A Month at the Shore (48 page)

"Well, okay, a boat," she said, smiling at the thought of the two of them poring over brochures days earlier. "That goes without saying. Still, I can see why the guys at the office are restless. They've just been handed what amounts to a second chance at life. How many people get that?"

Jim angled his head to get a better look at her. "That's exactly their situation. Exactly. They don't want to blow it."

"No one does," she said. Certainly
she
didn't. She wanted the money to be put to the best possible use, whatever that was, because she wanted to be the best person she could, whatever that was.

Her husband murmured, "I don't think you realize that most of us have already blown it. That half of our lives have already been shot to hell behind a desk. That's why everyone's looking around, trying to get it right this time. Everyone's second-guessing
 
... everything. Believe me."

Something hot and sharp needled its way through Wendy's insides. Before she could identify the sensation, she said, "I hope their wives are helping them try to figure it out?"

Jim shifted his weight, and Wendy found herself sinking into the void alongside him. "That's just it," he mused. "I think the guys have this
... this feeling of,
I'm
the one who bought the ticket, and the money's
my
responsibility to figure out," he said. "Except Ed, of course. Dorothy runs that show."

She tried to laugh away the unease that both of them seemed to be feeling. "Uh-oh; does this mean that from now on I have to fill out a written request to buy something?"

He gave her hair a quick yank and said, "Goof. I'm talking about the other guys, not me. Hell, I'm the one who feels like he has to fill out a form to spend any money around here."

"Because you're impulsive," she couldn't help saying. "It's the Irish in you."

"What about the Irish in
you,
Wenda Hodene?" he said in a fake but rich Irish brogue. "Ye've repressed it of late."

She sat up and turned to face him squarely. "Meaning
...?"

"Meaning it's been a while. I know things have been crazy, but
... it's been a couple of weeks now."

There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Wendy had seen the same look the day she walked into the motorcycle shop twelve years earlier, in search of a bicycle bell. The only bells around were the ones he rang that night when he kissed her. Within the month they'd gone to bed; within three months they'd become engaged. It was the O'Byrne in her that had made her do it.

She smiled at the memory but s
aid, "You're tight, James; it would
take all blessed night."

"We have all blessed night. Tyler, do not forget, is at a sleepover."

"His first in a month," she said, keying in on the fact. "You're right."

Jim grinned, showing straight white teeth, and Wendy thought,
I keep forgetting how good-looking the man is.

And loyal; she loved that he was loyal. His desire for her, coming hard on the heels of the news about Phil and Cindy, was a spur to passion.

And, they would be alone. All blessed night.

Motive and opportunity; Wendy had it all. "You know what, mister? I think I'll take you up on that offer."

She turned and straddled him, wedging her knees between his thighs and the arms of the recliner. Her kiss was fierce and deep, as reassuring as it was hungry for reassurance. She felt him rise instantly beneath her and realized that he might not be so drunk, after all.

He broke off the kiss and said in a raspy growl, "Let's go
screw our brains out
."

His
bluntness
jolted her out of any expectation of fuzzy, warm intercourse between a couple with more than a decade of lovemaking behind them. This would be raw; this would be basic.

This could be fun.

****

Zack Tompkins was in bed with the hottest date he'd had in months. He lay back and closed his eyes, perfectly willing to let her do most of the work. "Ah, darlin', where
did
you go to school?" he murmured. At this rate, he wouldn't last; he was going to have to think about doing his taxes or something.

No need. The new phone on the nightstand rang, a shrill, unfamiliar sound that brought a string of expletives from him. "Ignore it, ignore it," he
told her
hoarsely. "It'll go away."

But it didn't. The machine kicked in after the second ring, and after that they heard a tremulous, "Zack? Zack, are you there?"

Ah, shit.

"It's about Jimmy."

Ah, shit.

At the other end of the line, he heard Zina's voice falter and then turn sniffly. "I know
... I know what you said. But it's him. It
is
him," she insisted poignantly to the machine. "I know it is. So I'm going to Providence tomorrow—"

Shit!
He rolled away from his date and snatched up the phone. "Zee, what're you
talkin
' about? Are you nuts?"

"Oh, Zack—you're home," she said, sounding less offended than relieved. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No, no, nothing," he mumbled, but he grabbed a corner of the sheet and pulled it over his groin. This was Zina he was talking to: an emotional, naive, hopelessly fragile human being. The least he could do was cover up in deference to her goodness.

He tried, as gently as he knew how, to crush her plan. "Zee, I don't think that that's a good idea. It would be too stressful for you."

"I'm stressed
now,"
she said simply. "Ever since I saw the photo in the paper."

"You'd be depressed if—when—you found out it wasn't him."

"Zack, don't you understand? I'm depressed
now."

"It could be embarrassing—"

"Not to me. Maybe to him."

"It could be dangerous, for crissake!"

"How? If he's Jimmy or if he isn't, the worst he could do wou
ld be to brush me off. You know
the way these lottery winners have to brush off charities and relatives and con artists. Who knows? Maybe he has a security guard that I won't be able to get past."

"Ah, geez..." Zack glanced at his date, sitting where she'd landed at the edge of the bed when he'd dumped her to grab the phone. Brittany was wearing a polite smile—but that was all, and she knew that he was well aware of it.

