Big Lies in a Small Town (ARC)

by Diane Chamberlain

  Over dinner, the three of them told Anna more about everyone she’d met in town, cutting through outside appearances to the real people inside. Mr. Arndt was as good and kind as he appeared, they said. Mr. Fiering at the cotton mill liked to dress in ladies’ undies, Pauline added.

  “How on earth would you know that?” Anna laughed.

  “Just a nasty rumor,” Karl said, with a grin that belied his words.

  “Mayor Sykes is a blustering fool, but he gets the job done,” Miss Myrtle said. Pauline made a disparaging sound with her tongue. “His wife covers up bruises and everyone knows he has a lady friend on the side.”

  “Pauline!” scolded her mother. “No one knows that for sure at all.”

  Anna thought she might have been right to feel uncomfortable with the mayor in the warehouse. She would keep her distance from him from now on.

  Once dinner was over and the kitchen clean, Anna mustered up her courage to show Miss Myrtle, Pauline, and Karl her sketch. She’d sent the original sketch to the section the week before, but she’d created an identical painting to work from when she was ready to start the cartoon—assuming of course, that the Section gave her the go-ahead. The cartoon paper she’d ordered had already arrived and she hoped she’d have the chance to use it.

  “You’re so talented!” Pauline actually gasped, as though she hadn’t expected Anna to be so skilled.

  “Very impressive,” Karl said.

  “I told you,” Miss Myrtle chided them. “She’s a genuine artist, our Anna.” Our Anna. The words touched her. Made her eyes sting.

  “I was worried about making the Tea Party the main subject,” she said, “but—”

  “Oh, it must be the main subject!” Pauline said. “Of course it has to be.”

  “Look at how well she drew the women’s faces,” Miss Myrtle said.

  “They’ll be better when I can work from models,” Anna said. She personally thought the dresses were the most beautiful part of the painting. So colorful, and she thought she had a penchant for painting fabric that looked so realistic you wanted to run your fingers over it. In the lower right-hand corner, she’d painted a line of homes from the Cotton Mill Village, with the mill itself behind them, and the wispy cotton caught in the branches of the trees. On the upper right-hand side, she’d sketched a colored woman holding up her apron full of peanuts. On the upper left, a fishing boat, the fishermen quite indistinct as they hauled in nets of herring. And in the lower left-hand corner stood a lumberman, ax in hand, green trees behind him.

  “The peanut lady is my favorite,” Karl said.

  “Well, I like the handsome lumberjack,” Pauline teased him.

  Karl didn’t rise to her bait. “It’s all quite wonderful, Anna,” he said instead. “That is the bottom line.”

  Anna glowed. She could imagine the final painting filling the post office wall.

  “When you go to Norfolk to pick up your supplies,” Pauline said, “I’d be happy to go with you, if you’d like some company.”

  “That would be lovely,” Anna said, pleased by the offer. It had been a long time since she’d had a girlfriend to chat with.

  They finished the evening with tea and slices of fruitcake that Freda had made, and as they ate together, Anna felt contentment wash over her. Such a rare emotion for her these days. She would be on pins and needles for the next couple of weeks as she waited to hear from the Section, but for tonight, she would bask in the joy of having new friends, a lovely place to live, and the sense of accomplishment that came with knowing she’d created something “quite wonderful.”

  Chapter 17

  MORGAN

  June 16, 2018

  At Oliver’s direction and with some help from Wyatt, I hung lengths of twine both horizontally and vertically across the stretcher to divide the mural into roughly seventy-two square-foot segments. “So you’ll know where you cleaned,” Oliver said. I balanced on a ladder and started in the upper left-hand corner using the cotton-wrapped dowel Wyatt had whittled to a point for me. “If you come to any flaking, clean around it and mark where it is,” Oliver added. “Take your time.”

  Time, I thought. The one thing I didn’t have.

  From the other rooms of the gallery came the sounds of hammering and buzzing saws, and I put in my earbuds, turned my phone to the Spotify Top Hits playlist, and lost myself in the music as I worked. People didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to be able to listen to music any time they wanted. I felt nearly overcome by the thought. People didn’t appreciate their freedom, that was all there was to it. I was never going back in that hellhole.

