gasp, and when he turned around, Beverly’s hand was covering her mouth.
“Oh my God!” she said. “Are you thinking—”
“No, Beverly,” he was quick to tell her. “No, I’m not.”
Teddy
So long ago, that euphoria, and so short-lived. And, like life itself, over before it could be fully comprehended. A cheat, really.
Returning to the picnic table where he’d made small talk with the Christians, Teddy took out the postcard he’d purchased earlier and studied its painted cliffs, themselves a cheat, their colors brighter than the real ones. When Jacy’d bought this same card back in ’71, he had no idea what she meant to do with it, though he remembered thinking it odd, given how cheap they were, that she’d bought just one. Only later would he learn who she’d sent it to.
Later that summer her fiancé—Vance? Lance? Chance?—had somehow learned that Tom Ford had helped Teddy land an internship at the Globe and called him there, wondering if he’d heard from Jacy. When Teddy told him no, he seemed satisfied but went on to say he’d be in Boston the following week and suggested they meet for coffee. Teddy, surprised by the invitation, hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse on the spot, so they’d met at a Greek diner not far from the Globe offices, where Lance/Chance/Vance, with his short hair and preppy attire, couldn’t have looked more out of place. Who, Teddy remembered wondering, did this guy remind him of?
They’d taken a booth in the back, “away from prying ears,” as Vance hilariously put it, as if their conversation would naturally be of interest to others, maybe the entire readership of the Globe. When Teddy ordered only coffee, Lance said, “You sure you don’t want some pie? I’m buying.” Teddy said no, just coffee, to which the would-be lawyer replied, “Suit yourself,” and ordered a slice of Boston cream to go with his coffee. For someone left a few scant blocks from the altar, Chance seemed to be in excellent spirits. “So,” he said when his pie arrived, fixing Teddy with his pale blue eyes, “there’s news.”
At this Teddy’s heart leaped. It was August by then and she’d been gone for a solid two months. “About Jacy?”
Vance shook his head. The news was actually about her parents, and get this: they were divorcing. Nobody’d seen that coming, Lance said, including his own parents, and the two couples had been best friends for as long as he could remember. Teddy started to ask how any of this was relevant, but Chance cut him off—because there was more. Jacy’s dad had apparently been caught up in the latest insider-trading Wall Street scandal. Did Teddy know? It was in all the papers. Word was he’d be lucky to escape jail. Jacy’s mother, originally from California, planned to sell the Greenwich house as soon as it was legally hers and move back. Which meant that if Jacy didn’t show up soon, she’d have neither a home nor married parents to return to.
To Teddy, none of this was as surprising as the fact that Vance seemed to have adjusted to the fact that if Jacy ever did come home, it wouldn’t be to him. “I guess some things just aren’t meant to be,” he said, causing Teddy to wonder if he’d begun to see the writing on the wall prior to his fiancée’s disappearance. Had they been quarreling in the run-up to the wedding? Teddy knew they argued about the war, and gathered there were other serious disagreements as well, such as where they’d live after they married. Jacy wanted out of Greenwich, whereas Chance was in favor of finding a place near their parents. Why not? Free babysitting once they started having kids, which Lance apparently thought would happen right away, despite Jacy’s stated disinclination to ever have any. So, when he said that some things just weren’t meant to be, was he acknowledging that they were fundamentally mismatched? Or had he, in Jacy’s continued absence, begun recalling the hundreds of minor irritants that inevitably cropped up between any two people, stuff that in the moment didn’t rise to the level of genuine discord?
“For a while, it felt like the end of the world,” Chance was saying, “but you know what, Teddy?” (He didn’t, but was surprised to hear his name, in direct address, from the mouth of a man he’d only just met.) “Turns out that only the end of the world”—here he paused so Teddy could savor