True Believer(26)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

“I’d like that,” he said. “She told me you kept quite a record.”

“I did my best. It’s probably not up to your standards, but then again, I never thought anyone but me would read it.”

“I’m sure I’ll be amazed. But speaking of Lexie, that’s part of the reason I came by. Have you seen her around? She wasn’t at the library today.”

She nodded. “She came by the house this morning. That’s how I knew to bring my book. She told me you two saw the lights last night.”

“We did.”

“And?”

“They were amazing, but like you said, they weren’t ghosts.”

She looked at him, satisfied. “And I take it that you’ve already figured everything out, or you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I think so.”

“Good for you,” she said. She motioned over her shoulder. “I’m sorry I can’t chat more now, but I’m kind of busy, so let me get my notebook for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to do a story about my amazing powers next.”

“You never know,” he said. “I just might.”

As Jeremy watched her vanish into the kitchen, he wondered about their conversation. It had been perfectly pleasant but curiously impersonal. And he noticed that Doris hadn’t really responded to his question about Lexie’s whereabouts. Nor had she even ventured a guess, which seemed to suggest that—for whatever reason—she viewed the subject of Lexie as suddenly off-limits. Which wasn’t good. He looked up to see her approaching again. She wore the same pleasant smile as she had before, but this time it gave him a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Now, if you have any questions about this,” she said, handing the notebook over, “don’t hesitate to call. And feel free to make copies if you want, but bring this back before you leave. It’s pretty special to me.”

“I’ll do that,” he promised.

She remained standing silently before him, and Jeremy got the impression that it was her way of telling him their conversation was at an end. He, on the other hand, wasn’t about to give up so easily.

“Oh, one more thing,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Would it be okay if I return the notebook to Lexie? If I happen to see her today?”

“That’s fine,” she said. “But I’ll be here, too, just in case.”

As he caught her obvious meaning, he felt his stomach sink even more.

“Did she say anything about me?” he asked. “When you saw her this morning?”

“Not much. However, she did say that you’d probably be coming by.”

“Did she seem okay?”

“Lexie,” she began slowly, as if choosing her words carefully, “is hard to read sometimes, so I’m not sure I can answer that. But I’m sure she’ll be okay, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Was she angry with me?”

“No, that I can tell you. She definitely wasn’t angry.”

Waiting for more, Jeremy said nothing. In the silence Doris took a long breath. For the first time since they’d met, he noticed her age in the lines around her eyes.

“I like you, Jeremy, you know that,” she said, her voice soft. “But you’re putting me on the spot. What you have to understand is that I have certain loyalties, and Lexie is one of them.”

“Which means what?” he asked, feeling his throat go dry.

“It means that I know what you want and what you’re asking, but I can’t answer your questions. What I can say is that if Lexie wanted you to know where she is, she would have told you.”

“Will I see her again? Before I leave?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose that’s up to her.”

With that comment, his mind began to absorb the fact that she was really gone.

“I don’t understand why she’d do something like this,” he said.

She gave a sad smile. “Yes,” she said, “I think you do.”

She was gone.

Like an echo, the words kept repeating themselves. Behind the wheel on the way to Greenleaf, Jeremy tried to analyze the facts with cool remove. He didn’t panic. He never panicked. No matter how wild he’d felt, no matter how much he wanted to press Doris for information about Lexie’s whereabouts or state of mind, he’d simply thanked her for her help and headed out to the car, as if he’d expected nothing different.

And besides, he reminded himself, there was no reason to panic. It wasn’t as if something terrible had happened to her. It simply boiled down to the fact that she didn’t want to see him again. Perhaps he should have seen it coming. He’d expected too much from her, even when she’d made it perfectly clear from the very beginning that she wasn’t interested.

He shook his head, thinking it was no wonder that she’d left. As modern as she was in some ways, she was traditional in others, and she was probably tired of having to deal with his transparent ploys. It was probably easier for her to simply leave town than to explain her reasoning to someone like him.

So where did that leave him? Either she would come back or she wouldn’t. If she came back, no problem. But if she didn’t . . . well, that’s where reality started getting complicated. He could sit back and accept her decision, or he could try to track her down. If there was one thing he was good at, it was finding people. Using public records, friendly conversations, and the right sites on the Web, he’d learned how to follow a trail of bread crumbs to anyone’s doorstep. He doubted, however, that any of that would be necessary. After all, she’d already given him the answer he needed, and he was sure he knew exactly where she’d gone. Which meant that he could handle this any way he wanted.

His thoughts stopped again.

The thing was, it didn’t quite help him with the idea of what he should do. He reminded himself that he had a conference call in just a few hours, one with important ramifications for his career, and if he headed off to look for Lexie now, he doubted he’d be able to find a pay phone when he needed one. Alvin would be arriving later this evening—possibly the last of the foggy evenings—and though Alvin could handle the filming on his own tonight, they had to work together tomorrow. Not to mention that he needed a nap—he had another long night ahead, and even his bones were tired.

On the other hand, he didn’t want everything to end like this. He wanted to see Lexie, he needed to see her. A voice in his head warned him not to let his emotions govern his actions, and rationally, he couldn’t see how anything good could come of him traipsing off in search of her. Even if he found her, she’d probably ignore him or, worse, find it creepy. And in the meantime, Nate would probably have a stroke, Alvin would be stranded and furious, and his story and future career might just go down the tubes.

In the end, the decision was simple. Pulling his car into the spot in front of his cottage at Greenleaf, he nodded to himself. Putting it in those terms made his choice clear. After all, he hadn’t spent the last fifteen years using logic and science without learning something along the way.

