At First Sight

"Then you might as well use the library. I mean, since you'll be staying at Greenleaf."

"Who says I'm staying at Greenleaf?"

She slid out from beneath his arm and faced him. "Where else would you stay?"

"I thought I'd just stay here."

"With me?" she asked.

"Of course with you," he said, as if the answer were obvious.

"But we're not married yet."

"So?"

"I know it's old-fashioned, but down here couples don't live together before they're married. Folks around town would frown on that. They would assume we're sleeping together."

He stared at her, not bothering to hide his confusion. "But we are sleeping together. You're pregnant, remember?"

She smiled. "I'll be the first to admit that it doesn't make much sense, and if I had my way, you'd stay. And I know that people will eventually find out that I'm pregnant, but the crazy thing is that folks down here understand that people make mistakes. They're perfectly willing to forgive mistakes, but it still doesn't mean we should live together. They'll talk behind our backs, they'll gossip, and it'll take folks a long time to forget that we 'lived in sin.' And for years, that's just how they'll describe us." She shook her head before reaching for his hand. "I know it's a lot to ask, but would you do this for me?"

Leaning back, he remembered what it was like at Greenleaf: a decrepit series of shacks set in the middle of a swamp known for water moccasins; Jed, the scary, nonspeaking proprietor; the mounted animals that decorated every room. Greenleaf. Good God.

"Yeah," he said, "okay. But... Greenleaf?"

"Where else is there? I mean, if you want, there's a shed behind Doris's place, and I think it's got a bathroom, but it's not as nice as Greenleaf."

He swallowed, thinking about it. "Jed scares me," he admitted.

"I know he does," she said. "He told me that when I made the reservations, but he promised me that he'll be better now that you're townsfolk. And the good news is that because you'll be staying for a while, he won't charge you the regular rate. You're getting a discount."

"Lucky me," Jeremy forced out.

She traced his forearm with her finger. "I'll make it up to you. For instance, if you're discreet, you can visit me at my place anytime. And I'll even cook you dinner."

"Discreet?"

She nodded. "That means you should probably not leave your car parked out front, or if you do, you should probably leave before the sun's up so no one sees."

"Why does it suddenly feel like I'm sixteen years old and sneaking behind my parents' back?"

"Because that's exactly what we're going to be doing. Except these people are not as understanding as parents. They're much worse."

"Then why are we living here?"

"Because you love me," she said.

Four

Over the course of the next month, Jeremy began adapting to his life in Boone Creek. In New York City, the first signs of spring began in April, but they started weeks earlier in Boone Creek, right around the beginning of March. Buds began forming on trees, cold mornings gradually gave way to cool ones, and on days when it wasn't raining, the mild afternoon temperatures required nothing more than a long-sleeved shirt. Lawns, brown over the winter as the centipede grass lay dormant, began the slow, almost imperceptible turn toward emerald green, reaching their full color just as the dogwoods and azaleas blossomed. The air was scented with perfume and pine and salted mist, and blue skies broken only by the occasional breath of cloud stretched across the horizon. By the time the ides of March came and went, the town itself seemed brighter and more vivid; it was as if his memory of how the place looked in winter had been nothing but a gloomy dream.

His furnishings, which had finally arrived, were being stored in the shed behind Doris's, and there were moments while staying at Greenleaf when he wondered whether he would have been better off staying with his furniture. Not that he hadn't adapted to life with Jed as his only neighbor; Jed had yet to say a single word to him, but he was pretty good at taking the occasional message. They were hard to read and sometimes smeared with... something--embalming fluid, maybe, or whatever else he used to stuff the critters--but whatever it was helped the notes stick directly to the door, and neither Jed nor Jeremy cared about the syrupy stain left in the aftermath.

