At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [34]
But even if he could understand objectively that he’d ordered the tuna because he’d wanted Lexie to admire him—thus making him feel powerful—it still didn’t help him decipher what made her tick, and pregnancy only complicated the matter further. He admitted that he didn’t know much about pregnancy, but if there was one thing he was sure about, it was the fact that pregnant women often had strange cravings. Lexie may have been an expert on virtually everything else, but he was ready for whatever she might throw at him in that particular department. His brothers had told him to expect anything; one sister-in-law had craved spinach salad, another wanted pastrami and olives, still another would wake up in the middle of the night to eat tomato soup and cheddar cheese. Consequently, when he wasn’t trying to write, he found himself heading to the grocery store to fill the car with whatever he could think of, anything that might satisfy Lexie’s cravings, no matter how odd they might be.
What he didn’t expect, however, were the irrational mood swings. One night, about a week after their dinner at the Carriage House, he woke up to the sound of Lexie sniffling. When he rolled over, he found her sitting up in bed with her back against the headboard. In the dim light, he could barely make out her features, but he noticed a pile of used tissues in her lap. He sat up in bed.
“Lex? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding as if she had a bad cold. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“That’s okay . . . no problem. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
It sounded as though she’d said “nudding.” He watched her, still unsure what was going on. The fact that he was staring didn’t stop her from crying, and she sniffled again. “I’m just sad,” she explained.
“Can I get you anything? Pastrami? Tomato soup?”
She blinked through her tears, as if trying to figure out if she’d heard him right. “Why on earth would you think I want pastrami?”
“No reason,” he said. Sliding closer, he slipped his arm around her. “So you’re not hungry, though? No strange cravings?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I just feel sad.”
“And you don’t know why?”
All at once she broke down again, big heaving cries that left her shoulders shaking. Jeremy felt his throat constrict. There was nothing worse than the sound of a woman crying, and he found himself wanting to comfort her. “There, there,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay, whatever it is.”
“No, it won’t,” she blubbered. “It’s not going to be okay. It’s never going to be okay.”
“What is it?”
It took a long time before she was able to regain some semblance of control. Finally, she faced him with red, puffy eyes.
“I killed my cat,” she announced.
There were a lot of things he’d expected her to say. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the changes in her life, for instance. Or maybe, in the surge of hormones, she had found herself missing her parents. He had no doubt her emotional outburst had to do with the pregnancy, but this was not the sort of comment he could ever have anticipated. All he could do was stare.
“Your cat?” he asked at last.
She nodded and reached for another tissue, talking through her sobs. “I . . . killed . . . it.”
“Huh,” Jeremy said. Frankly, he didn’t know what else to say. He’d never seen a cat around her place, never heard her talk about a cat. Didn’t even know she liked cats.
Meanwhile, she went on, her voice still raspy. He could tell by her body language that she’d been hurt by his comment. “That’s . . . all you can . . . say?”
He was at a loss. Should he agree with her? You really shouldn’t have killed the cat. Should he empathize? That’s okay. The cat deserved it. Should he support her? I still think you’re a good person, even if you did kill that cat. At the same time, he was frantically searching his memory, trying to figure out if there actually had been a cat, and if so, what its name was. Or how on earth he’d gone this long without ever seeing it. But in a burst of inspiration,