True Believer (22 page)

The morning rush at Herbs had died down, and the restaurant was in the twilight period between breakfast and lunch, when things were cleaned up from the last rush and preparations were being made for the next. The staff outnumbered the remaining patrons four to one, and it took only a moment to see that Lexie wasn’t here, either. Rachel was wiping a table and waved a towel when she saw him.

“Morning, darlin’,” she said, approaching. “It’s a little late, but I’m sure we can whip up some breakfast if you’re hungry.”

Jeremy slipped his keys into his pocket. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m not that hungry. But would you happen to know if Doris is around? I’d love to talk to her if she has a moment.”

“Back for her again, huh?” She smiled and nodded over her shoulder. “She’s in the back. I’ll tell her you’re here. And by the way, that was quite a party last night. People were talking about you all morning, and the mayor dropped by to see if you’d recov

ered. I think he was disappointed you weren’t here.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“Do you want some coffee or tea while you’re waiting?”

“No, thanks,” he answered.

She disappeared into the back, and a minute later, Doris emerged, wiping her hands on her apron. Her cheek was smudged with dough, but even from a distance, he could see the bags under her eyes, and she seemed to be moving more slowly than usual.

“Sorry about looking like this,” she said, gesturing at herself. “You caught me mixing dough. Last night set me back a little for the weekend, and it’s going to take a bit to catch up before the crowds tomorrow.”

Remembering what Lexie had told him, he asked, “How many people are you expecting this weekend?”

“Who knows?” she said. “Usually, a couple of hundred come in for the tour, sometimes a bit more. The mayor was hoping for close to a thousand for the tour this year, but it’s always a wild guess for me to figure out how many will come in for breakfast and lunch.”

“If the mayor’s right, that’s quite a jump this year.”

“Well, take his estimate for what it’s worth. Tom has a tendency to be overly optimistic, but he’s got to create a sense of urgency to get everything ready in time. And besides, even if people don’t do the tour, folks still like to come to the parade on Saturday. The Shriners will be here zooming around with their cars, you know, and kids love to see them. And there’ll be a petting zoo, too, this year, which is new.”

“Sounds great.”

“It would be better if it wasn’t in the middle of winter. The Pamlico Festival always draws the biggest crowds, but that’s in June, and we usually have one of those traveling carnivals set up shop that weekend. Now, those are weekends that can make or break a business. Talk about stress. It’s about ten times what I’m going through now.”

He smiled. “Life here never ceases to amaze me.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it. I have a funny feeling you’d love it here.”

She sounded almost as if she was testing him, and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Behind them, Rachel cleared a table while jawing with the cook, who was half a room away. Both were laughing at something one or the other had said.

“But, anyway,” Doris said, letting him off the hook, “I’m glad you came by. Lexie mentioned that she told you about my notebook. She warned me that you probably wouldn’t believe a word of it, but you’re welcome to look through it if you’d like. It’s in my office in the back.”

“I’d like that,” he said. “She told me you kept quite a record.”

“I did my best. It’s probably not up to your standards, but then again, I never thought anyone but me would read it.”

“I’m sure I’ll be amazed. But speaking of Lexie, that’s part of the reason I came by. Have you seen her around? She wasn’t at the library today.”

She nodded. “She came by the house this morning. That’s how I knew to bring my book. She told me you two saw the lights last night.”

“We did.”

“And?”

“They were amazing, but like you said, they weren’t ghosts.”

She looked at him, satisfied. “And I take it that you’ve already figured everything out, or you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I think so.”

“Good for you,” she said. She motioned over her shoulder. “I’m sorry I can’t chat more now, but I’m kind of busy, so let me get my notebook for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to do a story about my amazing powers next.”

“You never know,” he said. “I just might.”

