Chapter 65
August 5, 2018
The gallery opening was scheduled for noon, and I intentionally took my time getting ready, aiming to be there no earlier than eleven. If Adam and Wyatt hadn’t shown up at six A.M. as promised, and the mural was still resting on the foyer floor, I didn’t want to know. I sped up as I walked toward the gallery, though, checking my phone with every other step. If there was a problem, surely I would have heard. So far, not a single text this morning.
Even though I’d dropped exhausted into bed at three thirty that morning, it had taken me a while to fall asleep. That last-minute surprise from Oliver? Wow. It felt real, everything he’d said. It felt genuine and it felt right. And that kiss! I smiled to myself, remembering, and a woman walking toward me on the sidewalk smiled back.
“’Morning,” I said as I passed her, and then I laughed. And despite the fact that I was wearing a dress and heels for the first time in well over a year, I ran the last block to the gallery.
Although Lisa’s sedan and Oliver’s van were parked in the small lot, and the catering company’s van was parked at the curb, I found myself alone when I walked into the foyer. Winded from the run, I stood in the middle of the room and saw that the information counter, laden with brochures, had been moved into place, and above it, stapled imperceptibly to the stretcher and high on the wall, hung the mural.
Damn, I thought. That is one beautiful, crazy painting!
The lump in my throat surprised me. I loved the painting in front of me. I loved all I’d done to return it to the intriguing composition Anna Dale had intended.
“It’s beautiful!” I yelled into the echoey air of the gallery, and soon Lisa and Oliver joined me in the foyer, along with a young guy from the catering company. To my surprise, Lisa gave me a hug—and not a baby, half-assed hug, either. She held me a long time, wrapping me in the scent of jasmine.
“Thank you,” she said, drawing away, yet still holding me by the shoulders and looking intently into my eyes. “You saved my house. I know I’ve been a bitch to deal with.” Her smile was rueful. “But I’m very, very grateful to you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, although I thought Lisa had it backward. Lisa had saved me, whether she’d meant to or not, and in more ways than one.
I saw Oliver leaning against the wall by the wall text, arms folded across his chest, a smile on his face, looking sexy as hell in a black shirt open at the collar, and I wondered how I could have ever thought of him as anything but.
“Dynamite job, Morgan,” he said.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said, remembering his help the night before, and he winked.
Lisa looked at the catering guy. “Are we squared away now?” she asked. I heard sounds coming from the small kitchen and guessed the servers were setting up for the opening.
“Good to go,” the man said. He looked at me. “You paint that?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the mural.
“I restored it,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means she brought it back to life,” Oliver said.
The man looked at the mural again, then gave me a confused-looking smile. “Cool,” he said. He headed for the foyer door, speaking to Lisa over his shoulder as he left. “I’ll be back to pick up the servers at five,” he said.
“Fine.” Lisa was already looking past him to the gallery’s first visitor: Andrea Fuller.
Andrea stopped in her tracks in the middle of the foyer. “Well,” she said, “that certainly looks different than the last time I saw it.” She looked at me, and I was afraid she might ask if I’d done the work entirely by myself. Did I have to admit to Oliver’s contribution to point one percent of the mural? But Andrea just smiled.
“Nice job, Morgan,” she said. She walked toward the side wall where Anna’s original sketch was displayed along with the “before” photograph of the mural and Oliver’s wall text about Anna Dale. She glanced from the photograph to the mural. “Unbelievable job, actually,” she said. Then she turned to Lisa. “You all set for the grand opening?”
“We are.” Lisa smiled broadly, and I knew she was letting out her breath in relief at Andrea’s response to the mural. Lisa was home free. “Let me show you around,” she said.
The two women started down the curved hallway and Oliver looked at me. “How’re you doing this morning?” he asked.
I looked again at the mural. It filled the entire foyer with color. “I think,” I said, returning my gaze to Oliver, “that I want to be an art restorer.”
He smiled. “And I think that’s an excellent idea,” he said. “Lots of schooling ahead of you, though.”
“That’s better than lots of jail time.”
He laughed and held an arm toward me. “Come here,” he said.
I walked over to him and he wrapped me in a hug. “You okay after last night?” He spoke quietly into my ear.
I knew what he meant. His loving words in the van. The kiss.
“I don’t know.” I pulled away with a smile. “I was really enjoying the whole ‘big brother’ thing.”
“This’ll be even better,” he said, a serious expression on his face now. “I promise.”
The front door opened and two women walked into the foyer, dressed in their Sunday clothes. “We’re your Art Guild volunteers, ready to man the information desk,” one of them said.
“Perfect,” said Oliver, letting go of me. “Let me show you around.”
It was an extraordinary day. People came from as far away as Asheville and Washington, D.C., and the reporter from the Charlotte Observer stayed for two hours. She interviewed me about the mural, and toward the end of our talk, she pointed to my alcohol monitor and said, “Interesting ankle jewelry.”
I told her the truth, all of it, while she scribbled her notes, and I had the feeling the whole tone of the article she would write changed in that moment.
The only negative of the day was that by five o’clock, my feet were killing me and my ankle let me know that my sprain was not completely healed. Shortly after five, once the last guests had left and the servers were cleaning up, I found Lisa sitting on the steps of the gallery’s small back porch, teary with happiness, or perhaps with relief. I sat down next to her and put a tentative arm around her shoulders. We sat in silence in the hot, sticky August air as Lisa blotted her eyes with her fingertips. Finally, she spoke.
“You don’t need to move out any time soon,” she said. “I think you have something cooking with Oliver, and I’m guessing you don’t have any place to go. Am I right?”
“Yes and yes,” I said, dropping my arm from her shoulders. “And I’d really like to stay for a while. Thanks.”
“You’ll have to find a job,” she said, sounding more like herself. “No freeloading.”
I smiled. “I’ll start looking right away,” I promised, though I had no idea what sort of job I could find in this little town. I’d do anything to be able to stay while I figured out what I’d do about school, though. “I think I want to go back to college,” I said.