And later, when Zack drove past the house again, that's when he saw the kid. A ten-year-old son easily trumped a baby that Hodene had never known—even Zack, a dedicated bachelor, could understand that. Another no-brainer: a decade-plus marriage to one woman trumped half a year of wedlock to another one. Jim Hodene, once Jimmy Hayward, was right where he wanted to be, financially
and
emotionally speaking.
That, however, was about to change.
Zack hitched up his leather tool belt, surprised at how heavy it felt. In the last few years, he had become used to working with more refined tools than hammers and prybars and fifty-foot rules: chisels and spokeshaves were his instruments of choice nowadays. Still, it took him less than a minute to adjust to the weight of the belt and slip into his old role as housebuilder.
The three men standing around their trucks alongside the Hodenes' house were in no hurry, finishing their cigarettes and slugging down coffee from Dunkin' Donuts cups. Zack introduced himself and learned that Pete hadn't shown up yet, which explained the general lack of hustle.
The crew showed no surprise at Zack's appearance on the site; he learned that a steady stream of carpenters had come and gone during the last
couple of years, mostly because the boss had little patience for slackers.
The boss himself
turned up fifteen minutes late—flat tire,
Pete
explained with disgust as he shook Zack's hand. There was a harried look in his eyes, testimony to the ridiculous workload he
apparently
had. Given the current
rehab
boom
(no one could afford to sell and move up)
, it hadn't taken a lot of ingenuity for Zack to check the want ads and match one of the phone numbers there to the one on Pete's truck. Zack had called the number, and after a brief telephone interview, had been given a job sight unseen.
Pete sent off the youngest and the oldest of the men to work on another site; Zack was plunked right where he wanted to be, in Jimmy Hayward's addition, paid for by Jim Hodene.
"Billy, I want you to finish up the subfloorin' on the second level," Pete told his remaining help as he strapped on his own tool belt. "Zack and I'll frame up the south wall."
"Okay," said Billy, but then he added, "I should've mentioned yesterday, but the leak on the compressor hose is worse; the compressor runs pretty near all the time now," Billy admitted. He lowered his voice and added, "Someone, I think her mother, come up to us yesterday and said can't we shut the thing up, something like that."
"Ah, shit. I'll have to go back to the shed for another hose. Why the hell didn't you tell me this yesterday? All right. Zack, you and Billy can start pulling off the siding on the old outside wall. I'll be back."
Off Pete went, muttering ominously. Zack sympathized. He'd been there himself, riding herd on a crew, which is why he'd gotten out of house building and into furniture making. He was a loner by nature, skeptical of the very concept of teamwork; and besides, he'd never yet tried to call himself in sick.
The fact was, he loved having complete control of a project. Sculpting wood was one of the most satisfying highs he'd ever known. The thought that right then he had a half-carved corner chair waiting in his workshop for him to finish was almost as painful as the thought of a woman waiting in his bed for him to return and bring her to climax.
Damn.
He had to get through this and get back to his real life.
He climbed through a roughed-out window onto the first floor of the addition and, while Billy went searching for a prybar, sized up the task at hand. Years ago the plastic siding had been attached over peeling clapboard, undoubtedly to save money. Big mistake. Whatever modest,
New England
charm the house had possessed was covered over in a mass of featureless vinyl strips that trapped moisture and encouraged rot. Hopefully the house was going to be returned to its original look.
Not that it mattered to Zack either way; he
didn't plan to be there long.
Billy came back with a prybar, and together he and Zack began pulling off the siding that surrounded the two original kitchen windows. They were standing in what was going to be the family room; Billy explained that the entire outside wall they were working on would eventually come down, creating an open floor plan between the old kitchen and the new family room.
The kitchen windows were fitted with miniblinds, but these were hauled all the way up. Apparently the Hodenes weren't too shy. Sure en
ough, as Zack worked, a sleepy-
eyed kid came moping into the kitchen and headed for a cupboard, oblivious to the two men on the other side of the windows. Behind him came his mother, apparently fresh from a shower. Her hair hung in dark wet ringlets around her clean, shiny face, and although she'd thrown on a T-shirt over tattered jeans, her feet were still bare.
The windows were old and anything but soundproof; Zack heard every word of her motherly harangue.
"
Tyler
, if you think you're going to a sleepover tonight and leaving behind that sinkhole you call a room—"
"What's the difference?" the kid shot back as he took out a bowl. "The whole house is a pit."
"Maybe so, but in this pit, the laundry is clean and the dishes are done. So you just march right back up to your room and collect all the dirty plates in there, and then march
right back down to the sink and wash them."
"I'll be late for school!"
'Tough. Move it."
Fists parked on shapely hips, she was focused on the confrontation, with her back to Zack and Billy. Zack had a flash of that same awareness he had when he saw her jump down from the SUV: of a woman with strength to spare and a will to match. It occurred to him that he wouldn't ever want to tangle with her. And then it occurred to him that he'd probably have no choice.
"Ma—"
"And bring your dirty clothes down, too. It smells like a beach at low tide in there. Good grief,
Tyler
. Shape up, will you?"
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 E
xpedition
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
ful
l ten inches.
Jesus, man, focus. You lose this job, you lose your entr
é
e.
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 Ex
pedition
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 not
iced a little café on
Wick
enden 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?