Now, he thought to himself, all he had to do was pack.

Thirteen

Okay, she admitted, she was a coward.

It wasn’t the easiest thing for her to own up to the fact that she’d run away, but hey, she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly these past couple of days, and she could forgive herself for not being perfect. The truth was, if she had stayed around, things would have become even more complicated. It didn’t matter that she liked him and that he liked her; she woke up this morning knowing that she had to end things before they went too far, and when she pulled in the sandy driveway out front, she knew she’d done the right thing by coming here.

The place wasn’t much to look at. The old cottage was weathered and blended into the sea oats that surrounded it. The small, rectangular white-curtained windows were coated with salted mist, and the siding had streaks of gray, remnants from the fury of a dozen hurricanes. In some ways, she’d always considered the cottage a time capsule of sorts; most of the furniture was over twenty years old, the pipes groaned when she turned on the shower, and she had to light the stove burners with a match. But the memories of spending parts of her youth here never ceased to calm her, and after storing her bags and the groceries she’d picked up for the weekend, she’d opened the windows to air out the place. Then, grabbing a blanket, she settled into a rocker on the back porch, wanting nothing more than to watch the ocean. The steady roar of the waves was soothing, almost hypnotic, and when the sun broke through the clouds and beams of light stretched toward the water like individual fingers from above, she found herself holding her breath.

She did that every time she came here. The first time she’d seen the light breaking through this way was soon after her visit to the cemetery with Doris, when she was still a little girl, and she remembered thinking that her parents had found another way to make their presence known in her life. Like heaven-sent angels, she believed they were watching out for her, always present but never intervening, as if they felt that she would always make the right decisions.

For a long time, she’d needed to believe in such things, simply because she’d often felt alone. Her grandparents had been kind and wonderful, but as much as she loved them for their care and sacrifice, she’d never quite gotten used to the feeling of being different from her peers. Her friends’ parents played softball on the weekends and looked youthful even in the soft morning light of church, an observation that made her wonder what, if anything, she was missing.

She couldn’t talk to Doris about these things. Nor could she talk to Doris about the guilt she felt as a result. No matter how she phrased it, Doris’s feelings would have been hurt, and even as a young girl, she’d known that.

But still, that feeling of being different had left its mark. Not only on her but on Doris as well, and it began to manifest itself during her teenage years. When Lexie would push the limits, Doris would frequently give in to avoid an argument, leaving Lexie with the belief that she could establish her own rules. She’d been a bit on the wild side when she was young, made mistakes and had too many regrets, but somehow turned serious during college. In her new, more mature incarnation, she embraced the idea that maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark in the world.

Last night, she knew, she’d almost made a mistake. She’d expected him to try to kiss her, and she was pleased by how resolute she’d been when he wanted to come inside.

She knew she’d hurt his feelings, and she was sorry for that. But what he probably didn’t realize was that it wasn’t until after he’d driven off that her heart had stopped pounding, because part of her had wanted to let him inside, no matter what it might have led to. She knew better, but she couldn’t help it. Even worse, as she tossed and turned in her bed last night, she realized she might not have the strength to do the right thing again.

In all honesty, she should have seen it coming. As the evening had worn on, she found herself comparing Jeremy to both Avery and Mr. Renaissance, and to her surprise, Jeremy more than held his own. He had Avery’s wit and sense of humor and Mr. Renaissance’s intelligence and charm, but Jeremy seemed more comfortable with himself than either of them. Perhaps she should just chalk it up to the wonderful day she’d had, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. When was the last time she’d had a spontaneous lunch? Or sat up on Riker’s Hill? Or visited the cemetery after a party, when normally she would have gone straight to bed? No doubt the excitement and unpredictability had reminded her of how happy she’d been when she still believed that Avery and Mr. Renaissance were the men of her dreams.

But she’d been wrong then, just as she was wrong now. She knew Jeremy would solve the mystery today—okay, maybe it was just a feeling, but she was sure of it, since the answer was in one of the diaries and all he had to do was find it—and she had no doubt that he would have asked her to celebrate the solution with him. Had she been in town, the two of them would have spent most of the day together, and she didn’t want that. Then again, deep down, it was exactly what she wanted, leaving her feeling more confused than she’d been in years.

Doris had intuited every bit of it this morning when Lexie stopped by, but that wasn’t surprising. Lexie could feel the exhaustion around her own eyes and knew she looked like a wreck when she showed up out of the blue. After throwing a few days’ worth of clothes into the suitcase, she’d left her house without showering; she didn’t even attempt to explain what she was feeling. Even so, Doris had simply nodded when Lexie told her she had to go. Doris, tired though she was, seemed to understand that while she’d set the whole thing in motion, she hadn’t anticipated what might happen as a result. That was the thing about premonitions; while they might be accurate in the short term, anything beyond that was impossible to know.

So she’d come here because she had to, if only to preserve her sanity, and she’d return to Boone Creek when things were back to normal. It wouldn’t take long. In a couple of days, people would have stopped talking about the ghosts and the historic homes and the stranger in town, and the visiting tourists would be nothing but a memory. The mayor would be back on the golf course, Rachel would date the wrong sorts of men, and Rodney would probably find a way to accidentally bump into Lexie near the library, no doubt breathing a sigh of relief when he realized their relationship could go back to the way it once was.

Maybe it wasn’t an exciting life, but it was her life, and she wasn’t about to let anyone or anything upset the balance. In another place and time, she might have felt differently, but thinking along those lines was pointless now. As she continued to stare out over the water, she forced herself not to imagine what might have been.