Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,33

here.

I was eating the Cheerios at the kitchen table when Lisa came in the back door. She was dressed in white capris and a button-down blue chambray shirt rather than her usual polished Realtor clothing. She looked like a different woman.

“Why aren’t you at the gallery?” she asked. “You need to get cracking on the mural.”

Nope, I thought. Same woman.

“Soon,” I said. “I got my computer and I’m reading about restoration and … do you realize that artists really aren’t the people who do it? It’s a whole different set of skills, and—”

“What are you saying?” She frowned at me.

“That you need to be patient with me. I’ll do it, but I don’t even know how to start and—”

“You’ll have to figure that out quickly,” she said. “We have a deadline to meet.”

I set down my spoon, annoyed. “Lisa, what’s the big deal with the opening date of the gallery? So what if it opens a week late or even a month late?”

She stared at me. It was unnerving, that stare.

“Don’t you want this done right?” I asked.

Lisa leaned against the counter, her body slumped, and she suddenly looked exhausted. “I have bigger fish to fry than to argue with you about this,” she said. “I not only have the gallery to deal with, I have clients selling, clients buying, clients pretending to want to buy. The mural is all you have to deal with. That’s it. Your only responsibility. Just seven or eight weeks of your life, and then you’re a free woman with fifty thousand dollars in the bank. If it weren’t for the mural and my father you’d still be in prison, all right? So get things in perspective.”

“They have these big companies who do restoration,” I argued, unwilling to let this topic slide. “Not one lone person who has never done anything like it before. I just don’t want you to expect a perfect job when I’m working by myself, doing it for the first time, learning as I go.”

“Then do an imperfect job,” she said. “My father had to know your limitations and he still wanted you to do it. Just make it good enough to hang in the foyer. No one’s going to examine it with a fine-tooth comb. It’s not the Mona Lisa. All right?”

I worried that “imperfect” would be the kindest word anyone could find to describe my work on the mural. “Fine,” I said.

Lisa glanced at her phone. “I want you at the gallery now,” she said. “This afternoon. The guys are building a stretcher and you need to supervise them. You have to figure out what supplies you need so we can get them ASAP.”

“Seriously, Lisa, I need to do more research before I can—”

“Research is always never-ending,” she said, “and I’m not paying you to sit on your computer here in my house.”

Wow, she was tough. I didn’t speak, at least not out loud. Inside, I was thinking, First of all, it’s not your money. Second of all, I have no idea what I’m doing.

“Fine,” I said again. Money and freedom. That was why I was here. The mural was bizarre and my curiosity was piqued by its strangeness, but I certainly felt no attachment to it. I just wanted to figure out how to restore it well enough to be paid and stay out of prison. I’d view the mural as nothing more than a means to an end.

I carried my bowl to the sink, then picked up my purse and the laptop. “I’m on my way,” I said, and I headed for the door.

Chapter 12

ANNA

December 12, 1939

In the morning, Mr. Fiering gave Anna a tour of the cotton mill and the diminutive Mill Village, which consisted of neat rows of little houses for the mill workers and their families. There were a lot of children in the streets playing catch and chasing one another around. The Mill Village had a very separate feeling from the rest of Edenton, and from a few things Mr. Fiering said, Anna had the sense that the people who lived in its tiny houses were not viewed in a very welcoming light by the rest of the town.

The mill itself was quite an impressive sight. The long brick building was filled with workers and machinery and noise, and Anna felt overwhelmed by it all as she walked through it, Toby Fiering at her side. Ironically, though, it was the outside of the mill that she found most intriguing. Wisps of cotton were