At First Sight (11 page)

“How about Savannah?” Lexie said while holding up yet another outfit. This one, Jeremy noticed, was pink with purple bunnies.

“I’ve only been there once,” he said.

She lowered the outfit. “I’m talking about a name for the baby. How about Savannah?”

Jeremy thought about it. “Nah,” he said, “it sounds too southern.”

“What’s wrong with that? She is southern.”

“But her daddy’s a Yankee, remember?”

“Fine. What names do you like?”

“How about Anna?”

“Aren’t half the women in your family named Anna?”

This was true, Jeremy thought. “Yes, but think how flattered every one of them will be.”

Lexie shook her head. “We can’t go with Anna. I want her to have her own name.”

“How about Olivia?”

Lexie shook her head again. “No. We can’t do that to her.”

“What’s wrong with Olivia?”

“There was a girl I went to school with who was named Olivia. She had a terrible case of acne.”

“So?”

“Brings back bad memories.”

Jeremy nodded, thinking it made sense. He wouldn’t name his daughter Maria, for instance. “What are some of your other ideas?”

“I was thinking about Bonnie, too. What do you think of that?”

“No, I dated a woman named Bonnie. She had nasty breath.”

“Sharon?”

He shrugged. “Same thing, except the Sharon I dated was a kleptomaniac.”

“Linda?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. That one threw a shoe at me.”

Lexie studied him carefully. “How many women have you dated in the last ten years?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Because I’m getting the sense that you’ve dated just about every name out there.”

“No, that’s not true.”

“Name one, then.”

Jeremy thought about it. “Gertrude. I can honestly say I’ve never dated a woman named Gertrude.”

After rolling her eyes, Lexie held up the outfit again, examined it once more, then set it aside before reaching for another. Only ten zillion more outfits to go, Jeremy thought. At this rate, we should be leaving the store right about the same time the baby is born.

She held up a new outfit before glancing at him. “Hmm . . .”

“Hmm what?”

“Gertrude, huh? I had an aunt named Gertrude, and she was just about the sweetest lady you’ve ever met.” She seemed to be conjuring up the memory. “Now that I think about it, there might be something there. I’ll have to consider that.”

“Wait,” Jeremy said, trying and failing to imagine calling any infant Gertrude, “you’re not serious.”

“We could call her Gertie for short. Or Trudy.”

Jeremy stood up. “No,” he said. “I can put up with a lot of things, but we are not going to name our baby Gertrude. I’m putting my foot down here. As the father, I think I have some say in this, and we’re not naming our daughter Gertrude. You asked for a name that I hadn’t dated.”

“Fine,” she said, putting down the outfit, “I was just teasing, anyway. I never liked that name.” She walked toward him and slipped her arms around his neck. “Tell you what-why don’t you let me make it up to you for dragging you around today. Maybe a nice romantic dinner at my place? With candles and wine . . . well, for you, anyway. And maybe after dinner, we’ll figure out something else to do.”

Only Lexie could make a day like today suddenly seem worth it, he realized. “I think I can come up with something.”

“I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

“I may have to show you.”

“Even better,” she teased, but when she leaned in to kiss him, her cell phone suddenly chimed to life. The mood broken, she pulled back and fumbled through her purse for the phone and answered on the third ring.

“Hello?” she said, and though she didn’t say anything else right away, Jeremy suddenly knew that something was wrong.

An hour later, after checking out and quickly loading the car, they were sitting at a table at Herbs across from Doris. Though they’d already gone over it, Doris had been talking so fast that Jeremy had trouble keeping up.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” he said, raising his hands.

Doris took a long breath. “I just can’t explain it,” she said. “I mean, I know Rachel can be flighty, but never like this. She was supposed to work today. And no one knows where she’s gone.”

“What about Rodney?” Jeremy asked.

“He’s as upset as I am. He’s been looking for her all day. So have her parents. It just isn’t like her to vanish without telling anyone where she’s going. What if something happened to her?”

Doris looked as if she were about to cry. Rachel had worked at the restaurant for a dozen years and had been friends with Lexie before that; Jeremy knew that Doris regarded her as family.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Maybe she just needed a break and headed out of town.”

“Without telling anyone? Without bothering to call and tell me that she wasn’t going to show up? Without talking to Rodney?”

“What did Rodney say, exactly? Did they have an argument, or . . . ?” Jeremy finally asked.

Doris shook her head. “He didn’t say anything. He came in this morning and asked if Rachel was around, and when I told him she hadn’t come in yet, he took a seat to wait for her. When she didn’t show, he decided to swing by her house. The next thing I knew, he was back here, asking if she was in yet since she wasn’t at home.”

“Was he angry?” Lexie asked, finally joining the conversation.

“No,” Doris said, reaching for a napkin. “He was upset, but he didn’t seem angry.”

Lexie nodded but said nothing else. In the silence, Jeremy shifted in his seat. “And she hadn’t stopped anywhere else? Like at her parents’?”

Doris worked the napkin in her hand, wringing it like a washrag. “Rodney didn’t say, but you know how he is. I know he didn’t stop after swinging by her house. He probably looked everywhere for her.”

“And her car was gone, too?” Jeremy pressed.

Doris nodded. “That’s why I’m so worried. What if something happened to her? What if someone took her?”

“You mean abducted her?”

