The place was too loud for conversation, and that was fine with me. Adam and Wyatt seemed to know nearly everyone. I felt uncomfortable with the noise and the crush of people, many of them banging into us as they walked past. Even when I drank, it hadn’t been in a place like this. First of all, I’d been barely old enough to go to a bar by the time I was locked up, so when I drank, it was at parties with people I knew, people I’d cared about. People I would probably never, ever see again.
I kept my gaze on the TV as I ate. Trey had loved soccer and I followed the game easily. I felt proud of myself: I was watching a game that made me think of Trey and it wasn’t bothering me, and although I was surrounded by booze, I was happy to simply enjoy my burger and Coke. It felt like a test, sitting there at the bar, and I was acing it.
Oliver and I had a shouted discussion about what was happening on the soccer field—it was clear he wasn’t much of a fan—but we soon gave up and focused on our food. On my other side, a couple of women stood talking to Adam and Wyatt. I couldn’t understand a word they said, but I could easily make out the conversation’s flirtatious tone.
I’d nearly finished my burger when there was a sudden escalation in the noise behind me. Then male voices, shouting. I looked at the TV. Nothing special happening in the game to merit the clamor.
“Oh, shit, here they go again,” Adam shouted in my ear as he pointed over his shoulder.
I turned around to see a couple of men exchanging blows directly behind us. I rolled my eyes. Idiots. The two women standing next to Adam and Wyatt started yelling, holding their drinks in the air to ward off any wild blows from the dueling men. I wanted to leave. I reached into my purse and took a twenty from my wallet. Placed it on the counter next to my plate.
Oliver set his own bills on the bar and leaned toward my ear. “We’re out of here,” he said, starting to get up. Just then, the idiotic man closest to me tossed his drink at one of the others, and I jumped from my stool, trying to get my ankle and its monitor out of harm’s way. I moved too quickly. The stool toppled over behind me, catching my right ankle—the one without the monitor—in one of the rungs, twisting it hard enough to make me scream as I fell to the floor. The men never stopped fighting. They were so damn drunk. God, I hate drunks, I thought. Wyatt and Oliver were instantly next to me on the floor, helping me up, while Adam extracted my foot from the rungs of the stool. All three of them were talking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word they said for the cacophony.
Once I was on my feet, Oliver took my hand and cleared a path for us through the sea of revelers, leaving Adam and Wyatt behind. I kept up with him, hoping against hope that my monitor was clean and dry.
Outside, I felt a welcome blanket of thick midsummer-night air wrap around me, the craziness inside the bar nothing more than a hum now.
“What a zoo!” Oliver said, and I could see him shake his head in the light from the streetlight. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I bent over and lifted the leg of my jeans to see if my monitor was unscathed, but it was too dark to tell. Bending like that, though, I suddenly became aware of pain in my right ankle, the one that had been caught in the rungs of the barstool. It was just enough of a twinge to make me yelp.
“What’s wrong?” Oliver asked.
“Caught my ankle in the bar stool when I fell,” I said. “It’s okay, I think.”
“Can you walk? We can head back to the gallery and I’ll give you a ride to Lisa’s.”
I nodded and we started walking. We talked about how the inpainting was going on the mural and the challenge Oliver was having as he wrote the text for it, since Anna Dale’s reasons for adding her oddities to the painting were unknown. I could barely concentrate on the conversation, though. Every time I put my weight on my right foot, I winced, and by the time we reached the corner, I could go no farther.
“Sorry,” I said, coming to a stop. I leaned against a lamppost, balancing on my left foot and right toe. “I don’t think I can make it to the gallery.”
He looked down as if he could see my ankle beneath the leg of my jeans. “Wait here and I’ll get my van.” He touched my bare arm. The softest, quickest of touches, yet it made my knees turn to mush and I held on to the lamppost to keep myself upright. And as I watched him break into a jog as he headed up the dark sidewalk toward the gallery, I felt the slightest twinge of danger. I’d given my heart to one man and look how that had turned out. Right now, I needed a friend more than a lover. I would have to keep that in mind.
Chapter 38
ANNA
February 13–17, 1940
Anna received a letter from the Section very quickly after she sent them the photographs of the cartoon. They seemed to be in as big a rush as she was. Mr. Rowan shared a few complaints about how fat one of her Tea Party ladies was (Miss Myrtle), and the too-slender build of her lumberman, as well as a few other minor things she could easily fix to his liking. She immediately set about trimming Miss Myrtle down and beefing Lumberman Frank up on the cartoon until she thought she’d reached perfection.
Along with the letter from Mr. Rowan came Anna’s second payment, which she took immediately to the bank. She loved looking in her little bankbook to see the money she’d earned all on her own. Fortunately, she made it in and out of the bank without bumping into Theresa’s father and bank president Riley Wayman. That had been a relief.
She spent most of the day carefully pricking the holes along the outline of her cartoon drawing with a dressmaker’s wheel she borrowed from Miss Myrtle, while Jesse and Peter watched in fascination until boredom set in and they resumed work on their own paintings. They had each painted twice over the canvases she’d given them, and she’d ordered them a couple more now that she had a little pocket money to spend. They would be able to start fresh once those canvases arrived, and keep the work they liked.
Once she’d finished with the dressmaker’s wheel, the boys helped her tack the cartoon over the canvas. Trying to get it square was a challenge, but the three of them finally succeeded. A few townspeople stopped by to see how things were coming along, including Mayor Sykes and Mr. Fiering from the cotton mill. Anna was excited and nervous; tomorrow she would pounce the design directly onto the canvas, and once that was done, she’d finally start painting. She felt as though she’d been in Edenton for a year rather than two and a half months. She couldn’t wait to see her design come to life.
The following day—and despite the date on the calendar—the weather was springlike and Anna and the boys opened three of the garage doors, the fourth being stuck beyond use. People seemed to have gotten the word and began showing up at the warehouse, parking cars and bicycles on the weedy earth next to the dirt road. They were shy at first, milling around outside the big garage doors, but once Anna welcomed them, they entered in a rush.
Anna had sewn a little cheesecloth bag and filled it with charcoal dust. She held it up in front of the cartoon and explained to her visitors what she was about to do with it. She was giving them a little art lesson, she thought, and she had her guests’ rapt attention. There were perhaps twelve or fifteen people in the warehouse, watching and listening. She recognized several of them. Miss Myrtle, of course, and one of her friends. A clerk from the market. A couple of men she didn’t know. The photographer from the paper. He stood front and center, his camera flashing in her face every few minutes.