In his entire life, no woman had ever begged him for anything that didn't involve sex. He was stunned and chastened and profoundly sorry that the first woman who'd been forced to do it was Wendy.
"I'll go," he said softly. "And I'll wait. But you're on a fool's errand, Wendy. The truth is staring you in the face."
She closed her eyes at that, and he took it as a sign.
Wendy ended up leaving the house first. Depressed, Zack stood in the shadow of a first-floor window and watched as she paused at her car door and allowed herself a sweeping look at her modest dream. Once again he was struck by her ability to remain unfazed by wealth. He was impressed and, he now realized, hopeful somehow because of it. It was the first time he'd admitted it to himself.
She drove off and Zack went back to work. The phone rang, as it did less often now that she'd moved out, and the machine kicked in. He paused on his way out to look at the caller
I
D screen: the caller's number was blocked. Instinctively on the alert, Zack waited to see if the caller was going to hang up or not.
The caller chose not.
"Jimmy—you there? Yo! Bro! You there?
C'mon
, I'm getting impatient
..."
Taking a shot, Zack picked up the phone and said briefly, "Yeh?"
No dice. His voice, he knew, was deeper than Jim's. The caller realized it, too, and hung up.
Zack played back the message. The background was free of moaning and groaning this time, but it was obvious that the caller was the same one who was tearing at Wendy's nerves. No longer did he sound like a dufus to Zack. Wendy was right: the guy was a first-class creep.
****
Wendy returned to her rented house without her son. She had dropped
Tyler
off for a sleepover with his grandparents, who as usual were happy to have the chance to ply him with Ovaltine and video rentals. Grace Ferro, still smarting from the aftermath of her failed birthday party, had admittedly been a little subdued; but Wendy's father had seemed his usual gentle and courteous self. No one alluded to Friday's fiasco.
With
Tyler
safely out of the way, Wendy felt ready for battle. She had warned Jim to stick around without telling him why, and he had instantly responded with a baffled and weary, "What, this again?"
But he was as good as his word and had, in fact, stuck around. She found him puttering on his go-fast boat and had to wave him ashore, which had the effect of annoying them both. It hardly mattered; she no longer felt the need to tread diplomatically through the morass of his secrecy and double-talk.
Jim suggested that they sit at the glass-topped table on the patio. Wendy suggested that they go inside. Jim didn't like her suggestion. Wendy didn't care.
In the kitchen, she opened by saying, "Yesterday you asked where I got the cat, and I said, from a shelter. Didn't you think it was odd that I went out for faucets and came back with a cat?"
"Nope. You've been talking about getting a pet forever." He added, "I would have picked a better-looking cat than that one, though. There must be a million of them out there to choose from."
Hoisting himself by the palms of his hands, he plunked his butt on a kitchen counter—presumably because Wendy had asked him not to, since it offended her mother.
She refused to let him get a rise out of her. "The shelter I went to was in Hopeville," she said, and when he looked blank, she added, "Near Worcester."
His look changed to mild surprise. "Way up there?"
"Way up there. I went to see Zina, Jim. She volunteers at a shelter."
He laughed. "Who Zina? Crazy Zina? You're kidding. How did you find her?"
"It wasn't hard. She's convinced that she's your wife."
"I think we've already established that," he said with a lingering smile. In no hurry, he waited to see what else she had to say.
"She told me about her childhood. And Zack's. About their parents. About the murder-suicide."
"Murder, geez. Sounds like you had a real friendly chat," he said. He rested the heel of his docksider idly on a drawer handle and began sliding the drawer open with it.
Wendy tried not to get distracted by his little maneuver. She had to watch him closely—watch for some sign, some twitch, some rise and fall of his Adam's apple that would tell her what she was trying to learn without her going to the ignominy of hiring a private investigator.
"In fact, Zina said that you were married not once but twice."
"Because
...? They mispelled Hodene? Not enough witnesses?"
"Her name is
Hayward
," Wendy said. He was being deliberately obtuse, more infuriating to her just then than being a liar. "And you know it."
"All I know is what you tell me," he said, with the first hint of resentment that she'd seen so far.
She wasn't sure if that meant she was winning or losing. "Where did you get the name Hodene?" she asked bluntly. "Zack told me you probably stole someone's identity."
"Oh—
Zack
told you. What can I say?" he said with a shrug. "Consider the source." He slammed the drawer shut with his heel, then opened it again.
"I went through our files last night—"
"What? No eBay?" he said, smirking.
"—and I dragged out your birth certificate," she announced calmly. She opened the cookie sheet drawer, removed a piece of paper, and handed it to him. "This is all I could find. It's not an original; it's nothing but a copy."
"Well, duh. People lose their originals, you know. For lots of reasons. Fire, flood, theft
. S
huffling between foster homes." He began folding the birth certificate into a paper plane on the counter's surface.
She thought,
He won't look me in the eye anymore. Either he's wearing down, or he just doesn't care.
The realization sent her adrenaline surging. She circled him and began to move in.
"It can't be that hard to get hold of a fake certificate with an embossed seal, can it?" she said. "Or wasn't it worth going through the trouble? Oh, wait—you didn't have a pot to pee in back then, did you? Was that the hitch? Lack of funds to do the job right?"
"
Jeezuz
, woman, what's your problem?" he asked lightly, and he sent the little paper plane soaring off.
It made a perfect loop and came down low, jabbing into poor Walter, who'd wandered into the kitchen looking for more treats. Startled, the cat jumped sideways and skulked back out.
