“Seriously, Lisa, I need to do more research before I can—”
“Research is always never-ending,” she said, “and I’m not paying you to sit on your computer here in my house.”
Wow, she was tough. I didn’t speak, at least not out loud. Inside, I was thinking, First of all, it’s not your money. Second of all, I have no idea what I’m doing.
“Fine,” I said again. Money and freedom. That was why I was here. The mural was bizarre and my curiosity was piqued by its strangeness, but I certainly felt no attachment to it. I just wanted to figure out how to restore it well enough to be paid and stay out of prison. I’d view the mural as nothing more than a means to an end.
I carried my bowl to the sink, then picked up my purse and the laptop. “I’m on my way,” I said, and I headed for the door.
Chapter 12
ANNA
December 12, 1939
In the morning, Mr. Fiering gave Anna a tour of the cotton mill and the diminutive Mill Village, which consisted of neat rows of little houses for the mill workers and their families. There were a lot of children in the streets playing catch and chasing one another around. The Mill Village had a very separate feeling from the rest of Edenton, and from a few things Mr. Fiering said, Anna had the sense that the people who lived in its tiny houses were not viewed in a very welcoming light by the rest of the town.
The mill itself was quite an impressive sight. The long brick building was filled with workers and machinery and noise, and Anna felt overwhelmed by it all as she walked through it, Toby Fiering at her side. Ironically, though, it was the outside of the mill that she found most intriguing. Wisps of cotton were caught in the branches of the trees closest to the mill windows and Anna found the sight of them fascinating—a stunning visual she decided then and there would be in her mural along with some of the small Mill Village homes that lined the nearby streets.
After they toured the mill, Mr. Fiering dropped her off at the peanut factory, where she watched women, most of them colored, doing monotonous work on the belts that moved the peanuts from one part of the tall brick building to another. Anna liked the idea of including colored workers in the mural. She mentioned that to Miss Myrtle when she returned home from her busy day.
“Oh, honey,” Miss Myrtle said, “this town couldn’t survive without our colored folk! Between the housekeepers and the nannies and the fishermen and the people working the fields—why, they’re the glue that holds us together. Of course they’ve got to be in the mural!”
Anna couldn’t help but wonder why, if Miss Myrtle felt that way about Edenton’s colored citizens, she made Freda go outside to use her own separate bathroom, rain or shine. She wasn’t sure she would ever truly understand the people in the South.
“And listen, dear,” Miss Myrtle said, “I nearly forgot. A reporter stopped by to talk to you. He’ll be coming back tomorrow afternoon. Said he wants to talk to the lady who’s making a painting for the post office.”
“A reporter!” Anna said. The word alone made her nervous. “I don’t have anything to say to a reporter. At least not yet.”
“Oh, sure you do,” Miss Myrtle said. “Tell him you’re going to paint something that will make Edenton proud.”
Miss Myrtle’s words still rang in her ears by the time she climbed into bed that night. Her head was so full of all she’d seen and heard and experienced over the last week, it was hard to separate one idea from another. But slowly, as she lay there sleepless, the mural began to take shape in her mind. She got out of bed around midnight, carried her sketch pad downstairs, and sat in the chilly living room to draw by lamplight. How she would include everything she wanted to without making a mess of it, she wasn’t sure. The ladies at the Tea Party would be front and center, whether the gentlemen liked it or not. The ladies were a bit of a problem as she sketched, though, since she had no models to work from. She would have to use models for the full-sized cartoon, that was clear. At that moment, though, she just wanted to get her ideas down so that once her art supplies arrived from Aunt Alice, she could begin working on the thirty-six-by-eighteen-inch sketch she needed to turn in to the Section for approval.
She thought of the reporter who wanted to talk to her. What could she tell him? It would be embarrassing if she described the mural taking shape in her imagination only to have the Section reject her sketch. But then she thought of Miss Myrtle’s words and relaxed. She didn’t need to describe her idea to him. She’d tell him the truth: all she cared about was creating a mural that would make Edenton proud.
Chapter 13
MORGAN
June 15, 2018
I found two bare-chested men—Wyatt and Adam—and a T-shirt-clad Oliver on the wide lawn outside the gallery as they put the final touches on the largest stretcher I’d ever seen. For a moment, I stood back, watching them from the sidewalk. Wyatt and Adam seemed to be working under Oliver’s supervision, because he stood at the edge of the yard in his blue T-shirt, earbuds loose around his neck, motioning to them.
“Hey, Morgan,” he called, waving me over, and I walked toward him. “They have a little more work to do on the interlocking joints,” he said, “and then we can tack on the mural and set it up against the wall for you to work on. You’re probably champing at the bit to get started on it.”
“I am.” I smiled, a frisson of anxiety in my chest.
“You do want the interlocking joints, right?” he asked.
For a terrible moment, I wondered if it was a trick question. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what interlocking joints were. Maybe he was making them up to see if I knew the first thing about restoration.
“That’ll be great,” I said, and I was relieved when he seemed satisfied with my answer.
The stretcher was a work of art all on its own. It was huge, made of long two-by-fours with wooden braces forming a grid between them. It was an enormous, beautifully crafted thing. Oliver was right about these guys. They were fast and they knew what they were doing. If only I could say the same about myself.
“Want to take another look at the mural?” Oliver asked, and I nodded, following him inside.
The delicious woody scent of the gallery greeted me again and I could hear the buzz of saws from somewhere in the interior of the building.
I stood next to Oliver in the middle of the foyer, looking down at the mural, which was still attached to the two-by-four on the floor. “I’m trying to find material on Anna Dale,” Oliver said, “and I did find something I’ll show you in a bit. But for the most part, it’s like she simply disappeared after she painted the mural.”
“What did you find?” “So strange,” I said, but my gaze on the many areas of the mural that were nearly bare of paint beneath the layer of grime or mildew coating the enormous canvas.
“Doesn’t look any better today than it did the other day, does it?” He laughed.
“Uh-uh,” I agreed.
“Where did you work before coming here?” he asked. A casual question or was he suspicious?
I hesitated, my gaze on the women and their broken teapot. Even if I wanted to make up an answer, I didn’t know what it should be. I glanced at Oliver. With his tall, slender build and dark-framed glasses, he struck me as bookish and kind, a bit nerdy despite handsome features, probably gay, and I opted for the truth. “I wasn’t,” I said.