True Believer

by Nicholas Sparks

  "By all means," Mayor Gherkin said, waving his hands.

  Jeremy followed her back to the table. Thankfully, Deputy Hopper was gone by then, and Jeremy slid back into his seat. Rachel set the plate in front of him.

  "You just enjoy that. I told 'em to make it extra special, since you're visiting from New York City. I absolutely love that place!"

  "Oh, you've been there?"

  "Well, no. But I've always wanted to go. It seems so . . . glamorous and exciting."

  "You should go. It's like nowhere else in the world."

  She smiled, looking coy. "Why, Mr. Marsh . . . is that an invitation?"

  Jeremy's jaw dropped. Huh?

  Rachel, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice his expression. "Well, I just might want to take you up on that," she twittered. "And I'd be glad to show you 'round the cemetery, any night you'd like to go. I'm usually finished here by three o'clock."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Jeremy mumbled.

  Over the next twenty minutes, as Jeremy ate, Rachel came by a dozen times, refilling his coffee cup a quarter inch each time, smiling at him unrelentingly.

  Jeremy made his way to his car, recovering from what was supposed to have been a leisurely breakfast.

  Deputy Hopper. Mayor Gherkin. Tully. Rachel. Jed.

  Small-town USA was way too much to deal with before coffee.

  Tomorrow he'd just grab a cup of coffee somewhere else. He wasn't sure eating at Herbs was worth it, even if the food was great. And, he had to admit, it was even better than he'd thought it would be. As Doris had said yesterday, it tasted fresh, like the ingredients had been gathered from the farm that morning.

  Still, tomorrow would be coffee elsewhere. And not from Tully's gas station, either, assuming he even had coffee. He didn't want to get stuck in a conversation when he had other things to do.

  He paused in midstep, amazed. Good Lord, he thought, I'm already thinking like a local.

  He shook his head and retrieved his keys from his pocket as he walked toward the car. At least breakfast was over. Checking his watch, he saw that it was coming up on nine o'clock. Good.

  Lexie found herself glancing out the window of her office the exact moment Jeremy Marsh pulled into the library parking lot.

  Jeremy Marsh. Who'd continued to creep into her thoughts, even though she was trying to work. And just look at him now. Trying to dress more casually to blend with folks around here, she supposed. And somehow he'd almost pulled it off.

  But enough of that. She had work to do. Her office was lined with bookcases crammed from top to bottom: books piled every which way, vertical and horizontal. A steel-gray filing cabinet stood in the corner, and her desk and chair were typically functional. There was little in the office that was decorative, simply for lack of space, and paperwork was piled everywhere: in corners, beneath the window, on the extra chair perched in a corner. Large stacks were also present on her desk, which held everything she considered urgent.

  The budget was due at the end of the month, and she had a stack of publishers' catalogs to go through before placing her weekly order. Add to the list finding a speaker for the Friends of the Library luncheon in April and getting everything set for the Historic Homes Tour--of which the library was part, since at one point it was a historic home--and she barely had enough time to breathe. She had two full-time employees, but she'd learned that things worked best if she didn't delegate. The employees were fine for recommending recent titles and helping students find what they were looking for, but the last time she'd let one of them decide what books to order, she'd ended up with six different titles about orchids, since that happened to be the employee's favorite flower. Earlier, after taking a seat in front of her computer, she'd tried to lay out a plan for organizing her schedule, but she hadn't gotten anywhere. No matter how hard she'd tried to squelch it, her mind kept wandering back to Jeremy Marsh. She didn't want to think about him, but Doris had said just enough to pique her curiosity.

  He's not what you imagine him to be.

  What was that supposed to mean? Last night, when she'd pressed, Doris had clammed up, as if she hadn't said anything in the first place. She didn't mention Lexie's love life again, or Jeremy Marsh, either. Instead, they circled the topic: what happened at work, what was going on with people they knew, how the Historic Homes Tour was shaping up for the weekend. Doris was the chair of the Historical Society, and the tour was one of the big events of the year, not that it took a lot of planning. For the most part, the same dozen homes were chosen every year, in addition to four churches and the library. As her grandmother rambled on, Lexie kept thinking about her pronouncement.

