Instantly a picture of her in a clingy, swingy floral-print dress popped up in his mind, a look that seemed downright retro after the a
l
l-American jeans and T-shirt outfit of the morning. Where would she be working that required such a dress? Clothing shop? Antique shop? Herbal shop? Pottery? Futon? Ceramics? Doctor's office? Lawyer's?
Now that he thought about it, why the hell was she going to work, anyway? Even though after penalties and taxes they were worth only a small fraction of the mind-boggling ten or so million that they seemed to have won at first blush, it was still plenty to live on without having to trek to a job in a shop on Wickenden Street. Unless, of course, she owned the shop and loved the work.
Would he abandon furniture making if he were a multimillionaire? Zack found himself going back and forth on that. His first impulse was to assume that he'd never give up something that brought him such profound pleasure. But money changed things. Money changed people. So he couldn't quite say that he'd keep on creating heirloom pieces that he hoped people and museums would bid on frantically in the centuries to come—but he liked to think that he would.
And in the meantime, here he was, slaving for a few bucks an hour at work that bored him just so that he could shimmy up to a man he despised and squeeze him until he howled. Pisser! The afternoon wore on, and Zack's mood turned more foul. What had he been thinking? His plan was beyond cockamamie; it was insane. If Zina knew
... God. If she
knew.
By late afternoon, Zack had resolved to bail out and try some other way to get at Jimmy.
"Pete, my man," came the shout from the ground. "It's lookin' good, real good."
Zack, a box of nails on his shoulder, had been coming up the ladder on the north side of the house when he heard the yell from ground-level on the south side of the house. North, south, east, west, it made no difference to him. He'd know the voice if it came from the opposite end of a stadium during halftime at a Super Bowl.
Careful to keep himself under control, Zack crossed the plywood floor and dropped the box of nails with a thud at Pete's feet. With both hands on the roughed-out sill, he peered at the sidewalk below. He didn't say hi, didn't say boo. He just looked down, as if he were curious about the shouting, and then he straightened up and went back to work.
But not before letting his brother-in-law have a good, long view of the man who was going to be within spitting distance of his wife and son all day.
Jimmy recognized him; there was no mistaking the stunned look on his face. His brow lifted and his mouth actually went a little slack. He was the kind of opportunist who was always scanning the company around him anyway, on the hunt for someone it might be useful to know. And Jimmy never forgot a face—unlike Zack, who only remembered the ones of those he loved and those he hated.
Zack allowed himself a grim smile of satisfaction. He would remember
that
face,
that
look, for the rest of his life.
They were ready to raise the east-wall framework. It was heavy work, but Billy was built like a linebacker and Pete had strength out of proportion to his compact size. Compared to them, Zack was out of shape: carving wood was a lot less rugged work than building a house from it. Huffing from the effort, he supported his end of the wall while Pete braced it.
"No point in starting the next one this late; we'll knock off for the day," Pete announced after the wall was secure. Zack remembered how his own men used to love to hear those words when he had been the boss. Now that he was the help, he felt—irony of ironies—bitterly disappointed. All it had taken was that one exchange of stares. It had convinced Zack to stick with the job, stick with the plan.
Pete took off to check progress at the other site, leaving Billy and Zack to clean up for the day. The younger man swept while Zack coiled the air hose and the electric cords. They covered the table saw, then climbed down the ladder to store the portable gear in the basement. Pete had a thing about keeping a site clean, Billy explained, which earned him a nod of approval from Zack. It was demoralizing to work in chaos, whether the help understood that or not.
Laden with coils of air hose and cords, Billy led Zack across the torn-up yard, through a small mud shed, and into the basement, with Zack carrying the compressor behind him.
The new part of the basement had been commandeered as a storage area for the construction crew. New windows, still in their crates, were stacked against the wall six deep. The lady really liked windows, though Zack couldn't understand why: all the views were of neighbors' houses. She must have been after the sunshine.
Why not in the country?
he wondered.
Or on the shore?
He was struck all over agai
n by the strangeness of the Ho
denes' decision to add on when they could so easily buy bigger. It was a puzzle that Zack considered important to solve.
"Hey. Later," said Billy when they were done. He was ready to fly.
Zack wasn't. Zack wanted to bump into the owner. Zack wanted to see phase two of the look of shock on the owner's face.
He tried to stall by saying pleasantly, "So how long you been workin' for Pete?"
"Coupla years," Billy said. He looked unhappy that Zack was detaining him by even so much as two words.
"What's he like?"
"Good," he said, glancing at the mudshed door. "Good guy."
"Overcommitted?"
Billy shrugged. "He can't seem to say no. Well—gotta
go."
"Sure."
He bolted, and a few seconds later, Zack heard rubber peeling on the street in front of the house. He smiled: all young crews, all over the country, ran like hell at the end of the workday.
He had been young and in a hurry once, but that was a long time ago. He looked around the basement and decided that, by golly, the place probably hadn't had a thorough sweep in a good long time. Humming a languid tune, he took up a broom and got to work. All the while, he kept his ears cocked for the sound of footsteps on the basement stairs.
A few minutes later, he heard someone descending. The steps were too slow to be a kid's, too heavy to be a woman's. Zack sucked in a lungful of air and let it out as a whistled tune; it was one way of controlling the pound of his pulse.
"Still here?" came the voice behind him.
Ripped by contradictory emotions, Zack turned around slowly. "You bet," he said, returning the steady look with one of his own. "I want to make an impression."
