Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,102

won’t even notice the smell in a couple of days,” Miss Myrtle assured Anna, who found that impossible to imagine.

Away from the water, gardens bloomed with color, and only then did Anna realize how badly she needed spring and growing things and all those vibrant colors surrounding her. The more color there was in her world, the happier she was, and she thought she now understood her mother’s passion for photographing flowers, preserving them in pictures she could enjoy when the cold weather set in.

Yet Anna wasn’t getting to see—or smell—too much of Edenton’s springtime: she was practically living in the warehouse these days.

Her borrowed cot seemed to worry everyone. Now that she had the cot, she painted well into the evening, refreshed from the nap she often took after Jesse went home to help on the farm. She’d hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, turn out the lights, and sleep deeply for twenty or thirty minutes in the shadowy light that slipped in through the big windows. She’d bring a sandwich with her for dinner, and Miss Myrtle complained that she was staying out after dark, which wasn’t “fitting for a single girl.”

The cot was just a simple old khaki-colored thing. It was low to the ground and more comfortable than it looked. Anna covered it with a thin quilt she’d borrowed from her bedroom closet at Miss Myrtle’s house, and she’d nap on a small pillow she’d picked up from Holmes Department Store. The funny thing was, a couple of months ago she never would have considered taking a nap in the warehouse. The creepiness of the place had been too much for her then, even when she was wide awake with her eyes open. She still didn’t like the long walk from her comfortable “studio” end where she had her work and lights and heaters, to the dark and dismal end when she needed to use the lavatory, but she no longer felt afraid. The warehouse was her home away from home now.

Mayor Sykes stopped by one evening after leaving his office and he, too, seemed concerned at realizing how late she was working in spite of the fact that he was the person who told her she didn’t need a lock on the warehouse door in the first place. Even Jesse gave her a talking-to about it.

“You shouldn’t stay here after dark,” he said. “Remember them words on the side of the warehouse? You don’t wanna be here at night when someone’s out there paintin’ on your buildin’, do you?”

No, she certainly did not, but a full month had passed since hooligans defaced the warehouse and nothing had happened since. The only reminder of the deed was that the paint Mr. Arndt and Peter used to cover up the words was much brighter and whiter than the old paint on the warehouse exterior. Anna didn’t look at the paint when she walked from her car to the door. That was the way she dealt with it.

“You know,” Jesse said one afternoon, “you sound like your mama.” He kept his eyes on his work at the easel as he spoke, as if he knew he was treading into dangerous territory.

Anna looked at him sharply, her guard up at the mention of her mother. “What are you talking about?”

He glanced at her. “You said how she had all that energy sometime,” he said. “That’s how you sound now.”

Anna bristled. “This is completely different,” she said, although his words shook her, ever so slightly. She thought of her mother’s “lively spells,” remembering how she would scour the house from top to bottom or race through the neighborhood with her camera, trotting up strangers’ driveways to take pictures of their gardens. “Really, Jesse. You didn’t know her. I’m nothing like her.”

It annoyed her—perhaps even angered her—that he would mention her mother at all and particularly in that context. Her mother’s manic spells had been like a living, breathing thing, a third being in the house with them. Jesse was completely wrong. Yet as Anna returned to her own work after their conversation, she was aware that her heart was thudding like a drum in her chest.

Chapter 45

MORGAN

July 16, 2018

Five days had passed since I sprained my ankle, and although I still couldn’t walk more than half a block without grinding pain, I barely felt a twinge when I focused on the mural. I was working faster and more confidently now. I understood what I was doing. I