True believer - Nicholas Sparks [114]
With the piles of clutter now hidden, Lexie was holding a can of furniture polish and wiping the top of the desk with a cloth, bringing the wood to a shine. She looked up as Jeremy raised the diary.
“Oh, hey,” she said, looking up. She forced a smile. “I’m just about finished up here.”
Jeremy stared at her. “You can quit the act,” he announced.
Even from across the room, she sensed his anger, and she instinctively tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, holding up the diary. “You have read this, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she said simply, recognizing it as Owen Gherkin’s. “I’ve read it.”
“Did you know there’s a passage that talks about the lights at Cedar Creek?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I did,” she said. “I told you about the diaries when you first came to the library. And if I remember right, I said you might find the answers you were looking for, remember?”
“Don’t play games,” Jeremy said, his eyes narrowing. “You knew what I was looking for.”
“And you found it,” she countered, her voice rising. “I don’t see what the problem is.”
“The problem is that I’ve been wasting my time. This diary had the answer all along. There is no mystery here. There never was. And you’ve been in on this little charade all along.”
“What charade?”
“Don’t bother trying to deny it,” he said, cutting her off. He held up the diary. “I’ve got the proof right here, remember? You lied to me. You lied right to my face.”
Lexie stared at him, feeling the heat of his anger, feeling her own rise in response. “Is this the reason you came to my office? To start firing accusations at me?”
“You knew!” he shouted.
She put her hands on her hips. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
“But you read it!”
“So what?” she shot back. “I read the article in the paper, too. And I read the articles by those other people. How on earth was I supposed to know that Owen Gherkin got it right? For all I knew, he was guessing like the others were. And that’s assuming I even cared about the subject. Do you honestly think I’ve ever spent more than a minute thinking about it until you got here? I don’t care! I never cared! You’re the one down here investigating. And if you’d read the diary two days ago, you wouldn’t have been sure, either. We both know you would have done your own investigation, anyway.”
“That’s not the point,” he said, dismissing the likelihood that she was right. “The point is that this whole thing has been a scam. The tour, the ghosts, the legend—it’s a con, plain and simple.”
“What are you talking about? The tour is about historic homes, and yeah, they added the cemetery to it. Whoop-de-do. All it is, is a nice weekend in the middle of a dreary season. No one’s being conned, no one’s being hurt. And come on, do you really think that most people actually think they’re ghosts? Most people just like to say they do because it’s fun.”
“Did Doris know?” he demanded, cutting her off again.
“About Owen Gherkin’s diary?” She shook her head, furious at his refusal to listen. “How would she know about it?”
“See,” he said, raising his finger, like a teacher emphasizing a point to a student. “That’s the part that I don’t understand. If you didn’t want the cemetery as part of the tour, and Doris didn’t want it as part of the tour, then why didn’t you just go to the newspaper with the truth? Why did you want to involve me in your little game?”
“I didn’t want to involve you. And it’s not a game. It’s a harmless weekend that you’re blowing completely out of proportion.”
“I didn’t blow it out of proportion. You and the mayor did that.”
“So I’m one of the bad guys now?”
When Jeremy said nothing, her eyes narrowed. “Then why did I give you the diary in the first place? Why didn’t I just keep it hidden from you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with Doris’s notebook.