At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [60]
When he finished, they both stared at each other for a long time without speaking.
“Is that what you really think? That there’s nothing here? What about the baby and me? Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“You know what I mean.”
Lexie crossed her arms. “No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”
Jeremy shook his head, suddenly exhausted. All he’d wanted her to do was listen. Without a word, he started off the porch.
He walked toward the car, then decided to leave it. Lexie would need it; he’d figure something out later. He fished the keys from his pocket and threw them near the tire. Heading up the drive, he didn’t bother to look back.
Eleven
Hours later, Jeremy sat in the easy chair at his parents’ brownstone in Queens, staring out the window. He’d ended up borrowing Doris’s car earlier that afternoon to change clothes and grab his things from Greenleaf, then rushing to the airport. Noting his expression, Doris hadn’t questioned his request, and during the drive he’d replayed the argument a hundred times.
At first, it had been easy to stay angry at the way Lexie had twisted the facts to her own advantage, but as the miles rolled past and his emotions settled, he began to wonder whether she might have been right. Not about all of it—she had some responsibility for the way the argument had escalated—but certainly on some counts. Had he really been angry about her lack of trust, or was he reacting to the stress he was under and taking it out on her? If he was completely honest, he might admit his stress was part of the equation, but it wasn’t only work-related stress. There was still the matter of the e-mails.
E-mails meant to make him question whether the baby was his. E-mails intended to make him suspicious of Lexie. E-mails that seemed to have served their purpose. But who had sent them? And why?
Who knew that Lexie was pregnant? Doris, of course, which again made her the obvious choice. But he just couldn’t see her doing that, and according to Lexie, she didn’t even know how to use a computer. Whoever had sent the e-mails was an expert.
Then there was Lexie. He remembered her expression when he’d told her that he’d seen her name. Unless her confusion had been faked, she hadn’t known her name was in the journal. Had Doris ever told her that she knew? Had Lexie ever told Doris? Depending on when the miscarriage had happened, neither one may have said anything at all to the other.
So who knew?
He placed a call to his hacker friend again and left a message, telling him it was urgent and that he really needed the information. Before hanging up, he asked him to call his cell phone as soon as he came up with anything.
In an hour, he’d be heading out to the bachelor party, but he wasn’t in the mood. As good as it would be to spend some time with Alvin, he didn’t want to get into all of this with him. Tonight was supposed to be fun, but right now having fun didn’t seem possible.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
Jeremy saw his father coming in from the kitchen. “I am ready,” he said.
“What’s with the shirt? You look like a lumberjack.”
In his haste to pack and get out of town—and realizing he’d sweat through the clothes he’d worn earlier at the closing—Jeremy had pulled the flannel shirt off its hanger. Glancing down, he wondered whether it was a subconscious effort to admit that Lexie had been right. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s different, that’s for sure,” his father remarked. “You buy that down there?”
“Lexie got it for me.”
“You might want to talk to her about style. Now, I might look good in something like that, but it just doesn’t seem right on you. Especially if you’re going out tonight.”
“We’ll see,” Jeremy said.
“Suit yourself,” his father said, taking a seat on the couch. “So what’s going on? You have a fight with Lexie before you left?”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. First the mayor, now his father. Was he that easy to read?
“What makes you say that?” he asked instead.
“The way you’ve been acting. She mad about you having a bachelor party?”
“No, not at all.”
“’Cause