chattered but assumed it must be a figure of speech. “G-G-God, no!”
Her teeth were chattering, too.
“Jacy?” he said. His happiness, complete a moment before, was now assailed by a terrible doubt.
“What’s the matter?”
Nothing. Everything. “It’s just…I don’t know what this means,” he said, his teeth rattling so badly that he marveled when she seemed to understand.
“What what means?”
“This!” That she’d wanted to come here with him in the first place, just the two of them. That she was naked and joyous and nestled comfortably in his arms. That she seemed to be about to kiss him. No, that she was kissing him, kisses even more deliriously thrilling than the one she’d given him the night they’d returned from the dog track. But that night she’d kissed Lincoln and Mickey, too. Since then each of them had been wondering the same thing: which one she’d choose in the unlikely event it ever came to that. Was that what this moment, this embrace, this sweetly salty kiss meant? Could she actually have chosen him?
“This right here?” she said, pulling him to her even tighter as they rose and then descended on every new swell. “I think this means I might not be getting married after all.”
Lincoln
And there she was. Beyond beautiful, even on grainy black-and-white microfilm. Lincoln had forgotten the slight asymmetry of her face, her right eye slightly lower than the left, the smile just a tad lopsided. So different from what passed for beauty nowadays. That Britney Spears girl, the left side of her face identical to the right, as if beauty were about perfection and symmetry. And right on top of this, another jolt. Her name. Justine Calloway. To Lincoln she’d always been just “Jacy.” She had no more need of a surname than Madonna or Cher. Two names identified a person as a mere mortal.
The story in the Gazette had run in mid-June, two full weeks after Jacy’s disappearance, and it included the same appeal her parents had placed in the Cape Cod and coastal Connecticut newspapers: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? No, Lincoln thought, not in forty-four years.
Aware that neither her parents nor her fiancé would approve of her going off to Martha’s Vineyard with Lincoln and Teddy and Mickey, she’d told them all she was spending the weekend in New York with her maid of honor and some other Thetas. There was no such thing as bachelorette parties back then, but something along those lines must’ve been her pitch: one last girls’ night out before the wedding. She’d be back in Connecticut in plenty of time to meet her fiancé when he returned from North Carolina, where law school was letting out for the summer. When she didn’t return as planned, her parents had telephoned the maid of honor, who informed them that, no, Jacy hadn’t come to the city and, no, she had no idea where she might be. Next they called Minerva on the off chance that she’d gone there, but of course the Theta house was closed up tight and the campus was mostly deserted. Now alarmed, they called the maid of honor again to see if Jacy’d been in touch, and this time the girl, whom Jacy had sworn to secrecy, caved, telling them she’d spent the Memorial Day weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. She’d been having second thoughts about the wedding, the girl claimed, and just wanted to get away and think. She was staying at a house in Chilmark with some boys who worked as hashers at the Theta house. The weather had been unseasonably warm and they’d probably just decided to stay a couple extra days. Did the maid of honor know the exact address of the Chilmark house? She did not. Had Jacy left her the phone number there? No. Reluctantly, however, she surrendered the names of the boys she’d been staying with, though of course by then Lincoln and Teddy and Mickey had all returned to the mainland.
When the end of the week came and there was still no sign of her, the Calloways went to the police, who at first were not terribly helpful. The girl hadn’t been gone that long, for one thing, and for another, if the maid of honor was correct and Jacy was getting cold feet about the wedding, well, a runaway bride was hardly of concern to the cops. She’d turn up when she was ready. They did, however, contact Minerva and were given the address of the off-campus apartment