She did have an idea for the Edenton mural, though. In the Plainfield library, the librarian pointed her toward the American Guide Series’ book on North Carolina. In it, she read about the “Edenton Tea Party,” an eighteenth-century women’s movement in which fifty-one women signed a petition to boycott all English products. She thought that might make an intriguing mural and wouldn’t be too challenging to paint. The idea seemed so simple to her at first that she thought she might not even have to travel to Edenton to do her research, but then she realized she actually wanted this trip. She needed to get away for a few days. She needed an escape from the sadness in the little house where she expected to see her mother every time she walked into another room.
King Street. She spotted the sign and turned left to see a big brick block of a building. The Hotel Joseph Hewes. It would be her home while she was in this town she knew as well as she knew Jupiter or Saturn. She drove into the parking lot, heart pounding, hands sticky on the steering wheel, wondering what the next few days would hold.
Chapter 3
MORGAN
June 13, 2018
I blinked against the bright sunlight as I walked with Lisa toward the silver sedan in the prison parking lot. The only words Lisa had said to me so far were “do you have everything?” and the two of us were quiet as we left the building. I breathed in the sweet air of freedom, but my stomach was full of knots. I held my chin high, though. Put on the tough-girl look I’d perfected inside. I’m not afraid of anything, I told myself … though the truth was, I was undeniably intimidated by the woman at my side. Lisa was Jesse Jameson Williams’s daughter, which was enough to intimidate anyone, but it was more than that. I couldn’t read her. Her brittle silence, for starters. What was that about? Her upright carriage and no-nonsense speed walk as she headed toward the car while checking her phone every two seconds. Her unsmiling, clenched-teeth expression. Anger bubbled just below the surface in this woman, I thought, and I didn’t like the fact that she held all the cards for my future.
I hadn’t anticipated the unease I felt getting into a car. It had been a bit more than a year since I’d been in any sort of vehicle, and my fingers froze on the outside handle of the car door. Lisa was already in the driver’s seat by the time I managed to pull myself together enough to open the door. Even then, I stood there holding the plastic bag of my very few belongings at my side, the muscles in my legs locked in paralysis.
“Come on, get in,” Lisa called.
I climbed into the car and sat down on the leather seat, dropping the bag of belongings at my feet. I pulled the door closed, then buckled the seat belt with fingers that felt ice-cold despite the warm spring weather.
Lisa stuck her phone in the holder on the dashboard, then started the car, still not speaking. Of course, I wasn’t speaking, either. I wanted to say thank you for doing this, but that would make me sound more vulnerable than I wanted to appear. I felt so strange, like I was attempting to step back into the person I used to be. For the first time in a year, I was wearing my small silver hoop earrings, the silver stud in my nostril, and my old blue sleeveless shirt. Not that I’d selected the shirt from my closet; I’d been wearing it the day I got locked up, so that was all I had with me. Still, I was glad I had on this particular shirt, not only because the day was warm, but because I wanted Lisa to see my tattoo in its entirety. The intricacy of the lacy design. It was the only thing I had with me to illustrate that I had any artistic talent. But Lisa said nothing about it.
Why was this woman wound so tight? Did she resent the fact that I was a criminal she’d been forced to spring from jail? Or that she was conservatively dressed and groomed within an inch of her life—I could smell jasmine-scented perfume in the air—while I sat there in my torn-at-the-knee jeans with a tattoo on my arm? Or that some of the money Lisa stood to inherit was going into my pocket? Or maybe that I was white on top of it all? I had no idea. All I knew at that moment was that Lisa was too close to the car in front of us while driving sixty-five miles per hour. You were supposed to allow a car length for every ten miles per hour. I remembered the rule from driver’s ed, though I’d probably never followed it myself. But that was before. Now I had to fight the urge to press an imaginary brake on the floor to slow Lisa down. This is the new Morgan, I thought sadly to myself. The Morgan afraid of the outside world.
We’d ridden ten minutes in silence before Lisa finally spoke.
“The government never fully paid the artist—Anna Dale—for the mural, so after she went crazy—or whatever happened—it essentially became my father’s property to do with as he pleased,” she said. “But since the gallery is a gift to the community, your work on the mural becomes a sort of community service.” She glanced at me, and the smallest of smiles lifted the corners of her lips. “So says Andrea.”
The rationale seemed quite a stretch and I waited for her to continue, unsure of her point. “I understand,” I said when it was clear Lisa had nothing more to say on the subject. “But why did the mural end up with your father?”
She shrugged. “No idea,” she said. “He didn’t leave me much in the way of details. I’m just following his orders.”
I kept my gaze riveted on the brake lights of the car in front of us.
“You have to meet with the parole officer within three days,” Lisa added.
“I know.” My responsibilities had been drilled into my head. “Is it possible … I can get an advance on my pay?”
Lisa looked at me sharply.
“I need clothes for the outside,” I said. “I mean, for … I just need clothes. I don’t have any with me except what I have on. And I’ll need a phone.”
“Could your family send you your clothes?”
“My parents and I aren’t talking.”
“Do they know you’re out? Would that make a difference?” Lisa’s phone rang and she looked at it. Pressed a button to stop the call. “I mean, would they talk to you now?” she continued.
I hadn’t called them. What was the point? If I’d learned anything at all those AA meetings I’d attended this past year, it was that I needed to cut toxic people out of my life.
“No, it wouldn’t make a difference,” I said.
Lisa didn’t respond and we drove in silence for a few more minutes. Then she made a call using the speaker on her phone. Something about a house. A contract. She was a real estate agent, I realized, and the little house pin on her lapel suddenly made sense. As she spoke into the phone, Lisa’s voice was higher, friendlier, more upbeat. A completely different person. When she hung up, she glanced at me. “Yes, you can have an advance,” she said. “You are going to need a phone. We need to be in touch all the time, and you’re going to need a laptop computer for restoration research, I’m sure. So I’ll advance you four thousand. Get what you need.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We were on Route 64 now and I watched the speedometer creep past eighty. I tried to shift my thinking to the absolute insanity that I was now out of prison because of Jesse Jameson Williams. Just the idea of him having known my name sent a thrill through me, though I still couldn’t help but feel he’d had me confused with another Morgan Christopher. Yet what was the likelihood there was another young artist—some young black artist, maybe—with my name in North Carolina? I wished I knew how he’d learned about me. It wasn’t like I’d been a top student. If my lifelong passion for art had been enough, I would have been a star, but my desire to create hadn’t been enough. One of my not-so-tactful professors told me I was in the top of the pack when it came to effort, but the “bottom of the middle of the pack” when it came to talent. “Talent can’t be taught,” he told me. He’d crushed me with those words. I’d thought of dropping out then, but art was all I’d ever cared about. Trey told me to tough it out. “He’s an asshole,” he said about my professor. “Your work is awesome.” Trey always had a way of building me up when I was down, but he wasn’t an artist, so what did he know? And then the accident happened and I’d landed in prison, and that pretty much made the “drop out/don’t drop out” decision for me.