Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,100

long and wild from the wind, speeding down the road like a maniac on a mission. She’d heard rumors that his wife had kicked him out of the house, so perhaps Mrs. Drapple had kept the car and this was Martin’s new transportation. Anna didn’t know. All she knew was that she was glad he no longer came around the warehouse. That slap he’d given his wife still rang in her ears.

Chapter 43

MORGAN

July 12, 2018

Rebecca’s gaze dropped to my walking boot as I limped into her office that morning.

“I already heard about this,” she said, gesturing toward the boot.

I dropped into the chair next to her desk, my guard suddenly up. “How could you have already heard about it?” I asked.

“Your supervisor-slash-landlady called me.”

I groaned. Lisa had been angry that morning when I told her how I ended up with the sprained ankle. I hadn’t expected sympathy from her, exactly, but I didn’t expect her to go ballistic.

“I’m not paying you to hang out in a bar,” she’d said, her brown eyes blazing. “I would have thought you’d learned your lesson about that sort of thing.”

“I was only there to get dinner,” I’d argued back. I should have backed down, but I’d been exhausted after so little sleep, plus my ankle was killing me and my patience was thin. “And as soon as the fight broke out, I left. At least, I tried to leave. But that’s when my foot got caught in the rungs of the barstool.”

Lisa had only stared. “You’re scaring me,” she said finally. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Now I looked at Rebecca. “Does she have a right to do that?” I asked. “Is she allowed to talk to you about me?”

“She can tell me anything she likes,” Rebecca said. “But I won’t share anything about you in response, so you don’t need to be concerned about that. I’d like to hear your side of the story, though. What happened last night?”

I shut my eyes, remembering back to the night before. It was all still very, very sharp in my mind. This is what happens when you don’t drink, I thought. Things stayed sharp and crisp. Not like after the accident, when everything had been a cloud of blood and fear in my memory. I told Rebecca the whole story. The only thing I left out was that I was falling in love with Oliver. At least, I was pretty sure I was. I didn’t completely trust myself when it came to love. Did I even know what it was? I didn’t think I’d ever felt love from another human being. Not the real thing, anyway. Not from Trey, no matter how many times he’d said those words to me. Certainly not from my parents. Sitting there, I could actually picture the huge empty space in my heart where love was supposed to be. The only person I could see in that space was Oliver—a little image of him tucked down in a corner.

“That was very risky for you, going there.” Rebecca brought my mind back to her office.

My eyes suddenly burned, surprising me. I was so tired after last night, and so tried of feeling criticized. “Everyone from the gallery was going,” I said. “I knew I could go and not drink. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I still don’t.”

Rebecca looked down at my ankle in its walking boot. “What did they say at the ER?” she asked.

“A mild sprain, though it doesn’t feel very mild. They said to ice it. Elevate it. But I have to work.”

“Lisa is worried you might backslide.”

I was angry, but tried not to show it. “I’m not going to backslide,” I said.

“And she’s worried about how your ankle will affect your work,” Rebecca said. “She told me that if you can’t work, she’ll have to fire you and hire someone else, though she sounded so—”

“What?” Fear rose in my chest. “No! I have to do it. I will do it!” The thought of returning to prison was only part of my sudden panic. The mural was mine. The sudden sense of ownership I felt over it stunned me. It was my handsome lumberjack and my old Tea Party ladies and my little skull in the window and my bloody hammer and motorcycle fender. I wasn’t letting anyone else work on it.

“I was going to say she—Lisa Williams—sounded…” She seemed to hunt for a word. “She sounded frantic about you not being able to work on the mural.