As Jeremy watched her vanish into the kitchen, he wondered about their conversation. It had been perfectly pleasant but curiously impersonal. And he noticed that Doris hadn’t really responded to his question about Lexie’s whereabouts. Nor had she even ventured a guess, which seemed to suggest that—for whatever reason—she viewed the subject of Lexie as suddenly off-limits. Which wasn’t good. He looked up to see her approaching again. She wore the same pleasant smile as she had before, but this time it gave him a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“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 for Lexie now, he doubted he’d be able to find a pay phone when he needed one. Alvin would be arriving later this evening—possibly the last of the foggy evenings—and though Alvin could handle the filming on his own tonight, they had to work together tomorrow. Not to mention that he needed a nap—he had another long night ahead, and even his bones were tired.

On the other hand, he didn’t want everything to end like this. He wanted to see Lexie, he needed to see her. A voice in his head warned him not to let his emotions govern his actions, and rationally, he couldn’t see how anything good could come of him traipsing off in search of her. Even if he found her, she’d probably ignore him or, worse, find it creepy. And in the meantime, Nate would probably have a stroke, Alvin would be stranded and furious, and his story and future career might just go down the tubes.

In the end, the decision was simple. Pulling his car into the spot in front of his cottage at Greenleaf, he nodded to himself. Putting it in those terms made his choice clear. After all, he hadn’t spent the last fifteen years using logic and science without learning something along the way.

Now, he thought to himself, all he had to do was pack.

True Believer

Thirteen

Okay, she admitted, she was a coward.

It wasn’t the easiest thing for her to own up to the fact that she’d run away, but hey, she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly these past couple of days, and she could forgive herself for not being perfect. The truth was, if she had stayed around, things would have become even more complicated. It didn’t matter that she liked him and that he liked her; she woke up this morning knowing that she had to end things before they went too far, and when she pulled in the sandy driveway out front, she knew she’d done the right thing by coming here.

The place wasn’t much to look at. The old cottage was weathered and blended into the sea oats that surrounded it. The small, rectangular white-curtained windows were coated with salted mist, and the siding had streaks of gray, remnants from the fury of a dozen hurricanes. In some ways, she’d always considered the cottage a time capsule of sorts; most of the furniture was over twenty years old, the pipes groaned when she turned on the shower, and she had to light the stove burners with a match. But the memories of spending parts of her youth here never ceased to calm her, and after storing her bags and the groceries she’d picked up for the weekend, she’d opened the windows to air out the place. Then, grabbing a blanket, she settled into a rocker on the back porch, wanting nothing more than to watch the ocean. The steady roar of the waves was soothing, almost hypnotic, and when the sun broke through the clouds and beams of light stretched toward the water like individual fingers from above, she found herself holding her breath.

She did that every time she came here. The first time she’d seen the light breaking through this way was soon after her visit to the cemetery with Doris, when she was still a little girl, and she remembered thinking that her parents had found another way to make their presence known in her life. Like heaven-sent angels, she believed they were watching out for her, always present but never intervening, as if they felt that she would always make the right decisions.

For a long time, she’d needed to believe in such things, simply because she’d often felt alone. Her grandparents had been kind and wonderful, but as much as she loved them for their care and sacrifice, she’d never quite gotten used to the feeling of being different from her peers. Her friends’ parents played softball on the weekends and looked youthful even in the soft morning light of church, an observation that made her wonder what, if anything, she was missing.

She couldn’t talk to Doris about these things. Nor could she talk to Doris about the guilt she felt as a result. No matter how she phrased it, Doris’s feelings would have been hurt, and even as a young girl, she’d known that.

But still, that feeling of being different had left its mark. Not only on her but on Doris as well, and it began to manifest itself during her teenage years. When Lexie would push the limits, Doris would frequently give in to avoid an argument, leaving Lexie with the belief that she could establish her own rules. She’d been a bit on the wild side when she was young, made mistakes and had too many regrets, but somehow turned serious during college. In her new, more mature incarnation, she embraced the idea that maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark in the world.

Last night, she knew, she’d almost made a mistake. She’d expected him to try to kiss her, and she was pleased by how resolute she’d been when he wanted to come inside.