  Cleaning the paint with the cotton-wrapped dowel was slow going, but I discovered I liked the work. Nodding my head to the music in my ears, I cleaned the squares, inch by inch. I was cautious not to disturb any paint that might be loose, and I could instantly see the difference I was making. When I finished the first square, I climbed down the ladder, my shoulders already aching, and was stunned to look up and see the vibrancy I’d revealed, despite the fact that there wasn’t much going on in that corner of the painting. The ship Anna had painted there was still covered with grime, but the sky above it was now a pretty—though mildly abraded in spots—gray-blue. I smiled to myself. When was the last time I’d felt satisfaction in something I’d done? When was the last time I’d felt that shudder of genuine joy? Crazy that one square foot of a clean painting could make me feel that way. Then my gaze traveled to the grungy seventy-one square feet I had left to clean and I groaned, rubbing my shoulder. This would take me forever, and it was only the first step in the restoration. I would have to pick up the pace.

  I didn’t eat lunch with Adam and Wyatt and the other construction workers on the front lawn, despite their invitation to join them. I wasn’t ready to make idle conversation with anyone—did I still know how? I noticed Oliver didn’t eat with them, either. He stayed in his office, the door closed. So I walked to a nearby café called Nothing Fancy, savoring the music of Post Malone and Maroon 5 in my ears. I ordered a takeout chicken-salad sandwich and sat on a bench outside to eat it. I thought about the AA meeting I’d attended the night before. It had felt strange, being at an AA meeting with a group of nonprisoners, not to mention being in a meeting with mostly men. I hadn’t shared. Hadn’t uttered a word except when I asked the guy leading the meeting if he’d sign the form proving I’d attended. I was done with drinking, and listening to everyone’s sad stories only irritated me. I hadn’t had a drink in fourteen months. Even without the monitor on my ankle, I knew I was finished with it.

  By four o’clock, I’d cleaned twelve of the squares and my work had given definition to part of a fishing vessel in the upper left of the painting as well as to the right arm of the hunky blond guy in the lower portion. Slowly, I came to realize the man was not holding a length of wood as I’d originally thought, but rather an ax, and something was dripping from the blade. Sap? I gently moved my cotton-tipped dowel over the lowest corner of the blade and gasped. The glistening drops were bright red. They could only represent one thing: blood. I stood back from the mural, clutching the dowel in my hand. Only a third of the man’s face had been cleaned and the paint was partly abraded, but I could see that he smiled. That he was handsome. That he seemed completely oblivious to the blood dripping from his ax. I felt a little sick. I thought of the newspaper image of Anna Dale. What had gone on in that strange head of hers?

  I was dying to show what I’d uncovered to Oliver, but he was shopping for supplies, so I continued working. An hour later, I realized that I was no longer hearing the background sounds of hammers and saws and the pop of nail guns. I pulled out my earbuds and could tell that the guys were finishing up in the rear of the gallery. I would keep going, though. I had plenty more to do and nothing waiting for me back at Lisa’s.

  Wyatt came into the foyer as I wound a fresh piece of cotton on the pointed end of the dowel. His dreadlocks were loose now, hanging long over his shoulders.

  “Damn, girl, that�
��s rad,” he said, checking out the cleaned portion of the mural. “I had no clue that thing was so trashed.”

  I felt myself beam. “Totally changes it,” I said.

  His grin turned to a frown and he moved nearer to the painting. “Is that blood on his ax?”

  I nodded. “I think our artist was a little whacked.”

  “Ya think?” he said, then looked at me. “We’re all goin’ over to Waterman’s for a drink. Come with us?”

  Oh, hell no, I thought. I could imagine the seductive smell of the place. The beer cold and foamy in tall glasses. Watching everybody drink while I nursed a Coke. Not a good idea.

  “I can’t,” I said. A guy at the AA meeting had talked about focusing on his accounting business to keep from drinking. “I’m going to do some more work here.”

