At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [38]
Because, the little voice in his head finally answered, whoever sent it knew that deep down, there was an instant when you wondered, too?
No, he suddenly thought, that was a lie. He knew the baby was his.
Except, of course, that you aren’t able to get a woman pregnant, the little voice reminded him.
With a flash, it all came rushing back—his first marriage to Maria, the difficulty they’d had getting pregnant, the trips to the fertility clinic, the tests he’d taken, all culminating with the doctor’s words: It’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever be able to father a child.
It was a kind choice of words: Jeremy had learned during that visit that for all intents and purposes he was sterile, a reality that eventually led Maria to ask for a divorce.
He remembered the doctor telling him that his sperm count was low—almost negligible, in fact—and those he did produce showed very little motility. Jeremy recalled sitting in the office in shock, grasping at any option. How about if I wore boxers? I’ve heard that helps, or How about treatments? There was nothing they could really do for him, the doctor explained. Nothing likely to be effective.
That day had been one of the most devastating of his life; until that point, he’d always assumed that he’d have children, and after the divorce, he’d reacted by becoming someone else entirely. He had more one-night stands than he could count and assumed he would lead the life of a bachelor forever. Until he met Lexie. And the miracle of her pregnancy, a child created out of passion and love, made him realize how pointless those years had been.
Unless . . .
No, scratch that, Jeremy thought. There was no unless. Of course the baby was his. Everything—from the timing, to Lexie’s behavior all along, to the way Doris treated him now—assured him that he was the father of the baby. He repeated those thoughts like a mantra, hoping to drown out the reality of the doctor’s words so long ago.
The message continued to taunt him. Who sent the e-mail? And, he wondered again, why?
Years of investigative research had taught him quite a bit about the Internet, and though the sender used an address Jeremy didn’t recognize, he knew that all e-mails could eventually be traced. With a bit of persistence and the right phone calls to a few contacts he’d made over the years, he could trace the e-mail back to the server and, from there, to the computer from which it had originated. He noticed that the message had arrived less than twenty minutes earlier, right around the time he was getting back to Greenleaf.
But again, the question was Why? Why would someone send it?
With the exception of Lexie, Jeremy had never told anyone—not his parents or his friends—about his inability to father children, and though there had been an instant when he’d wondered how the pregnancy had happened despite the odds, he’d shrugged that thought off. But if only Maria and Lexie knew—and neither one, he was sure, had sent it—then again, what was the reason? Was it a prank?
Doris had mentioned that some people had begun to suspect that Lexie was pregnant—Rachel, for instance. But he couldn’t picture Rachel being responsible for the e-mail. She and Lexie had been friends for years, and this wasn’t the sort of prank friends played on one another.
But if it hadn’t been meant as a prank, the only conceivable reason to send the e-mail was to cause trouble between Jeremy and Lexie. But again, who would do that?
The real father? a voice inside whispered, suddenly making him remember Lexie and Rodney holding hands.
Jeremy shook his head. Rodney and Lexie? He’d gone over that a thousand times, and it simply wasn’t possible. It was ridiculous even to consider it.
Except that it does explain the e-mail, the voice whispered again.
No, he thought, this time more adamantly. Lexie wasn’t like that. Lexie wasn’t sleeping with someone else that week; Lexie wasn’t even seeing someone else. And Rodney wasn’t the kind of man who would write an e-mail; he would have confronted Jeremy in person.
Jeremy pressed the button to delete the e-mail.