She knew she’d hurt his feelings, and she was sorry for that. But what he probably didn’t realize was that it wasn’t until after he’d driven off that her heart had stopped pounding, because part of her had wanted to let him inside, no matter what it might have led to. She knew better, but she couldn’t help it. Even worse, as she tossed and turned in her bed last night, she realized she might not have the strength to do the right thing again.

In all honesty, she should have seen it coming. As the evening had worn on, she found herself comparing Jeremy to both Avery and Mr. Renaissance, and to her surprise, Jeremy more than held his own. He had Avery’s wit and sense of humor and Mr. Renaissance’s intelligence and charm, but Jeremy seemed more comfortable with himself than either of them. Perhaps she should just chalk it up to the wonderful day she’d had, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. When was the last time she’d had a spontaneous lunch? Or sat up on Riker’s Hill? Or visited the cemetery after a party, when normally she would have gone straight to bed? No doubt the excitement and unpredictability had reminded her of how happy she’d been when she still believed that Avery and Mr. Renaissance were the men of her dreams.

But she’d been wrong then, just as she was wrong now. She knew Jeremy would solve the mystery today—okay, maybe it was just a feeling, but she was sure of it, since the answer was in one of the diaries and all he had to do was find it—and she had no doubt that he would have asked her to celebrate the solution with him. Had she been in town, the two of them would have spent most of the day together, and she didn’t want that. Then again, deep down, it was exactly what she wanted, leaving her feeling more confused than she’d been in years.

Doris had intuited every bit of it this morning when Lexie stopped by, but that wasn’t surprising. Lexie could feel the exhaustion around her own eyes and knew she looked like a wreck when she showed up out of the blue. After throwing a few days’ worth of clothes into the suitcase, she’d left her house without showering; she didn’t even attempt to explain what she was feeling. Even so, Doris had simply nodded when Lexie told her she had to go. Doris, tired though she was, seemed to understand that while she’d set the whole thing in motion, she hadn’t anticipated what might happen as a result. That was the thing about premonitions; while they might be accurate in the short term, anything beyond that was impossible to know.

So she’d come here because she had to, if only to preserve her sanity, and she’d return to Boone Creek when things were back to normal. It wouldn’t take long. In a couple of days, people would have stopped talking about the ghosts and the historic homes and the stranger in town, and the visiting tourists would be nothing but a memory. The mayor would be back on the golf course, Rachel would date the wrong sorts of men, and Rodney would probably find a way to accidentally bump into Lexie near the library, no doubt breathing a sigh of relief when he realized their relationship could go back to the way it once was.

Maybe it wasn’t an exciting life, but it was her life, and she wasn’t about to let anyone or anything upset the balance. In another place and time, she might have felt differently, but thinking along those lines was pointless now. As she continued to stare out over the water, she forced herself not to imagine what might have been.

On the porch, Lexie tugged the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She was a big girl and she’d get over him, just as she’d gotten over the others. She was certain about it. But even with the comfort of that realization, the roiling sea reminded her again of her feelings for Jeremy, and it took everything she had to keep her tears in check.

It had seemed relatively simple when Jeremy set out, and he’d rushed through his room at Greenleaf, making the necessary plans as he did so. Grab the map and his wallet, just in case. Leave the computer because he didn’t need it. Ditto his notes. Put Doris’s book in his leather satchel and bring it along. Write a note for Alvin and leave it at the front desk, despite the fact that Jed didn’t seem too pleased about it. Make sure he had the recharger for his phone—and go.

He was in and out in less than ten minutes, on his way to Swan Quarter, where the ferry would take him to Ocracoke, a village in the Outer Banks. From there, he’d head north on Highway 12 to Buxton. He figured it was the route she would have taken, and all he had to do was follow the same path and he’d reach the place in just a couple of hours.

But while the drive to Swan Quarter had been an easy one on straight and empty roads, he’d found himself thinking about Lexie and pressed the accelerator harder, trying to ward off the jitters. But jitters were just another word for panic, and he didn’t panic. He prided himself on that. Nonetheless, whenever he was forced to slow the car—in places like Belhaven and Leechville— he found himself tapping the wheel with his fingers and muttering under his breath.