"Oh, you're doing that, all right."
"That's the whole idea," Zack drawled. He stood there holding his broom, looking as benign as a farmer with a hoe in
Kansas
. Only his eyes, blazing with contempt, were at odds with his manner.
His brother-in-law blinked, then looked past him at the stacked-up windows, as if he were counting to make sure they were all still there. He snorted, God only knew why, and said to Zack, "Pete mentioned that he'd been looking for more help."
"He found it."
"So I see. He tells me you're new to the area. Where you from?"
"Up north," Zack said dryly.
"
Canada
?"
Very funny.
"
Worcester
area. We moved there after Summerville."
"We?"
You son of a bitch
.
"Zina and I."
"I'm sorry? Zina is
...?"
"Ah, Jesus!" Despite his resolve and knowing he was being goaded, Zack still ended up lunging at him, catching a handful of shirt in his fist as he said with pent-up fury, "Zina: my
sister.
Innocent. Naive. Trusting. Betrayed.
And.
Still.
Waiting
." With a shudder of loathing, he shook the fabric out of his hand as if he'd grabbed someone's entrails by mistake, and said, "Get the picture, asshole?"
Jimmy let his shoulders slump back to normal, gave his neatly pressed shirt a little yank at belt level, and kept on looking baffled. Obviously choosing his words carefully, he said, "You seem to have a lot of concern for your sister. Maybe you shouldn't be working down here in
Providence
. I used to be in real estate. I know for a fact that there's a boom going on in your neck of
Massachusetts
. Maybe you should be looking for work closer to home. Maybe that would be the best thing for your sister."
"Yeah, right," Zack said, infuriated that Jimmy was continuing the pretense of being Jim. "You asshole," he repeated, kicking the broom over to the side and out of his way. He was aching to inflict some kind of physical punishment; the broom for now would have to do.
Instantly he realized that he shouldn't have kicked the broom. He could see that Jimmy was heartened by the act; that he understood that Zack wasn't going to beat him bloody if Zack could avoid it.
Hell! He shouldn't have kicked the broom.
He tried to recover. "Get this straight. I'm not going—"
A car door slammed and Jimmy jerked his head; it obviously was a car door he knew. He said hurriedly, "The best advice I can give you is to go back to your family, to your sister."
"Oh, I will. Eventually."
"The sooner the better. For her, I mean. Look, give me your number. Maybe I can give you some help, pull some strings, do something for you."
"I'm open to suggestions
... Jimmy."
It was a body blow, and Jimmy buckled under it. "Sorry, you must have got that wrong," he insisted. "It's Jim."
"Sure... Jim. Whatever you say, Jim."
A woman's voice called out above them. "Jim? Wendy? Anybody home?"
Family or a close friend, without a doubt. Either way, the lady upstairs had Jimmy Hayward running scared. He said in a low hiss, "Christ, will you just get
out
of here?" He just about stamped his foot.
Aware that he'd regained the momentum, Zack smiled and said, "Sure, Jim. See you tomorrow. Jimmy."
"You've talked to him, yes?"
Zack swallowed hard and lied. "No, Zee, I haven't. I'm going to need more time."
"More time! Zack,
why?"
She sounded as if she'd been trapped underwater; he could hear her gasping for air.
"Because he's gone," Zack explained, piling it on. "I saw him load a carry-on bag into his car. I assume he was on his way to the airport." In a lame attempt to keep it light, he added, "Who knows? Maybe he's off pricing villas in
Europe
."
His sister's voice came back little more than a heartbroken whisper. "This is so disappointing."
"It's frustrating, Zee, I know."
"It's beyond that. Zack
... I think about Jimmy constantly. I can't eat, I can't sleep. It's worse now than it was that day I came home and saw that his clothes were gone. At least then I went straight into shock. At least then there was
that
blessing. And I had to eat, to sleep, for the baby's sake." She let out a single, sad sigh. "So there was that."
And now there wasn't.
As far as Zack could tell, he had two choices. One, he could tell his sister the truth, that the bastard who married but never bothered to divorce her was now rich, re-wed, and a father—and risk the consequences. Or, two, he could stall until he was able to squeeze Jimmy for enough money to enable Zina to move far away to a happier place.
Zack pictured his sister in sunny
California
, running her own program for abandoned critters. There was a kind of gentle poetry in the notion of the abandoned caring for the abandoned. He clung to that vision, because the image of a happy-at-last Zina was profoundly, incredibly moving to him.
So, yeah, damn right he was going to stall. He would tell tender lies at this end, and he'd slash and burn at the other end—whatever it took to make the world a better place for a fragile, utterly compassionate child-woman who deserved better than the stinking luck she'd been handed so far.
Zina seemed to misinterpret his thoughtful silence. "I'm sure it's him," she murmured. "You were sure, too, Zack."
"I only saw him from down the street, Zee," her bro
th
er said gently.
"No, you really did sound sure. You were trying
not
to—but I could tell. You were sure."
Helpless to undo the impression, Zack decided instead to change the subject. "Anyway, so what's the deal with your latest foster cat? The skunk—what was her name? Miss Petunia?"
"Don't be so mean," Zina said, laughing. "Her name is Cassie, and she's really coming along. I think in a couple of weeks we'll be able to see about getting her adopted. She likes potato chips and frosted doughnuts; isn't that wild?"
"There's your ad, the
n: 'Junk-Food Lover seeks Like-minded Companion'.
"
And on that lighthearted note, they hung up.