Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,35

huge, made of long two-by-fours with wooden braces forming a grid between them. It was an enormous, beautifully crafted thing. Oliver was right about these guys. They were fast and they knew what they were doing. If only I could say the same about myself.

“Want to take another look at the mural?” Oliver asked, and I nodded, following him inside.

The delicious woody scent of the gallery greeted me again and I could hear the buzz of saws from somewhere in the interior of the building.

I stood next to Oliver in the middle of the foyer, looking down at the mural, which was still attached to the two-by-four on the floor. “I’m trying to find material on Anna Dale,” Oliver said, “and I did find something I’ll show you in a bit. But for the most part, it’s like she simply disappeared after she painted the mural.”

“What did you find?” “So strange,” I said, but my gaze on the many areas of the mural that were nearly bare of paint beneath the layer of grime or mildew coating the enormous canvas.

“Doesn’t look any better today than it did the other day, does it?” He laughed.

“Uh-uh,” I agreed.

“Where did you work before coming here?” he asked. A casual question or was he suspicious?

I hesitated, my gaze on the women and their broken teapot. Even if I wanted to make up an answer, I didn’t know what it should be. I glanced at Oliver. With his tall, slender build and dark-framed glasses, he struck me as bookish and kind, a bit nerdy despite handsome features, probably gay, and I opted for the truth. “I wasn’t,” I said.

He tilted his head. “You were between jobs?”

I drew in a breath. “I’m not actually an art restorer.” I looked squarely at him. “I was a fine arts major at UNC in Chapel Hill and had to drop out in my third year.”

I thought his cheeks actually blanched. “You’re kidding,” he said. Was there worry in his voice or was I projecting? Suddenly, though, he let out a laugh. “So, you’re the one,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He was still chuckling to himself. He put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “A couple of months before Jesse died, I was over at his house talking about his design for the building, and he said, ‘Watch for this white girl to show up at the gallery. She’s gonna need a boatload of help.’ Though he didn’t say ‘boatload.’”

“Oh my God…” Oliver’s words suddenly made this whole crazy experience feel real. “Do you have any idea how he decided on me?”

He shrugged. “I don’t even know how he decided to help me.”

“Help you?”

He nodded. “I was one of his charity cases,” he said. “Thirteen years ago, now.”

“You’re kidding!” I took a step back to really look at him. “What did he do for you?”

Oliver smiled. “I was seventeen, living in Philadelphia, and about to drop out of the stifling private school my parents had me in—”

“Wait. Private school? Charity case?”

“There are different types of charity.”

“Okay.” I could understand that. “Continue.”

“I’d gotten my girlfriend pregnant, and thought I should get a job and support her and my soon-to-be kid—”

“Whoa,” I said. Maybe not gay, after all. “You are so not at all what I imagined you to be.”

“What did you imagine?”

“Just not … the type to get a girl pregnant at seventeen.”

“Yeah, well … Don’t judge a book, and all that.” He smiled again. “So one day I get this phone call from Jesse Jameson Williams, a guy I’d never heard of. He told me I had promise and he wanted to help me.”

“He called you personally?” I wished I’d had the chance to talk to him myself. How incredible that would have been.

“Uh-huh,” Oliver said. “Jesse somehow got me out of my hellhole of a school and into the University of the Arts in Philly. He paid for everything. He even paid child support for my son, including child care, so my girlfriend could stay in school.” Oliver’s voice thickened and he turned his gaze away from me. Drew in a breath. “Really, he saved me,” he said. “I was going down the drain.”

“How did he even know about you?”

“He’d never tell me.” Oliver cleared his voice, seeming to get his emotions back under control. “I don’t think he ever told the kids he helped. But I’m pretty sure my art teacher got in touch with him. That was just the way Jesse was. He had a