That too bothered Wendy. Everything about Jim was suddenly an irritant. What he said, how he looked, eve
r
y single thing he did—irritants. At best.
"My problem is you, you total
jerk,"
she said, not bothering to hide the bitterness she was feeling toward him. "I know you're lying. I just don't know
why
you're lying. Why bother? You're rich. You can afford an even newer wife. Or whatever the hell she'd be. Why bother trying to hang on here?"
"If you don't know," he muttered, dropping down from the counter, "then I'm not going to tell you."
There it was: that wounded sincerity that always ended up blindsiding her, time after time after time. This time, it was different. She stepped in front of him to prevent him from walking away.
"Tell
me," she commanded, sticking out her hand
at him like a crossing guard. "
Tell me why you're still hanging around here. Because I really don't have a clue."
"You know what?" he said angrily. "Neither do I. Up until that woman showed up, I would've told you it was because I loved you, loved Ty, loved our life together. Not anymore."
His fair skin flushed dark and he ran his hand through his hair, classic signs of his frustration.
"You've always been suspicious of me," he said hotly, "but this takes the cake. I feel like a prime
frigging
suspect in a murder trial! A total stranger walks across the lawn and claims to be my wife, and you buy into it hook, line, and sinker. You hunt her down and wring your hands because you think her daddy shot her mommy," he said, sneering. "I mean, come
on;
who do we know with a history like that? I think you
want
to believe I'm a bigamist, God only knows why. If you're tired of the marriage, then say so, damn it. Have the guts and the decency to just
...
say
so!"
Her head was bursting, but her voice was deadly calm as she said, "I never told you that Zina's father shot her mother. I only mentioned a murder-suicide."
"Yes you d—"
His brow twitched and his eyes went blank: he was in that place again, that hiding place between him and her that he retreated to so often. "I'm sure you did," he said at last.
"No."
"Well, I suppose I assumed it, then," he said with gruff nonchalance. "That's the way it usually is. I'm sure the guy didn't put a pillow over her face and then over his own."
"I didn't even say that her father was the murderer."
"Well, that would be obvious, don't you think?" he asked her coolly.
Wendy's heart wasn't breaking so much as it was being tempered in the furnace of her fury. "Not to me," she said.
"Then you're either naive or stupid, Wen. And I know you're not stupid." He brushed her aside. "I'm going out," he growled. "If you want me to pack my bags, let me know when I get back."
He walked out of the kitchen, and for reasons she didn't understand, Wendy went immediately to look for Walter. Her body was shaking from head to foot; she felt like an escapee who'd just jumped between the roofs of two buildings. She found the old, fat cat curled in a lump on one of the sun-washed wicker chairs in the breezeway. As soon as she touched him, he lifted his big head and began to purr.
"Sorry about that, Wally," she said with a voice that was no more steady than her limbs. "Diet or no diet, you deserve a treat."
****
Wendy stayed in the guest room that night. She thought about
Tyler
, wondering how he was going to react when he found out that his worst fear was true. She thought about Zina, wondering how she was ever going to be able to move beyond the betrayal and horror that she'd already gone through. She thought about Zack, wondering—truly wondering—how he could still have enough strength for his sister and him both.
She didn't think about Jim, as Jim, at all. He was someone's father, someone's husband, the worthy target of someone's blackmail scheme. Other than that, he really had no place in her life. She didn't even know what to call him.
When he knocked softly on the door of the guest room in the morning, Wendy was in the adjacent bathroom, preparing for her day. She ignored his muffled summons. The door was locked—had been locked, since he'd leaned his head inside late the night before and had whispered, "Are you awake? Because I have something to say to you."
"It can wait until morning," she'd said from her bed in the dark.
It was morning now, and she still didn't care.
She changed into nondescript sleuthing clothes—a denim skirt and a beige knit top—and slipped into comfortable walking sandals. She opened the door to go down the hall and nearly tripped over the man she once had believed was her husband. He'd been sitting on the floor with his back against the door, and when she swung it open, he'd been caught unawares and had fallen back. He looked so undignified; anyone would have thought he was trying to peep through the keyhole.
Wendy stepped over him and continued on her way, but he scrambled to his feet and fell in beside her.
"I remember now," he said, eager as a jumping puppy. "I knew about the shootings because Zack told me; it was Zack himself who told me. It was when we were in the basement, when he was going on about his sister. Remember how I couldn't figure out what he was talking about?
Some of his garbled story had to do with his sister's suffering
... her father
... a gun, her mother in bed.
That's
how I knew, Wen! Yesterday it didn't come to me—"
"You're pathological, you know that?" she said without looking at him. She didn't dare: she was dismayed to realize that once again he could be telling the truth.
She stepped out more briskly, headed for the kitchen; Walter would need to be fed.
"Wendy, please, you're not listening," Jim said, catching her lightly from alongside.
She felt suddenly violated. "Get
away
from me!" she shrieked, as if he were an attacker in a dark alley.
Stunned by her vehemence, Jim threw up his hands and said, "Wendy, come on, it's me, Jim."
"I don't know you! Get
away
from me!" She turned into the nearest room,
Tyler
's bedroom, and tried slamming the door on Jim. He got hold of it on the other side and shoved it open, all the while trying to calm her sudden fury. But she was past calming, a wild thing, kicking and pushing as he tried to hold on to her. Finally he let her go; but she wanted him out of the room, out of her life.