“What else could I mean? Even if she wanted to leave, where would she go? She grew up here, her family’s here, her friends are here. I’ve never even heard her talk about someone from Raleigh or Norfolk, or anywhere else, for that matter. She’s not the type to just up and leave without telling anyone where she’s going.”

Jeremy said nothing. He glanced at Lexie, and though it appeared that she was listening, her gaze was unfocused, as if she were occupied by other thoughts.

“How have Rachel and Rodney been getting along?” Jeremy asked. “You mentioned that they were having some trouble before.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Doris asked. “Rodney’s more worried than I am. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I’m not saying he did. I was just trying to figure out why she might have left.”

Doris eyed him, her expression unwavering. “I know what you’re thinking, Jeremy. It’s easy to blame Rodney, to think that he did something or said something that drove Rachel away. But that’s not it. Rodney had nothing to do with this. Whatever happened has to do with Rachel. Or someone else. Leave Rodney out of it. Something happened to Rachel. Or Rachel took off. It’s that simple.”

Her voice brooked no argument about the matter. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on,” he reasoned.

At his words, Doris’s tone softened. “I know you are,” she said, “and I know there’s probably nothing to worry about, but . . . but this is wrong somehow. Unless there’s something I don’t know about, Rachel just wouldn’t do this.”

“Has Rodney put out an APB?” Jeremy asked.

“I don’t know,” Doris said. “All I know is he’s out looking for her now. He promised to keep me informed, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I just know that something terrible is going to happen, if it hasn’t already.” She paused. “And I think it has something to do with you two.”

When she finished, Jeremy knew she was talking less about her feelings than her instincts. Though she readily claimed to be a diviner and someone who could predict the sex of babies before birth, she’d been less willing to claim clairvoyance regarding other matters. Nonetheless, her words left Jeremy with no doubt that she believed she was right. Rachel’s disappearance was somehow going to affect them all.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell us,” he said.

Doris sighed and stood up, tossing the crumpled napkin on the table. “I don’t know, either,” she said, turning toward the windows. “I can’t make sense of it. Rachel’s gone and I know I should be worried about that, and I am . . . but there’s something else about this . . . something I can’t make sense of. All I know is that none of this should have happened, and that-”

“Something bad is going to happen,” Lexie finished.

Both Doris and Jeremy turned toward her. Lexie sounded as convinced as Doris, but more than that, a note of understanding underscored her pronouncement, as if she knew exactly what it was that Doris had trouble formulating. Jeremy felt again like an outsider.

Doris said nothing; she didn’t have to. Whatever wavelength the two of them were sharing, whatever information passed between them, was incomprehensible to him. All at once, Jeremy was sure that each of them could be more specific if she wanted to be, but for some reason both had decided to keep him in the dark. Just as Lexie had kept him in the dark about that afternoon on the bench with Rodney.

As if on cue, Lexie reached across the table and rested her hand on Jeremy’s. “Maybe I should stay with Doris for a while.”

Jeremy pulled his hand back. Doris remained silent.

He nodded and rose from the table, again feeling like a stranger. He tried to convince himself that Lexie simply wanted to stay and comfort Doris, and he forced a smile. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

“I’m sure that Rachel’s fine,” Alvin’s voice boomed out of the cell phone. “She’s a big girl, and I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”

After leaving Herbs, Jeremy had swung by Lexie’s and dropped off the baby items. He debated whether or not to wait for her there, then decided to head off to Greenleaf. Not to write, but to talk to Alvin. Despite himself, he was beginning to wonder how well he really knew Lexie. To his mind, she’d seemed more concerned about Rodney than she had about Rachel, and he wondered again what Rachel’s sudden departure meant.

“I know, but it is strange, don’t you think? I mean, you met her. Did she strike you as the type who would just up and leave without telling anyone?”

“Who knows,” Alvin said. “But it probably has something to do with Rodney.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She’s dating him, isn’t she? I don’t know, maybe they had a fight. Maybe she thinks he’s still hung up on Lexie or something like that and just wanted to get away to clear her mind for a few days. The same way Lexie did when she bolted off to the coast.”

Jeremy took that in, remembering his experience with Lexie, wondering if it was some sort of southern woman thing.

“Could be,” he said. “But Rodney didn’t say anything to Doris.”

“So Doris says. You don’t know that for sure. Maybe that’s what Lexie and Doris are talking about now, and it’s the reason they wanted to be alone. Maybe Doris is as worried about Rodney as she is about Rachel.”

Jeremy said nothing, wondering whether his friend was right. When Jeremy remained quiet, Alvin added, “Then again, it probably doesn’t mean anything. It’ll all work out, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “You’re probably right.”

Jeremy could hear Alvin breathing into the line.

“What’s really going on?” Alvin asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You . . . all this. Every time I talk to you, you seem more depressed.”

“Just busy,” Jeremy said, falling back on his standard answer. “There’s a lot going on.”

“Yeah, so you’ve told me. The repairs are bleeding you dry, you’re getting married, you’re going to have a baby. But you’ve been under pressure before, and you’ve got to admit your life isn’t as stressful as when you and Maria were getting divorced. But unlike now, then you still had a sense of humor.”

“I still have a sense of humor. If I wasn’t able to laugh at this stuff, I’d probably curl up in a little ball and mumble nonsense all day long.”

“Are you writing yet?”

“Nope.”

“Any ideas?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you should work naked and have Jed hold your clothes for you while you work.”