It was an odd feeling for him, one that only grew stronger as he drew nearer to his destination. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow he didn’t want to analyze it. For one of the few times in his life, he was moving on autopilot, doing exactly the opposite of what logic demanded, thinking only about how she’d react when she saw him.

Just when he thought he was beginning to understand the reason for his odd behavior, Jeremy found himself at the ferry station staring at a thin, uniformed man who barely looked up from the magazine he was reading. The ferry to Ocracoke, he learned, didn’t run with the same regularity as the one from Staten Island to Manhattan, and he’d missed the last departure of the day, which meant he could either come back tomorrow or cancel his plan altogether, neither of which he was willing to consider.

“Are you sure there’s no other way that I can get to Hatteras Lighthouse?” he asked, feeling his heart pick up speed. “This is important.”

“You could drive it, I suppose.”

“How long would that take?”

“Depends on how fast you drive.”

Obviously, Jeremy thought. “Let’s say I drove fast.”

The man shrugged, as if the whole topic bored him. “Five or six hours maybe. You’d have to head north till you get to Plymouth, then take 64 over Roanoke Island, then into Whalebone. From there, you head south into Buxton. The lighthouse is right there.”

Jeremy checked his watch; it was already coming up on one o’clock; by the time he got there, Alvin would probably be pulling into Boone Creek. No good.

“Is there another place to catch the ferry?”

“There’s one out of Cedar Island.”

“Great. Where’s that?”

“It’s about three hours in the other direction. But again, you’d have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

Over the man’s shoulder, he saw a poster displaying the various lighthouses of North Carolina. Hatteras, the grandest of them all, was in the center.

“What if I told you this was an emergency?” he asked.

For the first time, the man looked up.

“Is it an emergency?”

“Let’s just say that it is.”

“Then I’d call the Coast Guard. Or maybe the sheriff.”

“Ah,” Jeremy said, trying to remain patient. “But what you’re telling me is that there’s no way for me to get out there right now? From here, I mean.”

The man brought a finger to his chin. “I suppose you could take a boat, if you’re in such a hurry.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, Jeremy thought. “And how would I arrange that?”

“I don’t know. No one’s ever asked.”

Jeremy hopped back into his car, finally admitting that he was beginning to panic.

Maybe it was because he’d already come this far, or maybe it was because he realized his final words to Lexie the night before had signaled a deeper truth, but something else had taken hold of him and he wasn’t going back. He refused to go back, not after getting this close.

Nate would be expecting his call, but suddenly, that didn’t seem as important to him as it once was. Nor did the fact that Alvin would be arriving; if all went well, they could still film both this evening and tomorrow evening. He had ten hours until the lights would appear; in a fast boat, he figured that he could reach Hatteras in two. It gave him plenty of time to get there, talk to Lexie, and come back, assuming he could find someone to take him there.

Anything could go wrong, of course. He might not be able to hire a boat, but if that happened, he’d drive to Buxton if he had to. Once there, however, he couldn’t even be sure that he’d find her.

Nothing about this entire scenario made sense. But who cared? Once in a while, everyone was entitled to be a bit flaky, and now it was his turn. He had cash in his wallet, and he’d find a way to get there. He’d take the risk and see how things turned out with her, if only to prove to himself that he could leave her and never think about her again.

That’s what this was all about, he knew. When Doris intimated that he might never see her again, his thoughts about her had gone into overdrive. Sure, he was leaving in a couple of days, but that didn’t mean this had to be over. Not yet, anyway. He could visit down here, she could come up to New York and if it was meant to be, they’d somehow work it out. People did that all the time, right? But even if that wasn’t possible, even if she was resolute in her determination to end things completely, he wanted to hear her say it. Only then could he return to New York knowing he’d had no other choice.

And yet, as he came to a sliding stop at the first marina he saw, he realized he didn’t want her to speak those words. He wasn’t going to Buxton to say good-bye or to hear her say that she never wanted to see him again. In fact, he thought with amazement, he knew that he was going there to find out if Alvin had been right all along.