Big Lies in a Small Town

by Diane Chamberlain

  “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.”

  “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 th
at 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.”

  “Oh, Oliver.” I suddenly thought I was going to cry. God, I was tired! “He’s so lucky to have you as his dad,” I said. “You’re so … tolerant and forgiving.”

  He gave me a rueful smile, barely visible in the dark. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I told him next year it’s Smith Mountain Lake with his old man, or I’ll disinherit him.”

  I smiled as he pulled the van into Lisa’s driveway.

  “Get a good night’s sleep,” he said, putting the van in park. “I’ll see you bright and early in the morning.”

  “Okay.” I leaned across the console to kiss him on the cheek. I felt his hand on my bare shoulder. Felt his fingers trail down my arm until they tightened—it was not my imagination—around my elbow. There was something more than friendship in that touch, and when I drew away, I didn’t reach for the door handle, hoping against hope that he’d kiss me and feeling too uncertain to take the lead myself. But he only smiled, touching my cheek with the back of his fingers. I wondered if he knew he was driving me crazy or if I was reading him all wrong and he wasn’t the least bit interested in me that way. Either way, by the time I got out of the van, I was almost dizzy with hunger for him.

  Starting up the long sidewalk to the front door, I stopped to look at the only lighted window in the house: Lisa’s second-story bedroom. She was usually in bed early, and I knew it was worry keeping her up.

  “Hey, Morgan?” Oliver called from his van window. “You all right?”

  I hadn’t realized he’d been waiting for me to get safely inside. I smiled, the warmth of his touch on my cheek still with me. I waved him on. Then I walked up the steps and into the house, heading for my dark sunroom and a very short night’s sleep.

  Chapter 61

  August 4, 2018

  Oliver sat at his folding table, slipping the various wall texts into their plastic frames, when I arrived at the gallery in the morning. I’d slept right through my alarm, but still managed to get there by seven thirty, eating a blueberry muffin along the way. I took out my earbuds to exchange a “hello” with him. I found it a little hard to hold his gaze this morning, remembering the subtle but undeniable—to me, anyway—shift in our relationship the night before. It hadn’t been much at all, just a light stroke down my arm, but it had electrified me and I was certain there’d been more than friendship behind it. You didn’t touch your friends that way.

  “I have something for you,” he said, setting down one of the wall texts.

  I walked over to his table. “What?” I asked, curious.

  He tore a piece of paper from the notepad on his table and held it out to me. “Emily Maxwell’s address and phone number,” he said.

  Stunned, I kept my hands by my sides. “You’re kidding.”

  He reached over to lift my hand, then pressed the paper into my palm. I lowered my gaze to it. Emily Maxwell, 5278 Kellerman Road, Apex, North Carolina. There was a phone number as well.

  “How did you get this?” I asked.

  “A friend who’s a state employee got it for me. She said it was easy.”

  “I don’t think I can…” My voice trailed off. I bit my lip and looked down at him. “Do you think I’m a coward?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I’m in a position to judge.” His expression was sober. “I don’t know how I’d feel in your shoes.” He nodded toward the slip of paper in my hand. “But now there’s nothing standing in your way if you decide you want to talk to her.”

  “Thank you,” I said, then gave him a weak smile. “I think.”

  I buried the paper in my jeans pocket and headed for my seat on the floor in front of the mural. The scrap of paper seemed to burn through the fabric of my jeans. I could feel it there. The paper might have had Emily’s address on it, but it didn’t tell me what I needed to know. How was she? How horrendously had we destroyed her life?

  I did my best to return my focus to my work. The gallery was utterly silent now that Adam and Wyatt had all the art installed. I knew they wouldn’t be in today, and I hoped they’d remember their promise to show up early tomorrow morning to get the mural stretched and hung. I would have to work all night to have it ready for them, but then my job would be over.

  Anyone else who looked at the mural this morning would probably think the restoration was complete, but in my eyes, that lower right-hand corner still screamed, “Finish me.” I had less than twenty-four hours to do so … and that was if I took no time out to eat or sleep.

  I mixed my paint, added it to my palette, and was once again working on the grass of the Mill Village when Lisa arrived.

  “Hi, you two,” she said. “Oliver, I’ve got to get to the office, but I just stopped in to let you know I contacted the Charlotte Observer about the mural and Anna Dale’s story. I’m hoping they’ll send a reporter and we can get some word of mouth going about the gallery.” She looked at her phone. “The caterer finally has his act together, as far as I can tell. But I owe the fact that we can open on Sunday to you two.”

  I turned to see Lisa looking directly at me, a mix of genuine gratitude and worry in her face. “It’ll be finished,” I said, assuring myself as much as I was her.

  “Get out of here, Lisa,” Oliver said. “Everything’s under control.”

  It was nearly noon when Oliver finished hanging all the wall texts. He walked over to where I was still inpainting blades of grass. Reaching toward me, he popped out one of my earbuds. “You’ve been sitting here for hours,” he s
aid, bending over to pry the brush from my stiff hand. I was too tired to offer much resistance. “I’ll take over while you stretch your legs. There’s food in the kitchen, and the art is on the walls. Go enjoy it. The rooms look pretty incredible now that they’re full.”

  My body seemed frozen in place in front of the mural. I looked up at him. Pointed to the brush in his hand. “That’s my job,” I said.

  “Do you mind if I help?”

  I thought about it. I was hot, tired, and hungry. Pointing to the color I’d mixed on my palette, I said, “This is what I’m using on the shaded area of the grass.”

  “Got it.” He held his free hand out to me and I rose stiffly to my feet. “Take half an hour,” he said. “Just chill.”

  In the kitchen, I wolfed down a rubbery piece of pizza I found in the refrigerator, then carried a Coke with me into the gallery. I was most interested in the work of the students Jesse had helped, financially or otherwise. I wished I could have had one of my paintings in the room with the other student art, but it didn’t really matter. The work I was proudest of would hang in the foyer, the first thing anyone would see when they walked into the gallery.

  Some sculptures were displayed here and there in the student room, but I was more drawn to the two-dimensional art. I moved from painting to painting, reading the wall texts Oliver had put together for each one. I stopped at the etching of a plane, a marvel in its detail. The wall text told me that Jesse had discovered the student artist when the boy was in middle school and living in foster care. Reading the texts next to each piece touched me. I could hear Oliver’s voice in them as he described the artist’s background and connection to Jesse, and for the hundredth time, I wondered why Jesse had zeroed in on me to help.

  I paid attention to my own feelings as I explored the student paintings, waiting for the yearning to paint—to create—to overwhelm me, but it didn’t. As a matter of fact, I felt a strange distance from the work in the room. I could appraise it, admire it, dissect it. But I didn’t envy the artists for being able to create it. I knew my professor had told me the truth when he said I wasn’t all that talented, and the reality was, while I loved art, I’d never truly loved creating it. It had frustrated me, never being able to translate what I could see so clearly in my mind to the canvas on my easel. I knew with a rush of surprise that what I had loved doing was restoring the mural. I pressed my fist to my mouth, nearly overcome by the realization. I’d spent so much of the last few weeks worrying about returning to prison or being angry with Trey or feeling guilty about Emily that I hadn’t let myself recognize the joy I felt in my work.