Big Lies in a Small Town (ARC)

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Is that blood, too?” Lisa moved near us, hand on her chest. “Oh my God. I wonder if my father remembered how disturbing this thing is when he thought of hanging it in the foyer?”

  “There is a lot of blood,” I said, almost apologetically.

  “She was, like, possessed.” Nathan sounded frankly delighted. “The artist.”

  “She may have been,” Oliver said.

  “It’s a mess,” Nathan said. “All those places where the paint’s, like, worn away?”

  Lisa let out a pained sigh. “It is indeed still a mess.” She knotted her hands together around her phone. “But you have a whole month left.” She gave me a hopeful look. “I’m sure you can do it.”

  I glanced at Oliver, whose expression told me he doubted anyone could do all the necessary work—and do it well—in a month. Then I nodded at Lisa.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  Lisa left, and Adam and Wyatt went back to work in the rear rooms of the gallery. I looked at the box of inpainting supplies waiting for me on the floor by the ladder.

  “You look nervous.” Oliver smiled at me.

  “Can you help me after lunch?” I asked. “Just to get me started?”

  “Of course.” He turned to his son. “You hungry, Nate?” he asked.

  “Starving!”

  Oliver pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and handed me a twenty. “You and Nathan get lunch for the three of us while I move my computer out here to the foyer. That way, I can supervise you for a few days,” he said. “Chicken wrap for me.”

  “Thank you,” I said, happy to know he’d be close by. I’d pictured myself running back and forth to his office, dragging him to the foyer to advise me on every brushstroke.

  Nathan and I set out for Nothing Fancy, talking about what we’d order for lunch: a BLT for him, chef’s salad for me. Then Nathan pointed to my ankle.

  “Is that one of those exercise things?” he asked. “Like, it tells you how far you walk every day?”

  I’d thought my jeans had been long enough to mask the monitor, but apparently not. I could lie, but decided against it. “Actually, no,” I said. “It’s an alcohol monitor. I had a problem with drinking.” I surprised myself with the admission. It was the first time those words had come out of my mouth. I’d never uttered “problem” and “drinking” in the same sentence before. About my parents, yes. About myself, never. At the AA meetings, I had yet to stand up and proclaim I was an alcoholic. “A problem with drinking” didn’t sound quite so ominous, and yet the words made me wince. It was the truth, though, wasn’t it? I had to own up to it. I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in if I didn’t have a problem with drinking. If I’d been sober the night of the accident, I would have been driving and my life—and Emily Maxwell’s life—would be completely different now.

  “So this keeps me from drinking,” I continued, “because when you drink, the alcohol comes out in your sweat and the monitor would know and would tell…” My parole officer? I really didn’t want to go into all that with this boy. “It would tell my doctor I had a drink. So this helps me to not drink.”

  “You’re an alcoholic?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

  I hesitated. “I guess you could say that,” I said finally. “And I drank too much and got into a car accident, so I can’t—I don’t want to—drink anymore.”

  “Oh,” Nathan said. “Do you always wear it? Like do you have to wear it for the rest of your life?”

  “No. Just for now.”

  “What happens when you take it off? Then you’ll need willpower, right? To not drink?”

  “Exactly.” I smiled, impressed that he’d made that leap in his thinking. He was so cute. Such a miniature Oliver. I wanted to put an arm around his shoulders. Give him a squeeze. “But by then I’ll have made a new habit. A new nondrinking habit. So I won’t drink once I take it off, either.” We’d reached the corner and started across the street. I needed to get the conversation off myself. “Your dad is really looking forward to going to Smith Mountain Lake with you,” I said as we stepped up the curb at the other side of the street.

  “Mmm,” he said. “I don’t know if I can go.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “My stepdad is getting us tickets to Disney World and he thinks that’s the only time he can get off before school starts up.”

  “Does your dad know?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not for sure yet, so I won’t tell him till it is. I’ve been to Smith Mountain Lake like a million times, but I’ve never been to Disney World and it’ll be so cool.”

  I was surprised how much my heart ached for Oliver. Truly ached. I rubbed my chest, thinking of how Oliver’s eyes lit up when he talked about having a whole week with his son. It had been a while since I’d felt such concern for someone, but then it had been a while since I’d had a friend who didn’t want something from me. A friend who only wanted to help me.

  “Your dad would be really disappointed,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Nathan said. “He actually hates how sticky hot it gets at the lake in the summer and all the mosquitoes and everything, so maybe he won’t care. And I really want to go to Disney World.”

  Stay out of it, I told myself. This is not your problem. Yet a million responses ran through my mind. Don’t be so selfish! I wanted to say. You are so lucky to have a father who loves you and wants to do things with you and isn’t drunk all the time. Please don’t break his heart.

  “I hope they have lots of mayo for the BLT,” Nathan said, and only then did I realize we’d reached the door of the café.

  “I’m sure they do,” I said, and I followed him inside, vowing to keep my mouth shut. This was not my problem to solve. I had plenty of my own.

  Oliver had set up a new workspace for himself in the foyer by the time Nathan and I returned with lunch. The folding table now held his computer, several of his towering stacks of paper, and the photograph of his son.

