“The journal’s incredible, Lisa,” I said. “It explains all about the—”
“Not you.” Lisa waved a hand toward me. “You keep working. Oliver can tell me.”
“I can talk while I work.” I walked back to my seat in front of the mural, and Oliver and I told Lisa the whole story of Anna Dale in Edenton.
“My God,” Lisa said when we’d finished. By that time, she’d stopped looking at her phone every few seconds and was sitting in Oliver’s chair, leafing through the sketches. “I wonder what ever became of her?”
“Wish we knew,” Oliver said.
“Well,” she said, getting to her feet. “No point in wondering about it right now. We have bigger things to deal with at the moment.” She turned to Oliver. “Do you have all the … the write-ups about each piece ready to go?” she asked.
“They’re all ready to slip into their frames and get on the walls,” he said. “With the exception of Anna Dale’s, which I’ve rewritten three times already. She’s a moving target, you might say.”
I felt Lisa’s gaze burning into the back of my head. I kept my fingers moving, delivering the infinitesimal brushstrokes to the roof of one of the Mill Village houses.
“You know, Morgan,” Lisa said, crossing the room toward me. “I know you’ve done a meticulous job on this thing and I appreciate it, but I personally don’t care if you rush through the bit you have remaining. Who is ever going to look closely at all that grass and whatever else is down there in the corner?”
Facing the mural, I tightened my lips as I tried to pick my response. “I’ll be looking closely at it,” I said finally. “I have to do it right, Lisa. Don’t worry. I’ll have it done by Sunday morning.”
“Doesn’t it need to be stretched or something again?” Lisa touched the side of the mural where it was tacked onto the stretcher. “With staples instead of these tacks? How long is that going to take?”
Oliver spoke up. “If worse comes to worse, I’ll add something to the wall text saying the restoration was just completed and the mural will soon be—”
“No,” Lisa said. “Don’t put anything in writing about it not being absolutely finished. Andrea Fuller—my father’s executrix—will be here for the opening and I don’t want to give her any reason to say we haven’t met our requirements. You need to be finished by tomorrow night.” She looked down at me. “Just get it done,” she said.
“I will,” I promised.
How? I wondered, and I imagined that behind me, Oliver was wondering the same thing.
For the rest of the evening, I kept my earbuds in, tuning out the hammering from the other rooms. I focused only on the mural, working on the gray siding of one of the Mill Village houses. I felt panicky as I watched the minutes tick by on my phone. It was nearly ten o’clock. How was I going to finish this by the deadline? I was kicking myself for every minute I’d relaxed or eaten lunch or gone to bed early over the last few weeks … any minute when I could have been working. I was close to the end—so close—and yet I didn’t think I could meet the deadline even if I worked twenty-four-seven for the next two nights. I suddenly understood Anna’s desire to have the cot in the warehouse.
My music wasn’t calming me down, either. The next time Oliver passed through the foyer I called him over.
“I’m in panic mode,” I said from my seat on the floor. I detached my earbuds from my phone and handed it to him. “Add a playlist of your calming old-people music for me, please.”
It took him a minute to understand what I was asking. Then he laughed, and took my phone from my hand.
“Listen,” he said as he tapped the screen on my phone. “I talked to Wyatt and Adam. They’re willing to come in at six A.M. Sunday morning and staple the mural to the stretcher and hang it then. That gives you some extra time. You’ll be dragging at the gallery opening, but you’ll have it done.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I wondered if I could finish it even with those few extra hours.
“Don’t cave in to Lisa,” he said. “You have integrity. You won’t be happy with yourself if you rush through this last section.” He motioned toward the grassy corner of the mural.
I swallowed hard, suddenly emotional over his compliment, but it was more than that. “I don’t want Lisa to lose her house,” I said, my voice a whisper. I thought of Lisa’s attachment to her mother’s garden in the front yard. The handprints on the sidewalk. The height chart in the pantry. “I feel like it’ll be my fault.”
“It won’t be your fault. It’s not fair she laid that on you. Just do the best you can. It’s all anyone can ask.” He squeezed my shoulder lightly as he handed my phone back to me, and in a few minutes, I felt a bit of the tension leave my body as I listened to that Mary Travers woman—the one Oliver said I looked like—sing about leaving on a jet plane.
You have integrity. I thought that might have been the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. The words ran through my mind as I finished the siding on the house and began working on the sea of grass in the lower right-hand corner of the mural. I was getting closer and closer to Anna Dale’s signature, which I would save for last. It was going to feel so good to work on those rounded gold-hued letters in the handwriting that was now as familiar to me as my own.
Shortly after midnight, I pulled out my earbuds to listen. Everything was still. The hammering had stopped in the back rooms. I heard truck doors slam outside and knew Adam and Wyatt had left the gallery through the rear door. In another minute, Oliver walked into the foyer.
“Time to go home,” he said to me.
“I’m going to keep working.”
He looked from me to the mural. “It’s late. You’re exhausted. Come on. You can come back early in the morning.” He nodded toward the front door of the foyer. “I’ll drive you back to Lisa’s.”
“I need the time,” I said.
“You’ll only start screwing it up if you keep at it tonight.”
I looked at the grass of the Mill Village. It was nothing more than a blur of green to my exhausted eyes. He was right.
“Okay,” I said.
He waited while I cleaned my brushes. Then we walked out to his van side by side.
“Had a long talk with my son today,” he said, once we were on the road.
“About Smith Mountain Lake versus Disney World?”
He hesitated. “More about ‘Dad versus John, his stepdad,’” he said, turning onto Broad Street. “It was pretty deep. He told me he feels guilty because he realized he loves John.”
I reached over to touch his arm. I felt a tenderness toward him as well as sympathy for Nathan. “What did you say?” I asked.
“I told him he never has to feel guilty about loving someone.”
I smiled to myself. “Great answer,” I said. “Was it hard to hear, though? That he loves John?”
“Yes and no.” He glanced at me as he made the turn onto Lisa’s street. “For obvious reasons. I wish I could be his only father figure, but I want my kid to be happy. The more good people he has in his life, the better.”