True Believer by Nicholas Sparks

promise to show you.”
Jeremy had to step quickly to catch up with her. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
She opened the main door and hesitated. “Not at all,” she said, her expression unchanged.
“Why were you in the cemetery today?”
Instead of answering, she simply stared at him, her expression the same.
“I mean, I was just wondering,” Jeremy continued. “I got the impression that few people head out there these days.”
Still she said nothing, and in the silence, Jeremy grew curious, then finally uncomfortable.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.
She smiled and, surprising him, winked before moving through the open doorway. “I said you could ask, Mr. Marsh. I didn’t say that I would answer.
As she strode ahead of him, all Jeremy could do was stare. Oh, she was something, wasn’t she? Confident and beautiful and charming all at once, and that was after she’d shot down the idea of going on a date.
Maybe Alvin had been right, he thought. Maybe there was something about southern belles that could drive a guy crazy.
They made their way through the foyer, past the children’s reading room, and Lexie led him up the stairs. Pausing at the top, Jeremy looked around.
L-I-B, he thought again.
There was more to the place than just a few rickety shelves stocked with new books. A lot more. And lots of Gothic feeling, too, right down to the dusty smell and the private-library atmosphere. With oak-paneled walls, mahogany flooring, and burgundy curtains, the cavernous, open room stood in stark contrast to the area downstairs. Overstuffed chairs and imitation Tiffany lamps stood in corners. Along the far wall was a stone fireplace, with a painting hung above it, and the windows, narrow though they were, offered just enough sunlight to give the place an almost homey feel.
“Now I understand,” Jeremy observed. “Downstairs was just the appetizer. This is where the real action is.”
She nodded. “Most of our daily visitors come in for recent titles by authors they know, so I set up the area downstairs for their convenience. The room downstairs is small because it used to be our offices before we had it converted.”
“Where are the offices now?”
“Over there,” she said, pointing behind the far shelf. “Next to the rare-book room.”
“Wow,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
She smiled. “Come on—I’ll show you around first and tell you about the place.”
For the next few minutes, they chatted as they meandered among the shelves. The home, he learned, had been built in 1874 by Horace Middleton, a captain who’d made his fortune shipping timber and tobacco. He’d built the home for his wife and seven children but, sadly, had never lived here. Right before completion, his wife passed away, and he decided to move with his family to Wilmington. The house was empty for years, then occupied by another family until the 1950s, when it was finally sold to the Historical Society, who later sold it to the county for use as the library.
Jeremy listened intently as she talked. They walked slowly, Lexie interrupting her own story to point out some of her favorite books. She was, he soon came to learn, even more well read than he, especially in the classics, but it made sense, now that he thought about it. Why else would you become a librarian if you didn’t love books? As if knowing what he was thinking, she paused and motioned to a shelf plaque with her finger.
“This section here is probably more up your alley, Mr. Marsh.”
He glanced at the plaque and noted the words supernatural/ witchcraft. He slowed but didn’t stop, taking time only to note a few of the titles, including one about the prophecies of Michel de Nostredame. Nostradamus, as he’s commonly known, published one hundred exceptionally vague predictions in 1555 in a book called Centuries, the first of ten that he wrote in his lifetime. Of the thousand prophecies Nostradamus published, only fifty or so are still quoted today,