  “All set here,” he said.

  The three of us ate together sitting on the cool tiled floor. Then Oliver spent the afternoon teaching me about the conservation paints and how to use the annoying magnification visor, while Nathan played games on his dad’s computer.

  “You have to forget you’re an artist,” Oliver said, as he demonstrated brushing the paint onto an abraded area. “Think more like a technician. You not only want to match the color of the area where you’re painting, you need to match the texture of the paint as well. The level of the gloss, too.” He showed me how to reduce the gloss of the paint by mixing it with a little silica, fine-tuning the result until it matched Anna’s oils.

  “Got it,” I said. I watched Oliver use short pointillist strokes with a tiny brush, touching the canvas with the gentlest care, but I was remembering what Nathan had said about not going to Smith Mountain Lake with him and felt like putting a comforting arm across his shoulders. I glanced at Nathan where he was engrossed in the computer. Spoiled little guy. I supposed most twelve-year-olds were just like him, only thinking of their own needs. Their own wants. I hadn’t been that way, though. No one could ever have accused me of being spoiled.

  “If you want me to check your work the first few times, just ask,” Oliver said, bringing me back to the here and now. “Might be a good idea.”

  I smiled at him from under the visor. “You worried I can’t do it?”

  “The paint’s just different than what you’re used to,” he said. “But I have confidence in you.”

  By the end of the day, I’d inpainted one tiny square inch near the upper left-hand corner of the mural. It was only background, only blue sky, nothing like what I’d be dealing with later—one of the Tea Party ladies’ missing eyelashes, for example—things that would truly matter, but Oliver declared my work competent. His faint praise told me it was quitting time for the day and I was relieved to slip the visor from my head.

  Standing back, I looked up at the speck of paint that had take
n me so long to apply. August fifth, I thought. One short month away. Slowly, I shook my head. This was going to be impossible.

  Chapter 30

  ANNA

  January 17, 1940

  Anna stopped in the library on her way to the warehouse, hoping to pick up some art books for Jesse. Peter had borrowed some of the library’s books on drawing, and when Anna suggested to Jesse that he do the same, he replied, “Ain’t no colored library here, Miss Anna.” She’d been more frustrated than surprised at that news. So she checked out some books for him herself, wondering what the librarian would say or do if she told her she planned to put them into the hands of a colored boy. But she behaved herself, quietly checking out the books without comment. She thought people talked about her quite enough already.

  She’d been working on the cartoon alone in the warehouse for a few hours when an unfamiliar man suddenly pushed open the door and strutted into the space as though he owned it. Anna stepped back from the cartoon, charcoal pencil in hand, unsure if she should be frightened or angered by the intrusion.

  “You’re Anna Dale?” the man asked, his voice deep and gruff.

  “Yes, and you’re…?”

  “I’m Riley Wayman,” he said. “Theresa Wayman’s father.”

  Oh, she thought. Theresa Wayman’s father and president of the bank. She set down her pencil and walked toward him, dusting her hand off on her smock before holding it out to him. “How do you do?” she asked, but he seemed to want nothing to do with her hand. She felt him eye her up and down, taking in her slacks, her charcoal-smeared smock, her oxfords. A cold wind had blown into the warehouse with him and Anna shivered despite the warmth her two space heaters were putting out.

  “I want to know why you brought in this colored boy and kicked my daughter out,” he said.

  “I didn’t kick her out,” Anna said. “Theresa told me you wouldn’t allow her to work with me if Jesse stayed. She chose to leave.”

  “She was with you first.”

  “But I have room for three students to work with me and Jesse was referred to me by his art teacher,” Anna said. “I would have loved to have Theresa stay. She’s quite talented.” Was she? Anna hadn’t actually seen any of her work. “It was her choice to leave.”

  Riley Wayman folded his arms across his big barrel chest and looked at the cartoon, frowning. He studied the drawing for so long and so silently that Anna said, “I’m happy to take her back if she chooses to come,” simply for something to break the silence.

  He turned back to her. “You don’t belong here, little lady,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? You don’t fit in; you could live here twenty years and you still wouldn’t fit in. People here like you right now because you’re a novelty and they’re excited our post office was chosen for one of the paintings, but they’ll get past that pretty soon and realize it was a mistake bringing you here.”

  “I’m doing fine in Edenton.” Anna stood her ground. She was doing fine in Edenton, but she knew what he meant. She knew exactly what he meant. She’d been in Edenton nearly a month and a half and there were some things she would never understand. She would always be thought of as a furriner, no matter how long she lived in the town.

  She knew arguing with Mr. Wayman would get her nowhere, so she took on a different tack.

  “Please let Theresa come back,” she said. “She’s interested in art and this could be a very good experience for her.”

  He was shaking his head before she’d even finished her sentence. “I’m not going to open my door to all sorts of talk and innuendo,” he said. His eyes traveled down her body again, which was masked quite thoroughly by her smock. He shook his head in what she took to be disgust. “She said she had to wear pants to work here.” He nodded toward Anna’s dusty slacks. “That it was a rule you made.”

