“Tiny, small-town paper?” Oliver shook his head as he climbed down the ladder to the floor. “I doubt it. You could try the library, though. I bet they have old copies.”
“Maybe.” I looked toward the mural, nearly half clean now, and felt a smile cross my face. “I like this part of restoration,” I said. “The cleaning part.”
“The easy part, you mean.” He grinned at me.
I sighed, my smile gone. “Everything I read about how to inpaint and … all of it … makes me feel so ignorant. It’s overwhelming.”
“Step by step,” he said patiently, motioning to the mural as he headed back to the hallway. “Let me know what other bizarre stuff you find in the next square.”
Instead of walking to Lisa’s house when I left the gallery that evening, I headed to the Edenton library to see what I could find in the local paper from 1940.
The old editions of the Chowan Herald, all on microfilm, were located in the small, cramped, and quiet second story of the library. I was the only person up there, and it took me thirty minutes to figure out how to operate the microfilm machine. I was frustrated by the time I loaded the reel for 1940 and even more frustrated when I realized there was no indexing—no way to search for Anna’s name. I began running through the papers week by week, studying the crude images with the dodgy machine, finally finding a photograph in the February 15 edition. The large but grainy picture appeared to have been taken inside the warehouse—Mama Nelle’s “big barn,” I felt sure. Anna and her very cool haircut stood next to an empty canvas … or at least, it appeared empty until I enlarged the shot and saw the faint but clear pounce lines that covered the surface. I understood immediately what I was looking at. Anna Dale had created a cartoon of the mural and pounced the image onto the canvas. A thrill ran up my spine, knowing that the canvas I was looking at was the very canvas I was working on, and I had the out-of-body feeling that I was there, with her, in that warehouse. I squinted at the faint, grainy image. I could see no pounce marks for the motorcycle, although it was hard to make out much of anything on the canvas.
The photograph was interesting in other ways, too. Anna stood to one side, pointing to the canvas, a wide smile on her face. She wore wide-legged pants and a smudged white smock. I thought she was beautiful. I smoothed my hand over my own shoulder-length pale hair, wondering how it would look in that bob. Flat as a pancake, most likely. My hair didn’t have the body hers did.
Next to Anna, a young black man held a long roll of paper—probably the used cartoon. On the opposite side of the canvas, a towheaded boy stood with his hands in his pockets. Both the man’s and the boy’s gazes were riveted on whatever Anna was illustrating on the canvas. There was just one line beneath the picture: Artist Anna Dale discusses the drawing for the mural, which will reside in the Edenton Post Office.
Anna was in command in this photograph, I thought, and I was surprised to feel a strong wave of caring for her. She looked healthy. Smiling. Engaged. This wasn’t a mentally ill woman. But then I remembered the blood dripping from the ax blade. Something must have gone terribly wrong for her, or with her. I wondered for the first time if whatever mental illness had brought Anna down might have also taken her life. Was that why no other information existed about her? She’d been a talented artist. Talented artists didn’t just disappear. If she died—or killed herself—that would explain why no one had ever heard of her again.
It was nearly closing time in the library. I found the librarian, who helped me get a copy of the photograph from the obstinate microfilm reader, then gathered up my things and headed to an AA meeting, where the main topic was making amends for however we screwed up while drinking. I found my palms sweating during the discussion. If I could manage to track down Emily Maxwell, would I ever have the courage to actually speak to her? The thought absolutely terrified me. I wanted to know how she was. I wanted to find her through the impersonal vehicle of my computer. But communicate with her? I didn’t think I had the guts.
She was still on my mind when I crawled into bed that night. I stared at the dark ceiling, wondering if Emily might be awake as well, and if she was, was she in terrible pain? Was she cursing my name?
I was free, my biggest physical complaint my aching shoulders from my fifty-thousand-dollar job. I doubted that Emily Maxwell would ever again know such physical freedom.
I curled up in a ball on my bed, remembering how I’d gotten into my car with Trey. We’d been laughing hard, at what, I couldn’t remember. I’d been so drunk I’d caught my scarf in the door and had trouble remembering how to open the door to free it. I didn’t deserve to be out of prison. I didn’t deserve fifty thousand dollars. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive myself for what we’d done to that innocent girl.
Chapter 24
ANNA
January 10, 1940
Anna arrived alone and nervous at the warehouse that morning. She hadn’t been there since her initial visit with Mayor Sykes a month ago, and she was stunned by what she found. The floor—concrete—had been swept clean and sun gleamed through the tall, sparkling windows. Two space heaters sat in front of one of the closed garage doors along with two tall floor lamps, two stepladders, and several extension cords. The three long tables and four wooden chairs were still in place, and a few of the crates remained, piled up beneath one of the windows on the side wall. She truly owed the mayor for his help. Or, at least, she owed Benny, his custodian. She would have to bake them something.
She carried the rolls of cartoon paper into the warehouse along with a big metal bucket filled with most of the tools she’d need for the creation of the cartoon. She wouldn’t be able to do much with her supplies until her helpers arrived from Edenton High School that afternoon, but she felt a sense of satisfaction as she began to fill her new workspace. She was wearing her beloved slacks once again, and the freedom of them felt wonderful, although Miss Myrtle had gasped when she saw Anna in them that morning.
“You can’t go out of the house in those!” she’d said, pointing to the slacks.
“Well, I can’t wear a dress in the warehouse,” Anna’d responded. “Impossible to work in.”
Miss Myrtle had shaken her head, a look of worry on her face. “Well, don’t go anywhere else in them,” she’d said. It had sounded like a warning. Anna thought she and Miss Myrtle saw eye to eye on most things in life, but every once in a while, it was clear they were a hefty generation apart.
Anna plugged in the space heaters, setting them on either side of the area in front of the windowless wall at the front end of the building, nearest the door. They didn’t exactly make the space toasty, but the temperature was quite tolerable. Tolerable enough that she could take off her coat. Her heavy sweater beneath her smock was plenty warm enough.
Around noon, she ate the ham sandwich Freda had made for her, and as she was cleaning up after herself, the lumber arrived for the stretcher. She’d never seen so much wood in an art studio and felt instantly intimidated at the thought of putting the massive stretcher together. She eyed the man who stacked the wood in the center of the warehouse for her. He was a rugged, Nordic-looking blue-eyed blond who would be perfect for the lumberman in the mural.