He hesitated, looking thoughtful, then nodded again. “I’ll make some calls,” he said. He picked up a pencil from his desk but did nothing with it other than tap it on his blotter. “There’s somethin’ you should know,” he said, eyeing her from beneath those unruly brows.
“Yes?”
“An Edenton artist by the name Martin Drapple—a fella everyone knows—he was born and raised here, as was his daddy. Anyway, he also sent in a sketch to the Forty-eight-States Contest. Understand?” He looked at her to see if she was following him. She was. “No one will think it’s very fair some young girl from New Jersey won when Martin has lived here his whole life, right?” he said. “Martin’s a fine artist, too. Near everyone has a Martin Drapple painting hangin’ somewhere in their house. Everyone expected him to win.” He let out a small chuckle. “’Specially him,” he added.
“Oh.” She had no idea what to do with this information. What was she going to be up against in this town? If everyone in Edenton had one of this man’s paintings, though, he most likely didn’t need the income from the mural. It sounded as though he had plenty of work to do. Anna, on the other hand, would be flat broke if not for the small amount of money her mother had left her. “Well,” she said, “the judges didn’t know he was from Edenton or that I was from New Jersey.” She wanted to sound strong without being argumentative. “They judged the entries on the merits of the design.”
“Yes, I do understand that,” Mr. Arndt said. “I only worry that it’s goin’ to put you in an awkward position and I wanted to give you fair warnin’, right?” He got to his feet in a signal that the meeting was over. “It just doesn’t seem fair to Martin.”
He stopped talking and she wondered if he expected her to resign right then and there and turn the assignment over to this Martin Drapple fellow. “Perhaps not,” she said, getting to her feet. “But the decision wasn’t mine to make.”
“No, I know that, and if the gov’ment says you’re our mural artist, why then I can promise you we’ll do our level best to cooperate with you.”
She thanked him, then left the post office and began walking back to the hotel, playing the meeting with Mr. Arndt over and over in her mind. She’d started the day with a sense of promise and optimism. After meeting the postmaster, she was not so sure. By the time she reached her hotel, though, she had her confidence back. She would do a stellar job on the mural and ignore any petty concerns about her being a female, or a Yankee, or any of the other complaints they might have against her. She would give this little town nothing to complain about.
Chapter 5
MORGAN
June 13, 2018
I hadn’t really noticed the town when we drove through it earlier, but now, on the drive with Lisa to the gallery, I took it in. In front of a sunny, clean, touristy-looking waterfront, Lisa made a right turn onto Broad Street and drove past one shop after another in a small, picturesque downtown. The buildings looked old, some of them beautiful and unique, and all well maintained. This was not a dying downtown, like so many others, I thought. There was even an old-timey-looking movie theater with its name, “Taylor,” in a playful script above the roof, but no movie titles were on the marquee.
“Is that building still a theater?” I asked, pointing toward it.
“Under renovation,” Lisa said. “It’s supposed to reopen in a few weeks.”
I continued observing the stores as we drove past. “Is there a computer store here?” I asked doubtfully. This wasn’t big-box territory. “And a phone store?”
Lisa took her eyes from the road to glance at the shops we passed. “You can get a phone here, but you’ll have to order your computer online,” she said.
“Okay.” I hadn’t felt a cell phone in my hand in over a year. It would be so good to reconnect to the world, although to be honest, I wasn’t sure who I’d connect with. I’d have nothing in common with my old friends now. And I sure wasn’t going to call Trey. He’d be done with his first year of law school at Georgetown. Anger bubbled up inside me and I shook my head as if I could tamp it down that way. It was probably just as well I wouldn’t be living near anyone from my old life.
“I know you’re not allowed to have a driver’s license while you’re on parole,” Lisa said, “so you’ll either have to walk to the gallery—it’s less than a mile—or ride with me when I go in.” She made a couple of turns, then pulled into a small unpaved parking lot next to an unpainted, unshingled contemporary structure, totally out of place to my eyes after riding through blocks of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses and churches.
“This is the gallery?” I asked.
“It is indeed.” Lisa turned off the ignition. “My father had to fight to build it here, even though it’s outside the historic district where there are rules about what you can and can’t build. You can see it doesn’t fit in.” She chuckled, the first time I’d heard any true levity in her voice. “Or rather,” Lisa added, “you can see it stands out, which I’m sure was his intent. You can also see it needs a hell of a lot of work before August fifth.”
We got out of the car and walked to the huge glass front door, which stood wide open, a fact that apparently annoyed Lisa.
“We just got the place air-conditioned,” she said. “The guys aren’t used to shutting this door yet.”
We stepped into a large, bare, high-ceilinged room. One wall was almost entirely made of glass, and the building smelled of wood and paint. The other walls were white, and a silvery-gray tiled floor was in place, but the spacious room was otherwise empty.
“This will be the foyer, obviously,” Lisa said. “I had my guys hang the drywall and paint in here first thing because this is where you’ll be working and I don’t want them disturbing you once you start.” She motioned to the area in front of us. “There’ll be a counter here with information about the gallery, and volunteers will take turns manning it. And this”—she swept her arm through the air to take in the wall above the nonexistent counter—“this is where my father wants the mural.”
“Wow, that’s a big space,” I said. “How big is the mural?”
“Twelve feet by six, I believe.” Lisa looked toward the corner of the room behind us, and for the first time I noticed an enormous roll of canvas standing upright, the only thing in the otherwise empty room. “That’s it,” Lisa said, walking toward it. “I had the guys pull it out of the studio closet and haul it over here last week, but I didn’t want them to unroll it before you were here.”
I followed her across the tiled floor until we stood next to the broad, towering roll. “I’m five seven,” Lisa said, “so what do you think?”
I looked toward the top of the roll, which reached a good two feet above Lisa’s head. “Eight feet, at least,” I said. The outside of the roll was covered in muslin. I pulled away a piece of the fabric to find the unpainted border of the canvas beneath it. I touched the canvas, gingerly, afraid it might disintegrate beneath my fingertips and steal my job and my freedom from me before I even began, but the canvas felt firm to my touch.