  “All work and no play…” Wyatt teased.

  “I know.” I smiled. “Have a good time.”

  Another half hour passed before Oliver walked into the gallery, a soft leather briefcase in his hand. He stopped in the middle of the foyer to look at what I’d accomplished.

  “That … is … awesome,” he said, loudly enough for me to hear with my earbuds in. “What do you think?”

  I pulled out my earbuds. “I think I need to find a massage place,” I said with a laugh.

  “You deserve it,” he said. “Seriously, great work today. Have you found any flaking paint?”

  “I found something much more interesting than flaking paint.”

  I moved the ladder aside to give him a clear view of the lumberjack’s ax blade, and I watched Oliver’s smile fade.

  “Is that…?” He set down his briefcase and moved closer to the mural, studying the drops of blood. He turned to look at me. “What the hell?” he asked.

  “I know. I thought it was tree sap or something when I first saw it, but once I cleaned it off, I realized what it was.”

  “This makes no sense at all,” he said, hands on his hips as he stared at the painting. He was close enough that I was suddenly aware of his scent. Leather? Although the only leather in the entire foyer was in his briefcase yards away from us. It was a good scent—a delicious, heady scent, actually—and for a moment I had trouble remembering what we were talking about as I breathed him in. “Blood and a motorcycle,” he said, bringing my attention back to the mural.

  “This must have to do with why Jesse told Lisa the artist went crazy,” I said.

  Oliver nodded. “Well, it explains why they never installed it in the post office, that’s for sure.” He pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and checked the time. “I just stopped in to see how you’re doing before I head home with a night full of work.” He nodded toward the briefcase behind us. “You ready to call it quits for the day?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Heading toward the front door, he bent over to pick up his briefcase before looking back at me. “You’ll lock up when you leave?”

  “I will.” Lisa had given me a key to the gallery that morning.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” he said.

  He left the gallery and I popped my earbuds back in, surprised by the sudden feeling of loneliness that slipped over me as I climbed the ladder again. Everyone was getting on with their lives this evening and I had no life to get on with. It would be worse if I went back to Lisa’s, though. I’d get on Instagram. I’d check out what Trey and my old friends were doing right now. I’d search for Emily Maxwell and stew in my guilt. Better to lose myself in the mural. I was curious to see if Anna Dale had left any other surprises for me to find.

  I’d cleaned three more squares when I heard someone call my name from behind me. I turned to see Rebecca Sanders standing there, arms folded across her chest, an actual smile on her face. I guessed this was one of those surprise visits she’d warned me about. Thank God I hadn’t gone to the bar with the guys! I climbed down the ladder.

  “So this is where you work,” Rebecca said. She pointed to the mural. “Are you cleaning that painting?” she asked. “That’s quite a difference.”

  “Yes.” I set the dowel on one of the steps of the ladder and wiped my damp hands on my jeans. I motioned to the cleaned portion of the mural. “It’s taken me all day to do this much.” I didn’t think Rebecca was into art. She noticed clean and she noticed dirty, but she seemed disinterested in the images on the mural.

  “I went to the address where you’re staying but the woman there—Lisa Williams?—told me you were probably still at work, so I’m glad to find you here.”

  I nodded, glad she had found me there as well. “Everyone went out drinking, but I thought I should stay here.” I winced. I sounded as though I expected a medal for not going with the guys.

  “Have you made it to a meeting yet?”

  “Last night. I have the signed paper but it’s at Lisa’s.”

  “Mail it to me,” Rebecca said. “You have the address on my card.”

  “Okay.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. “It must have been hard, saying no to going out for drinks with your coworkers,” Rebecca said finally.

  I shrugged. “Not really.” I didn’t want to get sucked into counselor talk. I didn’t want to give Rebecca any more power over me than she already had.

  “You’re doing well so far, Morgan,” Rebecca said.

  I nodded. “I’m okay.”

  “What’s been hardest for you?”

