Free Sand Castles by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

regained the momentum, Zack smiled and said, "Sure, Jim. See you tomorrow. Jimmy."

Chapter 7
     
    "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.
    *****
    Over the droning of her electric toothbrush, Wendy heard a truck pull up on the street.
    "Oh, nut ch ," she garbled to her husband as she peeked through the shutters. "I yunt mow da Taurush. Udja dowa hor me, hweesh?"
    "What? Oh. The Taurus. Yeah, okay, I'll move it, " Jim said. He was threading his belt through his pant loops, looking totally preoccupied.
    She glanced at him curiously. "You all right?" she asked between rinsing spits. "You've been out of it since yesterday." Letting the toothbrush run under a stream of water, she added only half in jest, "You haven't bought another ten thousand dollars' worth of Powerball tickets, have you? Because I have more than enough now to decoupage Tyler 's room, in case you're wondering."
    He threw her a wry look and peered over the shutters at the street below. "Oh, Christ," he muttered.
    "What's wrong?"
    "Nothing. I'll go move the cars."
    He sounded tense and disgusted, and Wendy could see why. Every day it was the same old thing: rushing to get the household up and running by seven-thirty, getting in each other's way in the process. Tyler hated the disruption, and Jim, though he was gone most of the day,