  He's not what you imagine him to be.

  And what might that be? A big-city type? A ladies' man? Someone in search of a quick fling? Someone who would make fun of the town the moment he left? Someone out for a story and willing to find one any way he could, even if it ended up hurting someone in the process?

  And why on earth did she even care? He was here for a few days, and then he'd be gone and everything would return to normal again. Thank goodness.

  Oh, she'd already heard the gossip this morning. At the bakery, where she'd stopped in for a muffin, she'd heard a couple of women talking about him. How he was going to make the town famous, how things might get a little better around here businesswise. The moment they saw her, they peppered her with questions about him and offered their own opinions as to whether he'd find the source of the mysterious lights.

  Some people here, after all, actually believed they were caused by ghosts. But others clearly didn't. Mayor Gherkin, for instance. No, he had a different angle, one that regarded Jeremy's investigation as a wager of sorts. If Jeremy Marsh couldn't find the cause, it would be good for the town's economy, and that's what the mayor was betting on. After all, Mayor Gherkin knew something that only a few others knew.

  People had been studying the mystery for years. Not just the students from Duke. Aside from the local historian--who seemed to have fathomed a plausible explanation, in Lexie's opinion--at least two other outside groups or individuals had investigated the claim in the past without success. Mayor Gherkin had actually invited the students from Duke to pay the cemetery a visit, in the hope that they wouldn't figure it out, either. And sure enough, tourist traffic had been picking up ever since.

  She supposed she could have mentioned that to Mr. Marsh yesterday. But since he hadn't asked, she hadn't offered. She was too busy trying to ward off his advances and make it clear she wasn't interested in him. Oh, he'd tried to be charming . . . well, okay, he was sort of charming in his own way, but that didn't change the fact that she had no intention of letting her emotions get the better of her. She'd even been sort of relieved when he left last night.

  And then Doris made that ridiculous comment, which essentially meant that she thought Lexie should get to know him better. But what really burned her was that she knew Doris wouldn't have said anything unless she was certain. For whatever reason, she saw something special in Jeremy.

  Sometimes she hated Doris's premonitions.

  Of course, she didn't have to listen to Doris. After all, she'd already done the "visiting stranger" thing, and she wasn't about to go down that road again. Despite her resolution, she had to admit that the whole thing left her feeling a little off-balance. As she pondered it, she heard her office door open with a squeak.

  "Good morning," Jeremy said, poking his head in. "I thought I saw a light on in here."

  Swiveling in her chair, she noticed he'd draped his jacket over his shoulder.

  "Hey there." She nodded politely. "I was just trying to get caught up on some work."

  He held up his jacket. "Do you have a place I can put this? There's not much room at the desk in the rare-book room."

  "Here, I'll take it. The coat hanger's behind the door."

  Entering the office, he handed Lexie the jacket. She hung it next to hers on the rack behind the door. Jeremy looked around the office.

&
nbsp; "So this is mission control, huh? Where it all happens?"

  "This is it," she confirmed. "It's not too roomy, but it's enough to get the job done."

  "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."

  The second article was only a bit more informative. Published in a 1969 issue of Coastal Carolina, a small magazine that went belly-up in 1980, the article reported the fact that the cemetery was sinking and the damage that had been caused as a result. The author also mentioned the legend and the proximity of Riker's Hill, and while he hadn't seen the lights (he'd visited during the summer months), he drew heavily on eyewitness accounts before speculating on a number of possibilities, all of which Jeremy was already aware.

  The first was rotting vegetation that sometimes bursts into flames, giving off vapors known as swamp gas. In a coastal area like this, Jeremy knew the idea couldn't be completely discounted, though he did think it unlikely, since the lights occurred on cold and foggy nights. They could also be "earthquake lights," which are electrical atmospheric charges generated by the shifting and grinding of rocks deep below the earth's crust. The automobile headlights theory was again advanced, as was the idea of refracted starlight and fox fire, which is a phosphorescent glow emitted by certain fungi on rotting wood. Algae, it was noted, could also glow phosphorescently. The author even mentioned the possibility of the Novaya Zemlya effect, in which light beams are bent by adjacent layers of air at different temperatures, thus seeming to glow. And, in offering a final possibility, the author concluded that it might be St. Elmo's fire, which is created by electrical discharges from sharp-pointed objects that occur during thunderstorms.