  I remembered my visit to Instagram. Seeing everyone moving on with their lives. Feeling alone. “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Come on,” Rebecca said. “I’m here to help. I’m on your side.”

  “Nothing. Really. I’m happy to be out and I have plenty of work to keep me busy and everything’s cool.”

  Rebecca looked doubtful, but she finally nodded. “What’ll you do when you leave here tonight?”

  “Go back to Lisa’s. Go to bed. Sleep. Come back here in the morning and start all over again.”

  Rebecca hesitated as though there were something more she wanted to say, but she simply nodded toward the mural. “All right, then,” she said. “Keep up the good work.”

  Rebecca left and I stood in the middle of the foyer trying to decide what to do. Work or go back to Lisa’s? Rebecca had disrupted my flow. I carried the container of water and the cotton-wrapped dowel to the small kitchenette at the rear of the building. Opening the cupboard beneath the sink to throw away the cotton, I was greeted by the yeasty smell of beer from a few crushed cans in the recycling bin. One or more of the guys were drinking on the job, I guessed. The scent took me back to my party days at UNC, only a little more than a year ago, a year that felt like a lifetime. I suddenly yearned for something I couldn’t name. Not the beer. Not my old friends. Trey? The perfect Trey I’d thought him to be? Maybe. But I knew it was something bigger that I longed for. My innocence, maybe. I wasn’t sure, but I stood in the small kitchen, my hands across my chest in a sad little hug. Whatever it was I wanted, I knew I could never get it back. I thought again of Emily Maxwell and imagined that she, too, yearned for her life before the accident. Before so much had been stolen from her. Oh God, how I hated thinking about her! Surprising tears burned my eyes and I was suddenly back in my car on that hideous night, remembering what we’d done to her. Yes, we, because even though Trey had been driving, it could just as easily have been me behind the wheel. It could have been me who T-boned Emily’s little Nissan at that dark, wet intersection. I’d been as toasted as Trey when we left the party and it was only at the last second that I turned my keys over to him. I would always remember the awful moment when I realized what we’d done, the sickening image of the totaled car in front of us, its headlights still piercing the darkness, the deafening, continuous sound of the car horn that filled the air after the crunch of steel against steel. The instant sobriety. Omigod, did we kill someone? The shock when Trey flung open the driver’s side door and said, “I wasn’t here! Got it?” I watched him leap from the car and take off into the dark woods. Even through m
y shock, I understood what he meant. His scholarship. Georgetown Law. He was brilliant, and he’d worked so hard. He had everything to lose. I loved him. I’d protect him.

  I’d sat there numb and paralyzed for a few seconds before I’d climbed out of the car myself. Slowly, heart pounding, I’d walked toward the Nissan, its horn still blaring. The darkness of the night stole my breath. There was just enough light for me to see that my car had impaled the driver’s side of the Nissan. I couldn’t see inside the car. Couldn’t possibly get to the driver through that door. Battling nausea, I climbed through brush and leaves around the front of the Nissan and mustered my courage to force open the passenger side door. The overhead light came on and I knew in that moment that the image in front of me would haunt my dreams forever: long black hair and blood, twisted limbs and bones. I screamed and screamed and screamed until someone showed up next to me and someone else called the police. Even when I was surrounded by sirens and flashing lights, wrapped in a blanket, and being treated for a cut on my forehead I hadn’t known I had—even through all of that, I screamed.

  “Is she dead?” I kept shouting, my arms wrapped across my chest, my whole body tightened into a ball of horror. “Is she dead? Is she dead?”

  I remembered, with painful clarity, the words of the cop standing next to me. “You didn’t kill her,” he said, “but you sure as hell ruined her life.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered now, standing in the gallery’s kitchenette. I pressed my fingers against my eyes as if I could block out the images of that night. The memories. I thought briefly of finding Adam and Wyatt. I imagined having a couple of beers with them to wipe out the horror. Dangerous thinking. I was going to have to find a way to live, sober, with the memories of all that had happened. You are alive, I thought to myself. Healthy and whole. Emily never would be. I had to appreciate my second chance. That’s what I had to remember.