Free Sand Castles by Antoinette Stockenberg Page A

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