Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,133
My link to my mother. I’ll tuck it deep in Nellie’s chest. It will be several years before she’ll be able to read what I’ve written here and I know that when she does, she will hold my secrets tight. There is a bond between that little girl and me. I am trusting my safety to you, dear Nellie!
I’ve thought of a new name I will use, and I plan to create a new future for myself. I hope Jesse is doing the same. If he is still out there, somewhere, somehow, someday, I will find him. I owe him my thanks. Perhaps I even owe him my life.
Chapter 59
MORGAN
August–3, 2018
What happened to Anna?
I read the journal cover to cover while sitting in the recliner in Jesse’s sunroom, and I closed the book after midnight with that question burning in my brain. Had she been able to safely escape from the Williams’s farm? And if she escaped, did the police ever catch up to her?
I felt emotionally drained after reading her story. Anna had felt real to me, increasingly so as I worked on the mural. Now, she felt like a friend. I needed to know what had become of her. I feared the ending couldn’t have been good. Had Jesse Williams known how Anna’s story ended? Had he wanted the mural front and center in the gallery as a tribute to his friend who had no longer been able to create art of her own?
I climbed into bed, the musty old journal on the nightstand next to me, but I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep. After lying there for more than an hour, I got up, pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, and quietly left the house, not wanting to awaken Lisa. I’d been secretive about the journal, not mentioning it to Lisa or even to Oliver. I’d needed to be the first to read it.
Edenton slept as I walked through the dark streets to the gallery, the journal clutched to my chest. It was my first long walk since I’d hurt my ankle, and I only started limping a bit as I neared the gallery. I punched in the security code and let myself into the building, turning on the foyer lights. The mural seemed to spring from the wall with the colors I’d help bring back to life. I pushed my chair away from in front of it. Dragged my paint table off to the side. Then I sat on the floor in the middle of the foyer, legs crossed, my hands on my bare knees where they poked through the holes in my jeans, and I began to cry for Anna, who had started the mural with such hope and joy and had ended it with fear and sorrow.
“Hey, Morgan. Wake up.”
I opened my eyes at the sound of Oliver’s voice. The mural was sideways in my vision and I realized I’d fallen asleep on the cool hard floor of the foyer. I pushed myself to a sitting position, blinking my eyes against the light.
“Have you been here all night?” Oliver squatted next to me. I saw concern in his face.
“Oh, Oliver!” I said, grabbing the journal from the floor. I held it out to him. “You have to read this! It’s Anna’s journal from when she was working on the mural!”
“What? You’re kidding.” He took the journal from my hand and got to his feet, then reached down to help me up. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
I told him about Saundra’s visit the evening before and how Anna had left the journal behind at the Williams farm.
“Wow,” he said, flipping through the pages. “What a gold mine of information this will give us.”
“Read it,” I said. “But it still doesn’t tell us what happened to her.”
“How does it end?” He flipped to the last page of the journal, and I put my hand on his to stop him.
“You have to read it from the beginning,” I said.
He smiled at me, his blue eyes clear as crystal, beautiful behind his glasses. “You love her, don’t you?” he said. “Anna Dale.”
I turned my face away from him, afraid I was going to cry again. “I feel really close to her.” I heard the huskiness in my voice. “You will, too, when you read this. She went through so much.”
He nodded, still smiling. “I think you were exactly the right person for this job.” He nodded toward the mural. “Somehow Jesse knew that.”