“Oh, my,” the woman said, looking around at the dimly lit space. “You’ve got quite the studio.”
“Yes, I’m very fortunate,” Anna said, thinking of how terrified she’d been of her “studio” only moments earlier. “My name is Anna Dale,” she added, prompting her visitor to identify herself.
“Oh, I know who you are,” the woman said. “Everyone does. I’m Tilda Furman.” The woman studied the cartoon paper tacked to the wall. “You’ll be sketching the mural on this paper, then transferring it to canvas?” she asked.
“Exactly.” Anna smiled. “Are you an artist?”
Tilda Furman nodded. “Though I’ve never done a mural the likes of which you’re proposing.”
“Well, feel free to stop in anytime to watch,” Anna said.
“Actually, I’m here for another reason.” The woman suddenly sounded almost shy. “I teach art and music at the colored high school,” she said. “I heard you were taking on students to help you, and I have a talented boy in my eleventh-grade class who is so good an artist that he needs more than I can give him. He could use this exposure.” She gestured toward the cartoon paper. “He’s smart, but a terrible student because he spends every class drawing instead of working on his history or English or what have you. Recess comes, he sits by himself with his sketch pad. All he cares about is art. He’d drop out if it didn’t mean losing his art class.”
Anna nodded. She could relate well to what the woman was telling her. She recalled her own high school years when she’d doodle all over the sides of her paper instead of taking notes in class.
“Would you consider taking him on to help you?” the woman asked.
Anna hesitated. “I’m not sure I’ll have enough for three students to do,” she said.
“Even if he just watches you, it would be a help,” she said. “He should see what a real-world artist does.”
“And I’m not paying the students,” Anna said. “They’re getting credit for—”
“Yes, I already spoke to the principal about that,” she said. “We could work that out for him, too. Might help him graduate, because if he keeps going the way he is, he won’t make it.”
“All right,” Anna said. “Have him come tomorrow.”
“Thank you, miss,” she said. “You might be saving this boy’s life.”
So dramatic, Anna thought, but she smiled. “What’s his name?” she asked as she walked the woman to the door.
“Jesse Williams,” the woman said. “And I don’t think you’ll regret this.”
Chapter 25
MORGAN
June 27, 2018
“You look like you could use a massage,” Adam said, as he walked into the foyer from the rear of the building. I stood on the lowest rung of the ladder as I cleaned the image of the broken teapot one of the Tea Party women was holding. I supposed Adam had caught me rubbing my shoulder. “I’m a pretty awesome masseur,” he added.
I held on to the ladder and looked at him. He was almost too much, this guy, trying too hard, with the snake on his arm and the bun in his hair, yet I couldn’t help that my stomach occasionally flipped when he was around. It was only that he reminded me of Trey—the old Trey. The Trey I thought was so phenomenal. I was not the least bit interested in Adam, and I decided against any clever comeback that could be perceived as flirtatious.
“Thanks.” I smiled. “I’m fine.”
“Wise answer.” Oliver was crouched on the floor near the front door, uncrating a large painting, and he didn’t even look up from the task when he spoke.
Adam grinned. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me,” he said, and he continued walking through the foyer and out the front door of the gallery.
Oliver and I were quiet for a moment as I worked on the mural and he pulled the well-padded painting from the box. Finally, he spoke. “Adam’s got a girlfriend,” he said.
I smiled to myself. “Like I care.”
He chuckled. “Just sayin’…”
“I think I’ve just been without for too long.” I felt embarrassed that any attraction I felt for Adam might be obvious.
“No guy in your life?” Oliver asked.
It took me a minute to answer. “I think it’s best if I just focus on myself for a while,” I said, meaning it. I stopped cleaning for a moment, resting my hands on a rung of the ladder as I thought about Trey. “I had a boyfriend,” I said. “I thought he was really pretty awesome, but it turned out he wasn’t.”
“Ah,” Oliver said, his focus still on freeing the painting from the thick padding that surrounded it. “You got a wake-up call, huh?”
That was one way to put it. “It’s complicated,” I said, not wanting to get into everything about the accident. “So how about you?” I asked. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I lived with a woman for five years. Till last year,” he said. He held the painting—sunflowers on a blue background—upright in front of him to study. I knew it was one of the student pieces. The more valuable art would be brought in by escorts and packed in heavy wooden crates. We would see none of it until the gallery’s security system was in place. “She wanted to move to California, pretty desperately,” Oliver continued. “And I wanted to stay close to my son, also desperately.”
“Are you sad you couldn’t make it work?”
“There were other problems, more minor, but taken all together, it was time to end it.”
“Her loss,” I said, and I meant it.
He smiled across the room at me. “Thank you,” he said. He leaned the painting against the wall near some of the other student work that had come in.
I returned his smile, then popped in my earbuds and went back to cleaning the mural. The spot I’d just worked on revealed drops of tea flying through the air. They were perfect, glistening, a catch light in each one. Not for the first time, I admired Anna Dale’s exquisite work.
“Come look at this, Oliver,” I said, taking my earbuds out again.
Oliver was opening another package, which he set down on the floor before crossing the foyer to the mural.
I pointed to the droplets. “Can you see this?” I asked. “She was so detailed. A huge painting like this and she still paid attention to every little thing. Even the catch lights in the drops of tea.”
I looked down at Oliver to see him craning his neck, studying the image hard, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Better tea drops than blood, right?” I smiled.
“Move the ladder for a sec,” he said.
I climbed down to the floor and pulled the ladder aside as Oliver stepped closer to the mural. “I think you spoke too soon,” he said, reaching up to touch one of the drops I hadn’t yet cleaned. “Hand me the dowel.”
I gave him the dowel and watched as he carefully smoothed the cotton tip over the spot.
“Oh, no,” I said. The droplet was the same size and shape as the tea drops, but this one was most definitely red. Bloodred. I looked at Oliver in silence, and he met my eyes.