Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,50

understand why this house is so precious to me.” She took another swallow of wine. “Do you know how rare it was for a black family to have a house like this when Daddy bought it in 1980?” she asked. “Or even today, for that matter? How hard my father had to work to make that happen? And I came up here—was raised here. I had a swing hanging from that big oak out back.” She motioned through the window toward the dark backyard. “In the summers, I sat reading in the corner of Daddy’s studio, while he created glorious art that now hangs in museums. This is the house where I did my homework, and baked with my mama, and got picked up for my first date. That garden out front? I still think of it as my mother’s garden. Bulbs she planted when I was a kid are still blooming in it. I don’t ever want to lose this house, and my father knew I’d do everything in my power to hold on to it. And I will hang on to it.” Her eyes blazed. “It won’t be easy with people taking their good ol’ time getting work to me, and the roofer dragging his feet, and this being my busy time at the office. You, though.” She gave me a steely-eyed look. “You’re my real loose end. I can’t control you. You’re the only person who can control you. You can cost me this house, not that I think you have a reason to care. But at least you should care about yourself. About the fact that this job got you out of prison and that it can make you a lot of money.”

I thought of the meticulous cleaning I’d done the last three days. “I’m doing my best, but from everything I’ve read, a job like this usually takes weeks or even months of work by a whole team of trained people.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Morgan.” The steely, dry-eyed Lisa was back. “I don’t care how it turns out. It’s so weird.” She shuddered. “That bloody ax? Just weird. All I care about is that it’s clean and has those bare spots covered over. No one’s going to be looking at it close-up.”

I felt a surprising flash of anger. The sympathy I’d had for Lisa only moments ago began to evaporate. She was nothing more than a wealthy woman so desperate to keep her family home that she’d ruin a piece of valuable art to hold on to it.

“I don’t think I can go into it with that attitude,” I said. “I don’t want to do a half-assed job.”

“Well, whatever your attitude,” Lisa said, “you have to finish the mural in time for the opening. All right? That, I’m afraid, is the bottom line.”

Chapter 20

ANNA

January 4, 1940

Anna, who had been brought up on the New York Times, had to admit that the small, provincial Chowan Herald fascinated her. She read the paper that morning while sitting in Miss Myrtle’s little sunroom, which had a view of the backyard, the trees bare, the birdbath water crusty with ice. Billy Calhoun, the paper’s editor whom Anna had met at lunch and who didn’t want to be “above his raisin’,” had written a beautifully crafted wrap-up of 1939 for the paper’s front page. We live in a safe haven, free from the scorching breath of war, he’d written. Anna nodded in agreement. Americans were very lucky, she thought, when so much of the world was not. She needed to remember that and count her blessings.

Then she read that Edenton’s first white baby of the new year had been born at 2:15 a.m. on January 1. She wondered if a colored baby had come earlier, but if so, the paper didn’t mention it. And then she learned how to rid cattle of lice and where she could buy hog-killing supplies.

Her mother would have gotten such a kick out of this paper.

From the time Anna was or twelve or thirteen, she and her mother would devour the Times over coffee every morning—at least during her mother’s lively spells. They’d read the news to one another, argue mildly over politics, and daydream about attending shows on Broadway. More than anything, Anna missed those mornings with her mother, though if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit that her mother hadn’t gotten up early enough to make it to the breakfast table since late summer. Still, as Anna read