At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [36]
“How would she know? Did you say anything?”
“No, of course not. But women can tell when other women are pregnant. And I’ve heard people whispering about it over lunch. Of course, it doesn’t help that Lexie’s been browsing through baby clothes at Gherkin’s store downtown. People notice things like that.”
“Lexie’s not going to be happy about it.”
“She won’t mind. Not in the long run, anyway. And besides, she didn’t really believe she’d even be able to keep it a secret this long.”
“Does that mean I can tell my family now?”
“I think,” Doris said slowly, “you’d better ask Lexie about that. She’s still worried that they won’t like her, especially with the wedding being so small. She feels bad about not being able to invite the whole clan.” She smiled. “That was her word, by the way, not mine.”
“It works,” Jeremy said. “They are a clan. But now it’ll be a manageable clan.”
When Doris reached for her glass, Rachel returned to their table with a pitcher of sweet tea. “Need a refill?”
“Thanks, Rach,” Jeremy said.
She poured. “Are you getting excited about the wedding?”
“Getting there. How’d shopping go with Lexie?”
“It was fun,” she said. “It was nice to get out of town for a while. But I’ll bet you can understand that.”
Sure I can, Jeremy thought. “Oh, by the way, I talked to Alvin and he said to say hello.”
“He did?”
“He said he’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Tell him hey from me, too.” She fiddled with her apron. “Do you two want some pecan pie? I think there’re still a few pieces left.”
“No thanks,” Jeremy said. “I’m stuffed.”
“None for me,” Doris said.
As Rachel headed toward the kitchen, Doris put her napkin on the table, returning her attention to Jeremy. “I walked through the house yesterday. It looks like it’s coming along.”
“Does it? I hadn’t noticed.”
“It’ll be done,” she reassured him, hearing his tone. “People may work at a slower pace down here, but it all gets done eventually.”
“I just hope it’s finished before the baby heads off to college. We just found out that there’s some termite damage.”
“What did you expect? It’s an old house.”
“It’s like the house in the movie The Money Pit. There’s always something else that needs to be fixed.”
“I could have told you that beforehand. Why do you think it had been on the market so long? And come on, no matter how much it costs, it’s still cheaper than anything in Manhattan, isn’t it?”
“It’s certainly more frustrating.”
Doris stared at him. “I take it you’re still not writing.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said, her voice soft. “You aren’t writing. That’s who you are; it’s how you define yourself. And if you can’t do it . . . well, it’s kind of like Lexie’s pregnancy in that it amplifies everything else.”
Doris was right, Jeremy decided. It wasn’t the cost of the new house, plans for the wedding, the baby, or the fact that he was still adjusting to life as a couple. Any stress he felt was due largely to the fact that he couldn’t write.
The day before, he’d sent off his next column, leaving only four prewritten columns left, and his editor at Scientific American had begun to leave messages on Jeremy’s cell phone, asking why Jeremy wasn’t bothering to keep in touch. Even Nate was beginning to get concerned; where he used to leave messages about the possibility of coming up with a story that might appeal to television producers, he now wondered whether Jeremy was working on anything at all.
At first, it had been easy to make excuses; both his editor and Nate understood how much had recently changed in his life. But when he offered the standard litany of excuses, even Jeremy realized they sounded exactly like that: excuses. Even so, he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Why did his thoughts become jumbled every time he turned on the computer? Why did his fingers turn to mud? And why did it happen only when it came to writing something that might pay the bills?
See, that was the