True believer - Nicholas Sparks [116]
They stood facing each other, frozen and finally wordless. With everything out in the open, with all the words spoken, both of them felt drained.
“Don’t be like this,” he said at last.
“Like what? Like someone who tells the truth?”
Instead of waiting for him to respond, Lexie reached for her jacket and purse. Slinging them over her arm, she headed for the door. Jeremy moved aside to allow her to pass, and she brushed by him without another word. She was a few steps away from the office when Jeremy finally summoned the will to speak again.
“Where are you going?”
Lexie took another step before stopping. With a sigh, she turned around. “I’m going home,” she said. She brushed away a tear on her cheek and stood straighter. “Just like you will.”
Eighteen
Later that night, Alvin and Jeremy set up the cameras near the boardwalk on the Pamlico River. In the distance, the sounds of music drifted from Meyer’s tobacco barn as the dance got under way. The rest of the shops downtown had closed up for the night; even Lookilu had been abandoned. Bundled in their jackets, they seemed to be alone.
“And then what?” Alvin asked.
“That’s it,” Jeremy said. “She left.”
“You didn’t follow her?”
“She didn’t want me to,” he said.
“How do you know?”
Jeremy rubbed his eyes, replaying the argument for the umpteenth time. The last few hours had passed in a haze. He vaguely remembered heading back to the rare-book room before putting the stack of diaries on the shelf and locking the door behind him. On the drive back, he’d brooded over what she’d said, his feelings of anger and betrayal mingling with those of sadness and regret. He spent the next four hours lying on the bed at Greenleaf, trying to figure out how he could have handled it better. He shouldn’t have stormed into her office the way he had. Had he really been so angry about the diary? About the thought that he’d been duped? Or was it simply that he was angry at Lexie and, like her, looking for any excuse to start an argument?
He wasn’t sure, and Alvin didn’t have any answers, either, after he’d related the day’s events. All Jeremy knew was that he was exhausted, and despite the fact he had to film, he was fighting the urge to go to Lexie’s house and see if he could mend things. Assuming she was even there. For all he knew, she was at the dance with everyone else.
Jeremy sighed, his thoughts going back to their final moment in the library. “I could see it in the way she looked at me,” he said.
“So it’s over?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said, “it’s over.”
In the darkness, Alvin shook his head and turned away. How his friend had become so attached in such a short period of time was beyond him. She hadn’t been that charming, and she didn’t fit the deferential image he’d had of southern women.
But whatever. This was a fling, Alvin knew, and he had little doubt that Jeremy would get over it as soon as he boarded the flight back home.
Jeremy always got over everyone.
At the dance, Mayor Gherkin sat alone at a table in the corner, his hand on his chin.
He’d hoped that Jeremy would swing by, preferably with Lexie, but as soon as he’d arrived, he heard the chatter from the library volunteers about the argument in the library. According to those folks, it had been a big one, and had something to do with one of the diaries and some sort of scam.
Thinking about it now, he decided he shouldn’t have donated his father’s journal to the library, but at the time, it hadn’t seemed all that important, and it was a fairly accurate record of the town’s history. The library was the obvious place to donate it. But who could have guessed what would happen in the next fifteen years? Who knew the textile mill would be closed or the mine abandoned? Who knew that hundreds of people would find themselves out of work? Who knew that a number of young families would leave and never return? Who knew the town would