  “There’s no such rule.” She was annoyed that Theresa would fib that way. “It’s just easier to move around in pants. To work on the stretcher, she’d have to be on the floor. Don’t you think pants of some sort would make a lot more sense?”

  He glanced at the stretcher taking shape on the concrete floor, then looked around the warehouse as if noticing its vast size, its dark corners, and its spooky beamed ceiling for the first time. He was making her increasingly nervous. She wanted him to leave.

  “Never mind,” he said finally. “I don’t want her working here with you anyway.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the warehouse, his footsteps echoing behind him.

  Lovely man, Anna thought, and she felt some sympathy for Theresa as she watched him go.

  She had plenty of other visitors to the warehouse that day. Her lumberman, Frank, came to pose for her. He was an excellent model, keeping perfectly still, even though he had to hold a long-handled ax steady the whole time. Anna could tell he got a kick out of posing and having some time off from his real job grading wood. About half an hour after he left, Jesse and Peter arrived and started working on the stretcher, and a short time later, Martin Drapple showed up again.

  “I had some spare time,” he said. “Thought I’d come see if I could help out with the— Hey!” He noticed the cartoon. “You’re making great progress!” He stood back to admire—she hoped—her drawing. “You’re quick,” he added, and Anna wondered if he thought she was working too quickly to do a good job. Why did she doubt herself so? She would accept his words as a compliment. Still, she was annoyed he was there. Was he keeping an eye on her?

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s going well so far.”

  He turned toward Peter and Jesse where they grappled with the stretcher on the floor.

  “Hey, fellas,” he said. “Looks like you could use another pair of hands.”

  “Sure could, sir!” Peter said. Jesse kept his head down, focusing on the screw he was turning into place. Martin lowered himself to the floor and held the two lengths of wood steady for him. Anna watched for a moment as the three of them worked together and she gradually shifted from annoyance at Martin’s arrival to gratitude. The boys could not easily manage the stretcher alone. She turned back to the cartoon and let the boys and Martin work on their own.

  Did Martin’s wife know he was at the warehouse? she wondered. Did she know he’d stopped in last week as well? Did he go home and tell her he’d helped Anna Dale make the grid lines on the cartoon? She doubted that very much. They’d be divorced by now if he had. She remembered the angry woman on the library steps, how she’d clutched Anna’s arm. How afraid she’d seemed over the family finances, with Martin’s design not being accepted for the post office. He shouldn’t be here in the warehouse, Anna thought, working for free. He especially shouldn’t be here with her.

  It would be best if he didn’t come again, but as she watched him working side by side with the boys, giving directions she might not have known to give, she was very glad that he had come.

  Chapter 31

  MORGAN

  July 9, 2018

  I heard sirens the moment I stepped out of Lisa’s house for my walk to the gallery. The sound didn’t slow or stop; instead, it built on itself, one siren on top of another on top of another. The sounds alone were enough to take me back to the accident and set my heart racing. I stood paralyzed on the sidewalk in front of the house, trying to decide if I should go back inside and wait it out or start walking toward the gallery. Get a grip, I told myself, beginning to walk again. I was not going to live the rest of my life in fear.

  The sound had settled down by the time I turned onto Broad Street, but then I found myself less than half a block from the clot of ambulances, police cars, and a fire truck. I froze. From where I stood, it looked like a horrific accident between a minivan and a delivery truck. I saw a stretcher and although I couldn’t see the person it carried, in my mind it was Emily Maxwell’s bloody body being loaded into the ambulance. I backtracked and took a cross street to avoid walking past the wreck, but it was really too late. The damage was done. My knees threatened to buckle. The whole world spun an
d I had to stop walking, pressing my body against the wall of a building to stay upright. I looked around for a bench I could sink onto, but there were none. Instead, I stood there, eyes closed, waiting for the worst of the dizziness to pass.

  I thought I had myself under control by the time I reached the gallery, but as soon as I entered the foyer, Oliver looked up from his computer, eyes wide.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, pulling out his earbuds.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Bull,” he said. “Are you sick? Your face is white.”

  I sat down next to the table that held my paints and brushes. My palms were damp and I wiped them on my jeans. “I just saw an accident,” I said. “The aftermath, anyhow. It shook me up.”

  “I heard the sirens,” he said. “Where was it?”

  “Broad Street. I didn’t really look. I … accidents … I…” I looked away from him. I wasn’t sure what I’d intended to say.

  He bent forward, elbows on his knees, searching my face. “You what?” he prompted. “Were you in an accident?” I could see the concern in his eyes.

  I nodded.

  “When … oh. The DUI?”

  I nodded again. “It was so terrible, Oliver,” I said. “We almost killed someone.”

  “What happened?” He straightened up again, all of his attention still on me.

  Before I could stop myself, I began talking. “I’d been at a party with my boyfriend, and … we’d both had too much to drink.” I twisted my hands together in my lap. “I turned my car keys over to him. I thought maybe he was more sober than I was. Neither of us should have been driving. I was so stupid.”