In her room, she shut the door, then leaned her back against it.
You took a life, a voice accused her.
He was a beast, another voice answered.
“Stop!” she pleaded out loud, then whispered, “Please stop. Please please please. He was going to kill me!”
She crawled into her bed, still fully clothed, face unwashed, teeth unbrushed. She hugged her arms around her body. She ached all over. She had bruises on her arms, her shoulders, her throat. The inside of her thighs were turning black with them. She was so sore between her legs. Torn up. She knew her body would heal. Her mind, her heart, her soul, though—she wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 49
MORGAN
July 20, 2018
Oliver pointed to the wall adjacent to the mural. “I think we should hang Anna’s original sketch there,” he said. “That’s where I envision the wall text for the mural, so the sketch will be a cool addition. What do you think?”
I liked knowing that Oliver valued my opinion. “I think that’s perfect,” I said. “What are you going to say in the wall text?
He shrugged. “I think we admit that we don’t understand why Anna Dale added the objects and—as Lisa suggested—we invite the viewer to examine both the sketch and the mural and draw his or her own conclusions,” he said. “Then a biographical text will tell what we know—or rather, what we don’t know—about the reclusive artist.”
“‘Reclusive’ isn’t really the right word, though, is it?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t know if she was a recluse. We don’t even know if she was crazy. We only know that she did some things we don’t understand. Maybe ‘mysterious’ is a better word.” I looked at Oliver to see an amused expression on his face.
“You trying to take over my job?” he teased.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I have enough on my plate already. And I need to get back to work.”
“Me, too,” he said. “But first”—he pulled his phone from his pocket and held it out to me—“let’s exchange music for half an hour.”
I looked at his phone as if he’d lost his mind.
“C’mon,” he said. “You said I need to listen to Nathan’s music. Just thirty minutes. It’s an experiment.”
I smiled, then pulled my phone from my pocket and handed it over. I attached my earbuds to his phone as he did the same with mine. I slipped the earbuds into my ears. A guy was singing something mellow. Very mellow.
“This might put me to sleep,” I said. I watched Oliver wince at whatever it was he heard on my Spotify playlist. I laughed.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Same to you.”
He walked back to his table and I returned my attention to the mural and the delicate, half-missing eyelashes of one of the Tea Party ladies. Some of Oliver’s music was pretty, actually. I had to admit it. But it would never keep me awake for long.
When twenty-five minutes had passed, I turned to look at Oliver. He appeared to be deep in concentration, studying something on his computer, but his head was gently bopping to a beat I couldn’t hear. I laughed.
“Rock it, homeboy!” I called across the room, loud enough for him to hear.
He looked up and gave me a sheepish smile that made him look boyishly handsome. Pulling my phone from his pocket, he stood up and walked across the foyer to me and we exchanged phones again.
“Pretty music,” I said, “but a little too tame for my taste.” I nodded toward my phone. “And what did you think?”
“I get the attraction,” he said. “The beat. The rhythm. The … um … power in it. And some of the women—their lyrics are moving. But I couldn’t take a steady diet of it the way you and Nathan can.”
“We’ll have to toughen you up,” I teased.
Lisa suddenly walked into the room from the hall. “What are you two doing, just standing here shooting the breeze?” She gestured toward the mural. She sounded more tired than angry. “C’mon, Morgan,” she said. “Start slapping some paint on those bare spots.”
“We were just discussing the wall text,” Oliver said smoothly.
“Crazy white woman painted ridiculous mural,” Lisa said. “What more do you need?”
Oliver laughed, but I could tell something was going on with Lisa. Her eyes were red, the way they’d been the day I caught her crying in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She sighed. Folded her arms across her chest, tightly, as if she were hugging herself. “Mama Nelle died during the night,” she said.
“Oh, no!” I filled with sudden guilt, wondering if bringing Mama Nelle to the gallery, taxing her and her fading memory with my questions … I wondered if it had all been too much for the old woman.
“I’m sorry, Lisa,” Oliver said.
“Me, too,” I said. “I really liked her. And she seemed to know Anna well. She was probably the last person who did.” I looked at the mural without really seeing it. “I felt like we really connected,” I said.
Lisa studied me curiously. Lowered her arms from across her chest. “The funeral’s Monday,” she said, turning toward the hallway again. “Make some good progress here and you can go with me to pay your respects.”
Chapter 50
ANNA
March 28–29, 1940
That morning’s Chowan Herald reported that Martin Drapple had gone missing, although there’d been plenty of gossip of his disappearance for nearly a week now. The rumors were that he had marital troubles and money troubles and was deeply depressed over not winning the mural contest. A woman—a friend of his wife’s, perhaps—had come to the warehouse to tell Anna that his depression was her fault.
“Martin’s a local artist who knows this town like the back of his hand, dear,” the woman said, in that kindly Southern voice that could mask daggers. “As soon as you learned that he’d also entered the contest, perhaps you should have gracefully withdrawn and turned the painting of the mural over to him.”
Anna wished she had done exactly that. She wished she’d never set foot in Edenton.
Maybe Martin killed himself, people speculated. Or maybe he ran off with another woman. Most likely, the majority seemed to think, he was simply taking some time alone to nurse his emotional wounds. Sometimes, Anna thought that, too. Oh, Martin Drapple is simply away on a trip, she fantasized. She frightened herself when she imagined such things. Was she losing her mind? She’d see the red stain on the floor of the warehouse and think, Oh, I remember the day I dropped the can of paint. How clumsy of me!
“You gonna need to buck up, Anna,” Jesse told her later that morning as she stood helplessly in front of the mural, useless brush in her hand. He’d been doing some of the painting for her this week, always the background, leaving the more intricate work for her. But most days, she’d simply sit on one of the chairs and turn her head away from the mural.
“It makes me sick to look at,” she told him.
The cot and its telltale stain were gone. Jesse had gotten rid of them and Anna didn’t ask what he’d done with them. She didn’t care. All that remained of that night in the warehouse was the revolting splash of red paint on the floor. Bile rose in her throat every time she saw it. Guilt and anger took turns toying with her and there was rarely a moment that she wasn’t suffering from one or the other. She barely slept, and when she did, she had frightening nightmares that left her confused about what was real and what was not. When she remembered what was real, she would break down sobbing whether she was alone in her room at Miss Myrtle’s or in an aisle of the pharmacy or sitting numbly in the warehouse.