Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,106

I really wanted to ask: Had Miss Anna and Jesse been lovers?

Mama Nelle lifted one tremulous hand to her lips, then shook her head. “Where you get this?” she asked, nodding toward the mural.

“Jesse had it in his studio for many, many years,” I said. “I’m restoring it. Cleaning it up. Fixing the paint.”

“Is Jesse the one what ruint it?” she asked.

“Ruined it?”

She pointed, her arm trembling. It looked like she was pointing to the peanut lady, the woman with the knife between her teeth. “What’d he do to it?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that in all the years the mural had been in Jesse’s possession, he might have been the one to tamper with it. That didn’t fit the story, though. The “Anna Dale lost her mind” story.

“There are strange things about the mural that we don’t understand,” I said, moving to stand in front of the painting. “The knife in her teeth. The motorcycle.” I pointed out the other oddities. “But we think Anna … Miss Anna painted them. Not Jesse. But … Mama Nelle.” I took a deep breath. “I was wondering if Jesse and Miss Anna were more than friends.”

Saundra turned her head from the mural to me. “You think they were lovers?” she asked.

Mama Nelle didn’t seem to hear either of us, her gaze still on the mural.

“I saw an article in the paper from back then,” I said to Saundra. “It said there’d been a racial slur written on the outside wall of the warehouse where Anna painted and where Jesse was her … apprentice, or helper, or … I wondered if there was something more between them.”

“Ah,” Saundra said, understanding. “Well, if there was, it’s certainly ancient history now. It hardly matters, does it?”

It didn’t matter at all, actually, but it was more than prurient interest driving me. “You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just that I’ve come to feel … close to Anna Dale, working on this thing.” I gestured toward the mural. “She created a perfectly nice sketch for this mural and then when she actually painted it she added all these … horrific details to it, and…” I seemed to run out of words.

“We’d just like to understand her better.” Oliver stood next to me and he surprised me by cupping my elbow in his hand. The touch didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. “And of course there are very few people alive now who were alive then,” he continued, dropping his hand to his side, “and Morgan thought maybe your mother might have some—”

“They wasn’t anythin’ of the kind,” Mama Nelle said suddenly. She looked across the room at me. “Ain’t you never had a friend that was a boy but not a boyfriend?”

I felt Oliver next to me. Until recently, he’d fit that description perfectly. Was it my imagination that there was something more between us? Something growing? Something I wanted to grow.

“Yes,” I said to Mama Nelle. “I know what you mean. Are you saying that’s all there was between Anna and Jesse? Friendship?”

“That’s ’xactly right.”

I tipped my head, curious. “How do you know that for sure?”

She looked at me in silence for so long I began to wonder if she was having some sort of spell.

“Mama?” Saundra prodded.

“We ain’t talkin’ ’bout Miss Anna no more,” Mama Nelle said in a near whisper. “Come here.” She motioned me to come closer. I walked the five or six steps to her chair and she reached out to take my hand. I bent low until her lips were next to my ear. “You’ll keep her secrets, right?” she whispered to me. “Me ’n’ you? We the only ones that know.”

Know what? I wanted to ask her. Her cool dry fingers grasped mine in a plea or a promise. I wasn’t sure which, but I knew it wasn’t the time to press for more. That would have to wait. “Yes,” I whispered back. “I’ll keep her secrets.”

Chapter 48

ANNA

March 22, 1940

Jesse arrived before dawn. Anna sat, half naked, on the broken cot. All the way broken now, its legs splayed and splintered on the concrete. She followed Jesse’s gaze to where Martin lay on the floor. She followed his gaze to the bloody hammer. His eyes grew wide. He raised a trembling hand to his mouth.

Anna thought of how the hammer actually belonged to Miss Myrtle, who’d said she could keep it as long as she needed it. She’d liked the feel of the smooth