He'd also settled into a routine of sorts. Lexie had been right--there wasn't the slightest possibility of high-speed Internet access at Greenleaf, but he'd jerry-rigged a way to dial in to retrieve e-mail and do slow-motion searches, during which time he might wait five minutes for a page to load. On a positive note, the glacial pace of the connection gave him reason to head to the library most days. Sometimes he and Lexie would visit in her office, other times they'd head to lunch, but after an hour or so together, she'd say something like "You know I'd love to visit with you all day, but I do have to get some work done." He'd take the hint and head back to one of the computer terminals, where he'd pretty much taken up residence for his research. His agent, Nate, had been calling him repeatedly, leaving messages and wondering aloud whether Jeremy had any great ideas for a future story, "since the television deal isn't dead yet!" Like most agents, Nate was an optimist above all. Jeremy seldom had an answer other than that Nate would be the first to know. Jeremy hadn't come up with a story, nor had he written even a column, since he'd been down south. With so much going on, it was easy to be distracted.

Or so he tried to convince himself. The fact was he'd had a couple of ideas, but nothing had come of them. Whenever he sat down to write, it was as if his brain turned to mush and his fingers became arthritic. He'd write a sentence or two, spend fifteen to twenty minutes evaluating his work, and then finally delete it. He spent entire days writing and deleting, with nothing to show at the end. Sometimes he wondered why the keyboard suddenly seemed to hate him, but he shrugged it off, knowing he had more important things on his mind.

Like Lexie. And the wedding. And the baby. And, of course, the bachelor party. Alvin had been trying to finalize the date since Jeremy had left, but that depended on the parks department. Despite Lexie's endless reminders on the subject, Jeremy hadn't been able to get through to anyone who might be able to help. In the end, he'd finally told Alvin to schedule the bachelor party for the last weekend in April, figuring the sooner the better, and Alvin hung up with an excited cackle and a promise to make it a night he wouldn't forget.

It wouldn't take much. As much as he was... getting used to Boone Creek, it wasn't New York, and he realized he missed the place. Granted, he'd known it would be a major adjustment before he agreed to move down here, but he was still amazed by the utter lack of things to do. In New York, he'd been able to leave his apartment, walk two blocks in either direction, and find a slew of movies to see, everything from the latest action-adventure flick to something arty and French. Boone Creek didn't even have a theater, and the nearest one--in Washington--had only three screens, one of which seemed perennially to show the latest cartoon offering from Disney. In New York, there was always a new restaurant to try and food that suited whatever mood he might be in, from Vietnamese to Italian to Greek to Ethiopian; in Boone Creek, dinner out was either cardboard pizza or home cooking at Ned's Diner, a place where everything was fried and so much oil floated in the air that you had to wipe your forehead with a napkin before leaving. He'd actually overheard folks at the counter talking about the best way to filter bacon grease for maximum flavor and how much fatback--whatever that was--to add to collard greens before topping the whole mess with butter. Leave it to southerners to figure out a way to make eating vegetables unhealthy.

He supposed he was being unkind, but without places to eat or movies to see, what were young couples supposed to do? Even if you wanted to go for a pleasant walk through town, you could walk only a few minutes in any direction before having to turn around. Lexie, of course, found nothing unusual about any of this and seemed perfectly content to sit on the porch after work, sipping sweet tea or lemonade and

waving at the occasional neighbor who was strolling around the block. Or, if nature was cooperating and it happened to be storming, another sizzling night of entertainment might entail sitting on the porch and watching for lightning. Lest he be disappointed by the whole idea of porch sitting, Lexie further assured him that "in the summer, you'll see so many fireflies, you'll be reminded of Christmas."

"I can hardly wait," Jeremy replied, sighing.

On the plus side, in the last few weeks Jeremy finally achieved a milestone: the purchase of his very first car. Call it a male thing, but as soon as he realized that he'd be moving to Boone Creek, that was one of the experiences he was most looking forward to. He hadn't saved and invested all these years for nothing. He'd been lucky enough to buy Yahoo! and AOL--after writing an article about the future of the Internet--and had ridden those stocks to the top before cashing out part of his portfolio when he moved to Boone Creek, and he visualized every moment of his purchase--from perusing various automobile magazines and walking the lot to sitting behind the wheel and inhaling the famed "new-car smell." There were countless times that he'd actually regretted living in New York, simply because owning a car in the city was largely superfluous. He couldn't wait to crawl into a sporty two-door coupe or convertible and take it for a test drive along the quiet county roads. On the morning he and Lexie were supposed to head to the lot, he couldn't stop grinning at the fantasy of slipping behind the wheel of his dream car.

