“It’s probably just a bundle of garbage,” he said. “And, look, now they’re going away. Driving off. And it doesn’t look like they saw us.”
“Damn.” She gazed out over the lake, squinting at the sinking sun as it still gave off some bold rays. “Who the hell would dump garbage in the lake like that? We ought to report them. Did you get the name of the boat or anything?”
“No.” He sank back down onto the floor. “We could report them, I suppose, but they might have just been throwing—I dunno—a fishing net in the water?”
“Did it look like a fishing net to you?”
“No.” It had looked like a bundle wrapped in black plastic; the covering shone a little in the light. It wasn’t big enough to be a body, he didn’t think—and why was he even entertaining such a thought? People didn’t do stuff like that except in movies or books.
Teddy sighed and sat next to him. “Well, if we ever get off this thing, we can report them. Now, where were we? Oh, right. Marcie. A fourth-grade teacher. Does she have a specialty?”
Relieved to have a different topic—even if it was Marcie—he continued.
* * *
“She specializes in math, but teaches cross-curriculum. She and my sister knew each other in college—Dina is six years younger than me—and they were in the same sorority. That’s how we met—she came home for Christmas one year with Dina. I’d been out of school for several years, and just finishing my doctorate, and, well—we fell for each other.
“We dated for three years, got engaged on our third anniversary, and set the wedding date for a year ago May. And then…I don’t know…things started to change. We began to argue more, and had less time to see each other. There was a new principal at her school, and he had her working on a new curriculum for the math department, and…” He shrugged. “Between my work and hers, and the wedding plans…”
“And the extra work for the curriculum?” Teddy said dryly. “Let me guess—something happened with her and the principal.”
She felt him tense. “I don’t…think so,” he replied. “I wondered…but I don’t think so. Even so, we began growing apart, and—well, she’s six years younger than me, and had just graduated college when we got engaged. She finally told me she wasn’t ready to get married. So…we tried to get through that. And…it just didn’t work out. I was ready to get married and start a family, and she wasn’t.”
“Except…she is now. Barely a year later.” Teddy kept her voice low and empty of the venom she felt on his behalf, but the roughness in Oscar’s voice told her she wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t thought or felt.
“Yeah. So…” He shrugged. “The guy she’s marrying—”
“It’s not the principal is it?” she demanded, unable to contain her outrage.
“No, thank goodness. He—Trevor—is just a guy she met—maybe eight or nine months ago. Father of a student, I think.”
“How do you know all this? You don’t keep in touch with her, do you?” she asked.
“No.Definitelynot. But Dina keeps me in the loop. She—”
“All right, wait. Can we stop there for a second?” Teddy said. “How did you get a great name like Oscar London, but your sister ended up with a very boring name about being stuck cooking?”
“Stuck cooking?”
“You know—someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” she sang, “someone’s in the kitchen I knooo-ohhh-ohhh-owww—”
“Okay, okay,” he said, cutting her off with a chuckle. “I got it. Her name is actually Engadine.”
Teddy burst out laughing. “Oh my, that isthe best! Engadine. Engadine London. I’mtotallyusing that in a book someday. So…Oscar and Engadine.”
“Yes, that’s us.”
“Whowereyour parents?” she said in the same tone as Sally Albright when she asked Harry Burns about his wife named Helen, who was a lawyer.
“Coming from a woman named Teddy,” he said, his voice shaking with laughter, “I don’t know how you can point fingers.”
“I’m not pointing fingers,” she said. “I’madmiring. I told you, I love good names. But seriously—are your parents British or something?”
“My father is. And my mother was a mechanical engineer from Boston. They met in Germany, both working for an auto supplier based there. I lived my first six years between Germany and the U.K., then we came to the U.S.”
“Ah, that explains a lot.” Teddy’s giggles had calmed, and she closed her eyes. Even with Oscar’s shirt, she was getting chilly. She couldn’t imagine how cold he was getting, bare-chested and all. How chivalrous it had been of him to have offered her his shirt—and a peek of what was beneath it. A little pale, but very solid and taut.
“I’m not going to ask what you mean by that,” Oscar said after a moment of silence. His voice was dry, and he, too, let his head bump gently back against the glass wall.
