True believer - Nicholas Sparks [43]
“I like your filing system,” he said, gesturing at the piles of paperwork on the desk. “I’ve got one just like it at home.”
A smile escaped her lips as he took a step toward her desk and peeked out the window.
“Nice view, too. Why, you can see all the way to the next house. And the parking lot, too.”
“Well, you seem to be in a spunky mood this morning.”
“How can I not be? I slept in a freezing room filled with dead animals. Or rather, barely slept at all. I kept hearing all these strange noises coming from the woods.”
“I wondered how you’d like Greenleaf. I hear it’s rustic.”
“The word ‘rustic’ doesn’t quite do the place justice. And then this morning. Half the town was at breakfast.”
“I take it you went to Herbs,” she remarked.
“I did,” he said. “I noticed you weren’t there.”
“No. It’s too busy. I like a little quiet time to start the day.”
“You should have warned me.”
She smiled. “You should have asked.”
He laughed, and Lexie motioned toward the door with her hand.
Walking to the rare-book room with him, she sensed he was in a good mood despite his exhaustion, but it still wasn’t enough to make her trust him.
“Would you happen to know a Deputy Hopper?” he asked.
She looked over in surprise. “Rodney?”
“I think that was his name. What’s his deal, anyway? He seemed a little perturbed by my presence here in town.”
“Oh, he’s harmless.”
“He didn’t seem harmless.”
She shrugged. “He probably heard that you’d be spending time at the library. He’s kind of protective when it comes to things like that. He’s been sweet on me for years.”
“Put in a good word for me, will you?”
“I suppose I could do that.”
Half expecting another witty comeback, he raised his eyebrow in pleasant surprise.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem. Just don’t do anything to make me take it back.”
They continued in silence to the rare-book room. She led the way inside, flicking on the light.
“I’ve been thinking about your project, and there’s something you should probably know.”
“What’s that?”
She told him about the two previous investigations into the cemetery before adding, “If you give me a few minutes, I can dig them up for you.”
“I’d appreciate that,” he said. “But why didn’t you mention them yesterday?”
She smiled without answering.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Because I didn’t ask?”
“I’m only a librarian, not a mind reader.”
“Like your grandmother? Oh, wait, she’s a diviner, right?”
“Actually, she is. And she can tell the sex of babies before they’re born, too.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jeremy said.
Her eyes flashed. “It’s true, Jeremy. Whether or not you want to believe it, she can do those things.”
He grinned at her. “Did you just call me Jeremy?”
“Yes. But don’t make a big deal out of it. You did ask me to, remember?”
“I remember,” he said, “Lexie.”
“Don’t push it,” she said, but even as she spoke, Jeremy noticed that she held his gaze just a little longer than usual, and he liked that.
He liked that a lot.
Seven
Jeremy spent the rest of the morning hunched over a stack of books and the two articles Lexie had found. The first, written in 1958 by a folklore professor at the University of North Carolina and published in the Journal of the South, seemed to have been intended as a response to A. J. Morrison’s account of the legend. The article pulled a few quotes from Morrison’s work, summarized the legend, and recounted the professor’s stay in the cemetery over a one-week period. On four of those evenings, he witnessed the lights. He seemed to have made at least a preliminary attempt to find the cause: he counted the number of homes in the surrounding area (there were eighteen within one mile of the cemetery and, interestingly, none on Riker’s Hill), and also noted the number of cars that passed within two minutes of the lights’ appearance. In two instances, the span of time was less than a minute. In the other two instances, however, there were no passing cars at all, which seemed to eliminate the possibility that headlights were the source of the “ghosts.”
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