At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [12]
But hey, with Lexie beside him, the drive hadn’t been half-bad. She’d been in a good mood all day, and as they neared her home—change that, he thought suddenly: their home—she’d become even more cheerful. They’d spent the last couple of hours rehashing their trip to New York, but he couldn’t mistake her expression of contentment as they crossed the Pamlico River and reached the final leg of their journey.
The first time he’d been here, Jeremy remembered, he’d barely been able to find the place. The only turn leading toward downtown was located off the highway, so he’d missed the nearest exit and had to pull his car over to check the map. But once he’d turned onto Main Street, he’d been charmed.
In the car, Jeremy shook his head, revising his opinion. He was thinking of Lexie, not the town. The town, while quaint in the way that all small towns were, was anything but charming. At first glance, anyway. He remembered thinking on his first visit here that the town seemed to be slowly rusting away. Downtown occupied only a few short blocks on which too many businesses were boarded up, and decaying storefronts were slowly being stripped of their paint, no doubt helped by the gusts of moving vans headed out of town. Boone Creek, once a thriving town, had been struggling ever since the phosphorus mine and textile mill closed, and there were more than a few times when Jeremy wondered whether the town would survive.
The jury was still out on that one, he concluded. But if this was where Lexie wanted to be, then that was enough. Besides, once you got beyond the “soon to be a ghost town” feel of the place, the town was picturesque, in a southern, Spanish-moss-hanging-from-tree-limbs kind of way. At the confluence of Boone Creek and the Pamlico River was a boardwalk where one could watch the sailboats cruising along the water, and according to the Chamber of Commerce, in the spring the azaleas and dogwoods planted throughout the downtown “exploded in a cacophony of color that was rivaled only by the ocean sunset of autumn leaves come every October,” whatever that meant. Even so, it was the people who made the place special, or so Lexie swore. Like many small-town dwellers, she viewed the people who lived here as her family. What Jeremy kept to himself was the observation that “family” often included a couple of crazy aunts and uncles, and this town was no different. People here gave the term character an entirely new meaning.
Jeremy drove past the Lookilu Tavern—the local after-work hangout—the pizza place, and the barbershop; around the corner, he knew, was a massive gothic structure that served as the county library, where Lexie worked. As they edged down the street toward Herbs, the restaurant that Doris, Lexie’s grandmother, owned, Lexie sat up straighter. Ironically, Doris had been the reason Jeremy had come to this town in the first place. As the resident town psychic, she was definitely one of the aforementioned “characters.”
Even from a distance, Jeremy could see the lights blazing from inside Herbs. Once a Victorian home, it seemed to dominate the end of the block. Strangely, cars were parked up and down the street.
“I thought Herbs was only open for breakfast and lunch.”
“It is.”
Remembering the little “get-together” the mayor had thrown in his honor on his previous visit—which had included almost everyone in the county, it seemed—Jeremy stiffened behind the wheel. “Don’t tell me they’re waiting for us.”
She laughed. “No, believe it or not, the world doesn’t revolve around us. It’s the third Monday of the month.”
“And that means?”
“It’s the town council meeting. And after that, they play bingo.”
Jeremy