What he hadn't quite expected was Lexie's response when he ogled the sporty two-door convertible and ran his finger along its sleek curves. "What do you think?" he asked.

He knew that she, too, couldn't resist.

She stared at the car, confused. "Where would we put the baby seat?"

"We can use your car for that," he said. "This is a car for the two of us. For quick trips to the beach or to the mountains, for weekends in Washington, D.C."

"I don't think my car's going to last that much longer, so don't you think we'd be better off getting something for the whole family?"

"Like what?"

"How about a minivan?"

He blinked. "No way. Not a chance. I didn't wait thirty-seven years for a minivan."

"How about a nice sedan?"

"A sedan? My dad drives a sedan. I'm too young to buy a sedan."

"An SUV? They're sporty and sharp. And you can take them into the mountains."

He tried to imagine how he would look behind the wheel before shaking his head. "Those are the vehicles of choice for suburban mothers. I've seen more SUVs in the Wal-Mart parking lot than I've ever seen in the mountains. And besides, they cause more pollution than regular cars, and I care about the environment." He touched his chest for emphasis, doing his best to appear earnest.

Lexie considered his response. "Where does that leave us, then?"

"With my first choice," he said. "Imagine how wonderful life could be... zipping along the highway, wind in our hair..."

She laughed. "You sound like a commercial. And believe me, I think it would be great, too. I'd love a flashy little number like this. But you've got to admit it's not very practical."

He watched her, his mouth drying slightly as he felt his dream begin to die. She was right, of course, and he shifted from one foot to the other before finally exhaling.

"Which one do you like?"

"I think this one over here would be good for the family," she said, motioning to a four-door sedan halfway down the lot. "It was rated a 'Best Buy' in Consumer Reports for safety, it's reliable, and we can get a warranty up to seventy thousand miles."

Economical. Sensible. Responsible. She covered all the bases, he acknowledged, but his heart nonetheless sank when he saw the car of her choice. In his opinion, it might as well have had wood paneling on the side and whitewall tires for all the sexiness it exuded.

Seeing his expression, she moved toward him and slipped her arms around his neck. "I know it's probably not what you dreamed about, but how about if we order it in fire-engine red?"

He raised an eyebrow. "With flames painted on the hood?"

She laughed again. "If that's what you really want."

"I don't. I was just seeing how far I could go."

She kissed him. "Thank you," she said. "And just so you know, I think you're going to look very sexy whenever you drive it."

"I'm going to look like my father."

"No," she said, "you'll look like the father of our baby, and no man on earth can touch that."

He smiled, knowing she was trying to make him feel better. Still, his shoulders slumped just a bit with the thought of what might have been when he signed the papers an hour later.

Aside from the tinge of disappointment he felt whenever he slipped behind the wheel, life wasn't all bad. Because he hadn't been writing, he found himself with quite a bit of time on his hands, far more than he was used to. For years he'd chased stories around the world, investigating everything from the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas to the Shroud of Turin in Italy, exposing frauds, legends, and hoaxes for what they were. In between, he'd hammered out articles exposing con men, psychics, and faith healers, while still finding time to put together his regular twelve columns a year. It was a life of steady pressure, sometimes all consuming, but more often simply unrelenting. In his earlier marriage to Maria, his constant traveling had become a source of tension, and she'd asked him to stop freelancing in exchange for a job that included a regular paycheck from one of the major New York papers. He'd never considered her suggestion seriously, but, reflecting on his life now, he wondered whether he should have. The constant pressure to find and deliver, he realized, had manifested itself in other areas of his life as well. For years he'd needed to do something--anything--every waking moment. He couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes at a time; there was always something to read or study, always something to write. Little by little, he realized, he'd lost the ability to relax, and the result was a long period of his life in which months blurred together, with nothing to differentiate one year from the next.

