True believer - Nicholas Sparks [84]
“Now, if you have any questions about this,” she said, handing the notebook over, “don’t hesitate to call. And feel free to make copies if you want, but bring this back before you leave. It’s pretty special to me.”
“I’ll do that,” he promised.
She remained standing silently before him, and Jeremy got the impression that it was her way of telling him their conversation was at an end. He, on the other hand, wasn’t about to give up so easily.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Would it be okay if I return the notebook to Lexie? If I happen to see her today?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “But I’ll be here, too, just in case.”
As he caught her obvious meaning, he felt his stomach sink even more.
“Did she say anything about me?” he asked. “When you saw her this morning?”
“Not much. However, she did say that you’d probably be coming by.”
“Did she seem okay?”
“Lexie,” she began slowly, as if choosing her words carefully, “is hard to read sometimes, so I’m not sure I can answer that. But I’m sure she’ll be okay, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Was she angry with me?”
“No, that I can tell you. She definitely wasn’t angry.”
Waiting for more, Jeremy said nothing. In the silence Doris took a long breath. For the first time since they’d met, he noticed her age in the lines around her eyes.
“I like you, Jeremy, you know that,” she said, her voice soft. “But you’re putting me on the spot. What you have to understand is that I have certain loyalties, and Lexie is one of them.”
“Which means what?” he asked, feeling his throat go dry.
“It means that I know what you want and what you’re asking, but I can’t answer your questions. What I can say is that if Lexie wanted you to know where she is, she would have told you.”
“Will I see her again? Before I leave?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose that’s up to her.”
With that comment, his mind began to absorb the fact that she was really gone.
“I don’t understand why she’d do something like this,” he said.
She gave a sad smile. “Yes,” she said, “I think you do.”
She was gone.
Like an echo, the words kept repeating themselves. Behind the wheel on the way to Greenleaf, Jeremy tried to analyze the facts with cool remove. He didn’t panic. He never panicked. No matter how wild he’d felt, no matter how much he wanted to press Doris for information about Lexie’s whereabouts or state of mind, he’d simply thanked her for her help and headed out to the car, as if he’d expected nothing different.
And besides, he reminded himself, there was no reason to panic. It wasn’t as if something terrible had happened to her. It simply boiled down to the fact that she didn’t want to see him again. Perhaps he should have seen it coming. He’d expected too much from her, even when she’d made it perfectly clear from the very beginning that she wasn’t interested.
He shook his head, thinking it was no wonder that she’d left. As modern as she was in some ways, she was traditional in others, and she was probably tired of having to deal with his transparent ploys. It was probably easier for her to simply leave town than to explain her reasoning to someone like him.
So where did that leave him? Either she would come back or she wouldn’t. If she came back, no problem. But if she didn’t . . . well, that’s where reality started getting complicated. He could sit back and accept her decision, or he could try to track her down. If there was one thing he was good at, it was finding people. Using public records, friendly conversations, and the right sites on the Web, he’d learned how to follow a trail of bread crumbs to anyone’s doorstep. He doubted, however, that any of that would be necessary. After all, she’d already given him the answer he needed, and he was sure he knew exactly where she’d gone. Which meant that he could handle this any way he wanted.
His thoughts stopped again.
The thing was, it didn’t quite help him with the idea of what he should do. He reminded himself that he had a conference call in just a few hours, one with important ramifications for his career, and if he headed off to look