  In other words, the author had said it could be anything.

  However inconclusive, the articles did help Jeremy clarify his own thoughts. In his opinion, the lights had everything to do with geography. The hill behind the cemetery seemed to be the highest point in any direction, and the sinking cemetery made the fog more dense in that particular area. All of which meant refracted or reflected light.

  He just had to pinpoint the source, and for that, he needed to find the first time the lights had ever been noted. Not something general, but an actual date, so he could then determine what was happening in the town at that time. If the town was undergoing a dramatic change around then--a new construction project, a new factory, or something along those lines--he just might find the cause. Or if he did see the lights--and he wasn't counting on it--his job would be even simpler. If they occurred at midnight, for instance, and he saw no passing cars, he could then survey the area, noting the location of occupied houses with lamps blazing in the window, the proximity of the highway, or possibly even river traffic. Boats, he suspected, were a possibility, if they were large enough.

  Going through the stack of books a second time, he made additional notes regarding the changes in the town over the years, with special emphasis on changes around the turn of the century.

  As the hours rolled on, the list grew. In the early twentieth century, there was a mini-housing boom that lasted from 1907 to 1914, during which the north side of the town grew. The small port was widened in 1910, again in 1916, and once more in 1922; combined with the quarries and phosphorous mines, excavation was extensive. The railroad was started in 1898, and spurs continued to be built in various areas of the county until 1912. A trestle over the river was completed in 1904, and from 1908 to 1915 three major factories were constructed: a textile mill, a phosphorous mine, and a paper mill. Of the three, only the paper mill was still in operation--the textile mill had closed four years ago, the mine in 1987--so that seemed to eliminate the other two as possibilities.

  He checked his facts again, made sure they were correct, and restacked the books so Lexie could shelve them. He leaned back in his
chair, stretched the stiffness from his body, and glanced at the clock. Already, it was coming up on noon. All in all, he thought it was a few hours well spent, and he glanced over his shoulder at the open door behind him.

  Lexie hadn't returned to check on him. He sort of liked the fact that he couldn't read her, and for a moment, he wished she lived in the city, or even someplace near the city. It would have been interesting to see the way things might have developed between them. A moment later, she pushed through the door.

  "Hey there," Lexie greeted him. "How's it going?"

  Jeremy turned. "Good. Thanks."

  She slipped into her jacket. "Listen, I was thinking about running out to grab lunch, and I was wondering if you wanted me to bring you something back."

  "Are you going to Herbs?" he asked.

  "No. If you thought breakfast was busy, you should see the place at lunch. But I'd be happy to pick up a to-go order on my way back."

  He hesitated for only an instant.

  "Well, would it be all right if I came with you to wherever it is you're going? I should probably stretch my legs. I've been sitting here all morning, and I'd love to see someplace new. Maybe you could even show me around a bit." He paused. "If that's okay, I mean."

  She almost said no, but again, she heard Doris's words, and her thoughts became muddled. Should I or shouldn't I? Despite her better judgment--thank you very much for that, Doris--she said, "Sure. But I've only got an hour or so before I have to get back, so I don't know how much help I can be."

  He seemed almost as surprised as she did, and he stood, then followed her out the door. "Anything at all is fine," he said. "Helps me fill in the blanks, you know. It's important to know what goes on in a place like this."

  "In our little hick town, you mean?"

  "I didn't say it was a hick town. Those are your words."

  "Yeah. But they're your thoughts, not mine. I love this place."

  "I'm sure," he agreed. "Why else would you live here?"

  "Because it's not New York City, for one thing."

  "You've been there?"

  "I used to live in Manhattan. On West Sixty-ninth."

  He almost stumbled in midstep. "That's just a few blocks from where I live."

  She smiled. "Small world, isn't it?"

  Walking quickly, Jeremy struggled to keep up with her as she approached the stairs. "You're kidding, right?"