: and to keep an eye on you."

"Why? Did you think I'd rip off your so-called sister's share of the lottery?"

"No."

"Then what?"

He didn't answer.

"
D
amn
it,
why?"
she cried, exploding at last. "Why are you back here, haunting me?"

"I'm here to make sure that Jim doesn't play faster and looser with you, either," he said quietly.

She threw her head back and said, "Ha! That's so
... incredible! You're unbelievable, you know that? How can you possibly say that you're concerned about me when you're the reason I'm in this shape in the first place? What are you, totally
warped?"

"I've been asking myself the same question lately," he admitted.

She threw her hands up and began pacing the narrow hall that ran alongside the stairs. "Well, you can't keep working here, you know that. I want you out."

"Pete needs me," Zack said.
And I need you.

"Pete was doing fine without you," she countered.

"No, he wasn't; he was tearing his hair out. His help is willing but inexperienced, or haven't you noticed?"

His last little jab made her round on him. She said, "I don't care. He'll have to make do. I want you off the premises. Be grateful I don't have you thrown in jail. You
and
your so-called sister."

"If I go, the house will slow to a crawl," he pointed out without much hope. His argument was so desperate that it
w
as laughable.

"Bull. I'll hire someone else."

"There
is
no one else; no one reputable, anyway."

"I'll pay them double."

"I repeat: no one reputable."

"In that case, I'll feel right at home having them work here, won't I?"

"Okay, I deserved that. But it doesn't change the fact that you'll end up either with a shoddy house or staring through a bunch of two-by-fours
for the indefinite future
."

She was livid. He could see it in the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying mightily not to be baited by him. He was surprised he didn't see fire coming out of her nostrils.

She walked back to the screen door and held it open for him without a word.

Mission
accomplished
, Zack thought, numb from the realization. He had shown up basically to blow up her marriage, and he'd done a darn good job. True, the structure might still be standing; but clearly the foundation was gone.

If only he'd been able to blow himself up with it. He passed within the reach of her breath, close enough to see the glaze of tears rimming her lower lashes. It was anyone's guess whether she'd let them fall or not; she was incredibly strong.

"Wendy—"

A liar. He talked like a liar. He acted like a liar. He
looked
like a liar. How could anyone know what was going on behind that mask of stone? Showing up suddenly
... without any history
... with blackmail on his mind
... brazen enough to admit it
...
.

Liar. How could he not have known about the scar? Everyone knew about the gash Jim got jumping over an iron fence when he was twelve.

He should have known about the scar.

As for all the rest: lucky guesses. What male didn't like the Rolling Stones,
Butch Cassidy,
steak? Regis Philbin would give you the same answers!

Liar, liar, liar. It was so clear to her now. He'd shown up, had tried to blackmail poor Jim, had been rebuffed, had raised the stakes by shoving his
... his whoever she was onto the scene. Well, it wouldn't work. He had done his lying best, and his lying best wasn't good enough.

Liar.

Wendy had only one regret: that she hadn't snatched away the photograph. She had no doubt that it had been doctored. That was why he'd made that sneering rema
rk
about it not being digitalized: because it
had
been digital
ized. You could do anything with pictures nowadays. Look at
Forrest Gump,
and that was
how many
years ago. Look at the la
s
t
Star Wars
entry, Harry Potter, the cover girls on magazines
... nothing was real anymore. It was all fake. Fake fake fake.

Liar.

****

She walked into the beach house just in time to give surprised good-bye hugs to Frank and Sharon and their kids:
Sharon
had managed to snag a much earlier flight back home to
California
.

Wendy was dismayed. "You should have called; I could have gotten here earlier to be with you."

"We assumed you were busy with your house," said her sister-in-law with a cursory embrace.

The hug and her ironic tone were evidence enough that they were offended by Wendy's early morning escape. If she needed more proof than that, it came from Jim, who said, "Maybe you shouldn't be trying to wear a hostess hat and a contractor's cap at the same time."

Over his brother-in-law's protest, he lifted the biggest, heaviest suitcase and walked out with it to the car.

Clearly he was still angry at Wendy for the inquisition she'd been putting him through. Wendy couldn't blame him—but somehow she couldn't seem apologetic, either.

All because of Zack. How she hated him just then.

"Who's driving you to the airport?" she asked her brother. "Let me do it."

"No problem," Frank told her. "Jim's got it under control."

Jim had everything under control. He had always enjoyed good relations with her mob of relatives, insisting that they were the family that he, an only child of an only child, had never had. She used to love that about him; now, she wasn't so sure. Wendy had the vague feeling—based on nothing, really—that Jim was pitting her family against her.

She turned to her two-year-old niece. "Give Aunty
Wendy a big, big good-bye hug," she coaxed. "And a big, big smooch, too."

