At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [39]
No, he decided, he wanted to know. It would take some time, but he’d find out and speak to whoever sent it, make him see how tasteless it was. And if it was Rodney . . . well, not only would Jeremy confront him, but there was no doubt that Lexie would give him a piece of her mind as well.
He nodded. Oh, he’d find out who did it all right. He saved the message, with the intent to begin the search immediately. And once he learned anything, Lexie would be the first to know.
Spending the evening with Lexie assuaged any doubts he had that he was indeed the father. At dinner, Lexie chatted away as usual; in fact, over the next week, Lexie acted as if nothing was bothering her at all. Which, in all honesty, Jeremy considered somewhat strange, considering that the wedding was now only a little more than two weeks away, they would close on the house a week from Friday—though it was still a long way from being habitable—and Jeremy had begun to wonder aloud where he was going to work in Boone Creek, since he’d obviously forgotten how to write an article. He’d sent another prewritten column, leaving only three left to submit. He hadn’t been able to trace the e-mail yet; whoever had done it had covered his tracks well. The address was not only anonymous, it had been routed through a series of different servers—one offshore and another that was unwilling to divulge information without a court order. Luckily he knew someone in New York who thought he could hack in, but it was going to take a little time. The guy freelanced for the FBI and they kept him busy.
On the plus side, aside from another teary episode in the middle of the night, Lexie seemed far less stressed than he was. Of course, that didn’t mean she was exactly the woman he’d imagined her to be. She was, he’d come to realize, completely in charge of the pregnancy. Granted, she was the one carrying the baby, she was the one with the crazy mood swings, and she was the one who read all the books, but it wasn’t as if Jeremy were clueless. Or that he was bored with the details she seemed to find so intriguing. On the following Saturday morning, with the bright April sun coming down hard, Lexie jingled her keys as they were about to leave to go shopping, as if giving him one last chance to back out of his fatherly duties.
“Are you sure about coming with me today?” Lexie asked.
“Positive.”
“Wasn’t there a basketball game on television that you want to watch? You’re going to miss it.”
He smiled. “I’ll be fine. There are more games tomorrow.”
“You do know this is going to take some time.”
“So?”
“I just don’t want you to get bored.”
“I won’t get bored. I love shopping,” Jeremy promised.
“Since when? And besides, it’s just baby stuff.”
“I live to buy baby stuff.”
She shook her head. “Suit yourself.”
An hour later, after arriving in Greenville, Jeremy entered one of those warehouse baby stores and suddenly wondered whether Lexie might have been right. The place was unlike anything he’d ever seen in New York. Not only was it cavernous, with wide aisles and towering ceilings, but the choice of items on sale was dizzying. If buying things proved how much you loved your children, this was obviously the place to go. Jeremy spent the first few minutes wandering around in disbelief, and wondering who had come up with all this stuff.
Who knew, for instance, that there were literally thousands of different mobiles a parent could attach to the crib? Some with animals, others with colors, some with black-and-white geometric shapes, some that played music, others that spun in slow circles. It went without saying that each mobile had been scientifically shown to stimulate the intellectual development of the baby, and he and Lexie must have stood in the aisle examining the choices for nearly twenty minutes, during which time Jeremy learned that his opinion was usually no help whatsoever.
“I’ve read that babies respond mostly to black