The last month in Boone Creek, boring as it had been, was actually... refreshing. There was simply nothing to do, and considering the hectic pace of his life over the last fifteen years, who could complain about that? It was like a vacation, one he hadn't planned for, but one that left him feeling more rested than he had in years. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he was choosing the pace of his life rather than having his life choose the pace. Being bored, he decided, was an underrated art form.

He especially liked being bored when he was with Lexie. Not so much the porch sitting, but he liked the feel of her beneath his arm while they watched an NBA game. Being with Lexie was comfortable, and he relished their quiet dinner conversations and the warmth of her body as they sat together atop Riker's Hill. He looked forward to those simple moments with an enthusiasm that surprised him, but what he enjoyed most of all were those mornings when they could sleep in, then wake up slowly together. It was a guilty pleasure--she allowed it only when she picked him up at Greenleaf after work, lest his car in the driveway be spotted by nosy neighbors--but whatever the reason, the sneaking around made it that much more exciting. After rising, they would read the newspaper at the small kitchen table while they had breakfast. More often than not, she'd still be wearing her pajamas and fuzzy slippers, her hair would be tousled, and her eyes would carry the slightest puffiness from sleep. But when the morning sun slanted through the windows, he was sure she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Sometimes she would catch him staring at her and would reach for his hand. Jeremy would begin reading again, and as they sat together holding hands, lost in their own worlds, he would wonder whether there was any greater pleasure in life.

They'd also been shopping for a house, and since Lexie had a pretty good idea of what she had in mind and Boone Creek didn't have that many houses to begin with, Jeremy figured they would find the right one in a couple of days. If he was lucky, maybe eve

n in an afternoon.

He was wrong. For whatever reason, they spent three long weekends walking through every house for sale in town at least twice. Jeremy found the whole situation more disheartening than exciting. There was something about walking through people's homes that left him feeling as if he were passing judgment, and usually not in the kindest of ways. Which, of course, he was. While the town may have been historic and the homes charming from the outside, going inside inevitably led to disappointment. Half the time it was like entering a time warp, one that led back to the 1970s. He hadn't seen so much beige shag carpet, orange wallpaper, and lime green kitchen sinks since The Brady Bunch went off the air. Sometimes there were strange odors, a few of which made his nose curl--mothballs and kitty litter, perhaps, or soiled diapers and moldy bread--and more often than not, the furniture was enough to make him shake his head. In his entire thirty-seven years of life, he'd never once considered rocking chairs in his living room and couches on the front porch. But hey, he was learning.

There were countless reasons to say no, but even when they found something that struck their fancy and made them want to say yes, it was often just as ridiculous.

"Look," he exclaimed one day, "this house has a darkroom!"

"But you're not a photographer," Lexie responded. "You don't need a darkroom."

"Yes, but I might become a photographer one day."

Or:

"I love the high ceilings," she said in wonder. "I've always dreamed of high ceilings in my bedroom."

"But the bedroom's tiny. We'd barely fit a queen-size bed in here."

"I know. But have you seen how high the ceiling is?"

Eventually they found a place. Or rather, a place that Lexie loved; he, on the other hand, was still unsure. A two-story brick Georgian with an uncovered porch that overlooked Boone Creek, it also had an interior layout that suited her. On the market for nearly two years, the place was a bargain--by New York standards an absolute steal--but it needed quite a bit of renovation. Still, when Lexie insisted that they walk through a third time, even Mrs. Reynolds, the Realtor, knew the hook was baited and a hungry fish was circling. A thin, gray-haired lady, she wore a self-satisfied grin on her mousy face as she assured Jeremy the remodeling would cost "no more than the purchase price."