I’ve thought of a new name I will use, and I plan to create a new future for myself. I hope Jesse is doing the same. If he is still out there, somewhere, somehow, someday, I will find him. I owe him my thanks. Perhaps I even owe him my life.
Chapter 59
MORGAN
August–3, 2018
What happened to Anna?
I read the journal cover to cover while sitting in the recliner in Jesse’s sunroom, and I closed the book after midnight with that question burning in my brain. Had she been able to safely escape from the Williams’s farm? And if she escaped, did the police ever catch up to her?
I felt emotionally drained after reading her story. Anna had felt real to me, increasingly so as I worked on the mural. Now, she felt like a friend. I needed to know what had become of her. I feared the ending couldn’t have been good. Had Jesse Williams known how Anna’s story ended? Had he wanted the mural front and center in the gallery as a tribute to his friend who had no longer been able to create art of her own?
I climbed into bed, the musty old journal on the nightstand next to me, but I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep. After lying there for more than an hour, I got up, pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, and quietly left the house, not wanting to awaken Lisa. I’d been secretive about the journal, not mentioning it to Lisa or even to Oliver. I’d needed to be the first to read it.
Edenton slept as I walked through the dark streets to the gallery, the journal clutched to my chest. It was my first long walk since I’d hurt my ankle, and I only started limping a bit as I neared the gallery. I punched in the security code and let myself into the building, turning on the foyer lights. The mural seemed to spring from the wall with the colors I’d help bring back to life. I pushed my chair away from in front of it. Dragged my paint table off to the side. Then I sat on the floor in the middle of the foyer, legs crossed, my hands on my bare knees where they poked through the holes in my jeans, and I began to cry for Anna, who had started the mural with such hope and joy and had ended it with fear and sorrow.
“Hey, Morgan. Wake up.”
I opened my eyes at the sound of Oliver’s voice. The mural was sideways in my vision and I realized I’d fallen asleep on the cool hard floor of the foyer. I pushed myself to a sitting position, blinking my eyes against the light.
“Have you been here all night?” Oliver squatted next to me. I saw concern in his face.
“Oh, Oliver!” I said, grabbing the journal from the floor. I held it out to him. “You have to read this! It’s Anna’s journal from when she was working on the mural!”
“What? You’re kidding.” He took the journal from my hand and got to his feet, then reached down to help me up. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
I told him about Saundra’s visit the evening before and how Anna had left the journal behind at the Williams farm.
“Wow,” he said, flipping through the pages. “What a gold mine of information this will give us.”
“Read it,” I said. “But it still doesn’t tell us what happened to her.”
“How does it end?” He flipped to the last page of the journal, and I put my hand on his to stop him.
“You have to read it from the beginning,” I said.
He smiled at me, his blue eyes clear as crystal, beautiful behind his glasses. “You love her, don’t you?” he said. “Anna Dale.”
I turned my face away from him, afraid I was going to cry again. “I feel really close to her.” I heard the huskiness in my voice. “You will, too, when you read this. She went through so much.”
He nodded, still smiling. “I think you were exactly the right person for this job.” He nodded toward the mural. “Somehow Jesse knew that.”
“How could he?” I asked. “He never even met me. If he heard about me from one of my teachers, he didn’t hear anything encouraging.”
“Maybe that’s how he knew you needed his help. You know how much he liked fixing people.” He set the journal on the table next to his computer. “Think about it, Morgan,” he said. “You came here scared and unsure of yourself, kind of angry, a little screwed up, feeling put upon, and—face it—not very interested in restoring this painting.” He nodded toward the mural again. “Not interested in restoration at all. Now you’re hooked, aren’t you? Hooked on Anna Dale. Hooked on the whole process. And you’ve done an awesome job.” He smiled. “The student has become the master.”
I felt the blush creeping up my neck to my cheeks. I didn’t buy that last compliment, but he was right about the rest of it. “Thank you,” I said. I looked past him to the journal. “I just wish we knew what happened to her.”
“What do you mean, what happened to her? How does the journal end?” He picked up the journal but I stopped him before he could begin flipping the pages again.
“From the beginning,” I said. “You have to understand what she went through.”
The sound of slamming car doors—most likely from Wyatt and Adam’s truck—echoed through the foyer. They were going to help Oliver with the installation of the art today, while I continued working on the mural. I should have spent the night painting instead of reading. I glanced at Oliver. “Gotta get to work,” I said, and I crossed the foyer to my paints and brushes and the strange mural I had come to love.
Chapter 60
August 3–4, 2018
I worked on the mural all that day and into the evening while the guys hung paintings throughout the gallery. Oliver had read the journal early that morning and whenever he passed through the foyer, he and I would speculate about what might have happened to Anna. It was an intellectual exercise for Oliver, I thought, but for me, it was something more. I found myself choking up as I inpainted the scratches on the little skull in the window of the Mill Village house, thinking of the confusion and anguish Anna had experienced as she painted it.
Lisa arrived at six thirty carrying two huge boxes of pizza, designed, I was sure, to keep us all working in the gallery without a good long dinner break—not that I’d planned to break for dinner anyway. Oliver took the boxes from Lisa and set them down on the folding table, and I swiveled in my seat to face them.
“Oliver and I have something mind-blowing to show you,” I said, paintbrush and palette still in my hands.
“What?” Lisa looked even more frazzled than usual. Her linen business suit was wrinkled and a lock of her hair was coming loose from the ponytail at the nape of her neck.
Oliver handed her the journal. “You need to read this,” he said.
I set down my brush and palette and got up from my chair to walk toward them. “Saundra brought it over,” I said, “along with these sketches of her family that she thought were Jesse’s.” I handed the sheaf of sketch paper to Lisa. “But they’re not Jesse’s,” I said. “They’re actually Anna Dale’s.”
“What?” Lisa asked. “Why would Saundra have anything of Anna Dale’s?”
“You have to read the journal,” Oliver said.
Lisa looked annoyed. She glanced at her phone. “You’ll just have to tell me what it says,” she said, setting down the journal and the portraits. “I don’t have time to read anything right now.”