He smiled back, also politely, while he focused on the crisis at hand. "Zee, I haven't asked you for much in life, but I'm asking you now: don't do this. For me. Don't do this."

He heard her shocked intake of breath. "Zack! How can you ask me not to?"

He turned away from Brittany now and hunched over the phone with one hand slapped over his free ear, feeling like a soldier in a foxhole during a firefight. "What will you gain, Zina?" he said, forcing himself not to scream at her. "What can you possibly gain? He's moved on, wherever and whoever he is. Let it
go."

After a long pause she gave him an answer, spoken softly but resolutely, that wasn't a reply to his question. "I have to see him."

He'd lost. It was a novel sensation. He felt the way he would have if she'd beaten him at arm wrestling, and for a moment he wasn't quite sure what to say. Later he realized that his ego had been smarting: he'd been her brother for thirty-four years, and yet there he was, outranked by an asshole she'd known for little more than that many weeks.

But at that moment, all Zack cared about was keeping his sister from a self-inflicted wound that he was convinced could end up being fatal.

"All right," he told her. "I won't object to hunting him down—if you agree to a compromise."

"What kind of compromise?"

"It's too complicated to get into over the phone; I'd better come over. I'm on my way."

He hung up and turned around to face the music. Beautiful, blond, naked Brittany was scrutinizing him through narrowed blue eyes.

Brittany didn't like what she was seeing, he could tell. Brittany didn't like it at all.

Chapter 4

"You can't be serious."

Wendy stood at the stove, a strip of bacon hanging from between two fingers, and stared in disbelief at her husband. He was in boxers and a T-shirt, sitting at the kitchen table with his hands wrapped around a big blue plastic glass filled with orange juice and ice. Five seconds earlier he had looked rumpled, smug, and adorable. Now he merely looked unshaven.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said anything," he said, going defensive.

"Ten thousand
dollars?"

"It's not like we don't have the money."

"For
lottery
tickets?"

"It's not a big deal, Wen. Don't make it into one.'"

Ignoring the unmistakable warning in his voice, Wendy slapped the bacon across the
surface of the cast-iron
griddle. "You couldn't discuss this with me first?"

"Aren't you mistaking me," he asked, "for Ed?"

She gave him a sharp look. "What's that supposed to mean? That I'm Dorothy?"

"I didn't say that," he answered coolly, and he turned his attention to drinking down his juice.

She watched him, thinking,
Ten. Count to ten.

Sometime during the first, sleepless night after the news that he had won that staggering sum, they had warned one
another that moments like these were bound to arise. They had promised as they clung to one another, that they would consider both sides of any differences that might pop up between them. Wendy, for one, was determined to keep that promise.

She took her time separating the next greasy bacon strip from the slab, trying to understand what could motivate him to grab for more when he already had so much.

"What's so
damned
urgent about lottery tickets?" she blurted. "It's not as though the state is running out of them."

So much for seeing both sides. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be snotty," she said, throwing him a glance of pale regret. "But you've got to admit, ten thousand is a big step up from ten dollars when it comes to a lottery budget."

"As it happens, Powerball is up to
ninety
-five million," he said, pouring himself more juice from the carton. "It was worth jumping in, statistically speaking."

"I do
not
get that," Wendy said, annoyed that she did not get that. If there were many more gazillions of people buying tickets in a particularly hot week, and only the same handful or less were going to win, then how could everyone's chances possibly improve? "It makes absolutely no sense," she grumbled.

"I'm a math major," he reminded her in a weary tone. They'd been through this so many times before. "
You
...
are not."

"No. I'm a home major," she said, turning up the burner, "and in my simple view of things, we have enough money. One-eighth of eighty-seven million, even after taxes and the cash-out penalty, is enough to live on. In my view."

And in my view you have a gambling problem, Jim; you've always had a gambling problem. Not enough for Gamblers Anonymous, maybe; but you like it too well, that thrill of the wait. Who else plays the Numbers game by calling out digits as the Ping-Pong balls pop up on TV—and then is genuinely disappointed when the balls don't match your shouts?

She said, "How did you pay for them? I don't suppose that they took Visa."

He looked almost sheepish as he said, "I borrowed most of it from Sam; he carries a money clip nowadays. I gave him a check, but naturally I'l
l split any pot with him fifty-
fifty," he added. "That's only fair."

There it was again, that gambler's cockiness.
I will split
—not
I would split.
In his mind, winning was a done deal.

Wendy fixed her attention not on her husband but on the cobalt-blue plastic glass in his hand. She had been toying with the idea of ordering real glasses from Pottery Barn in the same deep blue as the plastic ones. But then yesterday she tossed the catalogue in the recycle bin; she wasn't a hundred percent sure that she would be going with the same blue-and-yellow color scheme in the kitchen
after it was remodeled
, and the glasses might
end
up a waste of money.

Ten thousand dollars.

She felt woozy at the thought of how long it once would have taken them to save that much. And now it meant—what? Pin money in Sam's pocket that Jim had felt free to glom onto like change in a dish on a dresser.

"If you're going to pout," Jim said, cutting through the fog of her dismay, "then at least flip the bacon. It's burning."

"Oh!" Wendy grabbed a fork and began stabbing at the underside of the bacon that was sticking to the pan on the too-hot flame. The bacon popped, and a spatter of grease shot out at her, making her jump back and drop her fork.