At least Clarissa didn't play favorites. She threw open her fat little arms and let herself be scooped into Wendy's embrace. Wendy inhaled the child's innocence the way she would a deliciously scented rose as she rocked her in a wistful, almost mournful embrace.

"Good-bye, good-bye, I love you," she said against Clarissa's soft pink cheek. "You come back to see Aunty Wendy soon, okay?"

The child nodded, not quite comprehending. Her mother said with a sprightly smile, "Maybe next time Aunty Wendy won't be under so much stress."

The remark was such an understatement that Wendy couldn't help snorting. "One can only hope," she said dryly as she threw her arms around her older brother. "I'm sorry about yesterday," she said to him.

"Hey, that wasn't your fault. Blame Dave for letting in a cuckoo. Mom's not speaking to little brother, by the way. He's gonna be on her shit list for a long, long time."

"Frank.
Not in front of the children."

Big Frank, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him, crumpled up into a little ball and said, "Sorry, dear."

He picked up half a dozen pieces of luggage and baby paraphernalia and began lumbering toward the front door. Wendy glanced around and said, "Don't tell me Mark and Marianne have left, too."

"Still here, but going," said her oldest brother as he emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of water in his hand. "The car's all packed. Since it's clearing up out, we decided to dip down to
Newport
for the jumping derby before we head back to
New Hampshire
."

Wendy didn't try to talk them out of it. Of everyone in the family, she had the least in common with Mark and his wife. They were thoroughly into selfish pleasures, whereas at the moment the only selfish pleasure that Wendy coveted was the conviction that she wasn't shacking up with a bigamist.

There was another round of unusually restrained hugs as the departing family stood in a huddle on the slate-tiled floor of the cavernous entry hall, and then very quickly they were gone.

With a start, Wendy realized that
Tyler
hadn't been there to see them off.

She found her son on the beach, halfheartedly poking at the remnants of an elaborate sand castle that the kids had made the day before. The in-and-out sun glinted on his red hair and brightened the green of his T-shirt, making him look even more Irish and boyish than usual. Not for the first time, Wendy was struck by the complete absence of any evidence of her own genetic material in him; he was so much the spitting image of Jim.

I might just as well have been a surrogate mother.
For whatever reason, the thought pushed her a little more deeply into thick anxiety.

"Hey, kiddo. Did you get a chance to say good-bye to everyone?"

He nodded, then kicked off the top of a spire into the moat below.

"I hope you thanked your aunt Marianne for the cool video game. I've never even seen that one. What was it called? 'Beast in the Jungle'?"

He shrugged an assent. "It's not that good. And the graphics suck."

"Stink."

"That, too," he said with a quick, resentful glance at her.

She began to toe out the filled-in sand from the moat; she hated to see the joyous creation come down. "Well, she made an effort just for you, and that was nice of her."

"Fine."

Gently probing, Wendy said, "I guess you're sorry to see your cousins leave so early?"

He shrugged. "Justy's such a know-it-all. All because he's going to be thirteen. Big deal. I don't even like him."

"You shouldn't say things like that, honey; Justin is family."

"So?
He
says things."

"Like what?"

"Like—" He took aim at another spire and whacked it so expertly that Wendy wasn't sure where all the sand went. "Like things about you."

"Me?"
said Wendy, taken aback.

"That you're not really married to Dad."

"That's ridiculous," she said in a shaking voice. "When did Justin say that?"

"When I had to sit at the table and couldn't leave it."

Wendy racked her brain to recall the sequence of events. It was all a blur, a rush of water into an unplugged tub. "Well, that was when things were still very confused. Everything got straightened out, Ty; you
know
that. I thought we talked about it last night."

She had stopped in his room at bedtime and had gone away reassured that he was so blasé about the disruption, accepting it simply as yet more goofy fallout from having won a lottery.

Obviously he'd had second thoughts since then. "Weren't you listening when I told you that the lady was probably ill?"

He looked at her through owlish glasses, a red-haired Harry Potter. "You mean, a nut?"

"That's a
very
rude word to use," Wendy said, thrown back to her exchange with Zack about wackos. "All I'm trying to say is that the lady had ideas in her head that weren't true."

Ty stood on the lone br
idge, a scrap of old wood, that spanned the tunneled-
out moat and jumped; the bridge collapsed under his weight. "She didn't look like a nut to me."

He was provoking her, but Wendy refused to take the bait. She said instead, "I'm surprised that you're smashing down the castle. It would have been a nice memento of
... of the party."

"Mom! That wasn't a party, it was an earthquake. People were running around like ants. Besides, this castle is doomed. An extra-high tide will wreck it. Or rain. And besides, this tower wasn't even my idea. It was
Justin's,
and it ruined the whole thing, but he had to have it here. He just had to," he said, kicking hard at the base. It was too massive to knock down, so he fell to his knees and began clawing the sand away with both hands.