Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,129

uneducated that he can’t read, but he is such a hard worker and good provider, that I don’t think Mrs. Williams cares a bit.

The first week, an article about Jesse and me was on the front page of the paper. The speculation was that we were illicit lovers who had killed Martin Drapple in a sordid triangle gone sour. (I once again had to assure Jesse’s parents that this was not the truth. I’ve since learned that some of their church friends have turned their backs on them, but they still seem to have many people to lean on). To escape the police, the paper said, we ran off together and haven’t been found despite a multistate search. It hadn’t occurred to me that the police think we are together. In a way, I wish we were. I miss Jesse and wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I was very happy to learn, though, that—at least as of this past Thursday—they hadn’t yet found him.

I’m hopeful that Mrs. Williams either skipped over this article when she read the paper to her husband, or that she doctored it a bit to tame it down.

According to the paper, my car was discovered a week after our disappearance on a street in Norfolk, Virginia. There was no mention of the mural being inside it and I wonder what Jesse did with it. I can’t imagine him trying to travel unnoticed while carrying that enormous canvas. It hurts to think that he might have had to burn it or find some other way to get rid of it. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only an object. It’s Jesse’s escape that really matters.

The reporter must have interviewed half the people in Edenton that first week. Everyone had an opinion. People thought they’d spotted Jesse and me one place or another. A man thought he saw the mural in the woods, but it turned out to be an old patchwork quilt. Some people who watched me paint in the warehouse say they saw a romantic spark between Jesse and me. Others said I was envious of Martin’s talent, “which Miss Dale couldn’t begin to match.” Mr. Arndt seemed more upset over the loss of the mural than anything else. “I hope that it can be recovered in pristine condition,” he said. “We were truly looking forward to having it grace the post office wall.”

And now, a month after our “disappearance,” the paper seems to have run out of news on us. I think that is the best news of all.

Monday, July 22, 1940

I’ve been living with the Williams family for two months now. I have a routine, starting with getting up when they do. It took me a while to make that transition, but I felt selfish sleeping in while they all got up to work. I have a quiet breakfast with them in the near dark. Then they all—even little Nellie—go outside to work on the farm, rain or shine. I could never be a farmer! Only Aunt Jewel stays behind. She puts on a white pinafore, gets her medical kit, and heads out to see her patients. She has a car, a very old Buick that she worries will give out on her someday at a critical time, but for now it’s working well enough to take her—or as they say here, to “carry” her—from farm to farm or into the colored neighborhoods of Edenton. She wears a serious expression when she leaves the house. Serious, with a sense of purpose and anticipation, all her focus on the patients she will see that day. On the babies she will deliver. Someday in the not too distant future, all her focus will be on me.

I spend the day cleaning and sewing and cooking (to the best of my ability). Dodie taught me how to pluck and clean a chicken and how to get the grit out of the leafy vegetables. I think she’s smart and could probably go back to school and then college, but she seems content to live here and help out on the farm. I know she doesn’t like me. She calls me “a right spoilt white girl” and I guess I am. She sees me as a burden, which I also am. She has friends, including a boyfriend, and it annoys her that she can’t invite them into the house at any time the way she apparently used to. I’m more than happy to hide in Nellie’s