Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,7

Too bad she wouldn’t be able to paint that mural now. The memory of her eager, happy production of that sketch, before everything changed, seemed to be from another lifetime.

She did have an idea for the Edenton mural, though. In the Plainfield library, the librarian pointed her toward the American Guide Series’ book on North Carolina. In it, she read about the “Edenton Tea Party,” an eighteenth-century women’s movement in which fifty-one women signed a petition to boycott all English products. She thought that might make an intriguing mural and wouldn’t be too challenging to paint. The idea seemed so simple to her at first that she thought she might not even have to travel to Edenton to do her research, but then she realized she actually wanted this trip. She needed to get away for a few days. She needed an escape from the sadness in the little house where she expected to see her mother every time she walked into another room.

King Street. She spotted the sign and turned left to see a big brick block of a building. The Hotel Joseph Hewes. It would be her home while she was in this town she knew as well as she knew Jupiter or Saturn. She drove into the parking lot, heart pounding, hands sticky on the steering wheel, wondering what the next few days would hold.

Chapter 3

MORGAN

June 13, 2018

I blinked against the bright sunlight as I walked with Lisa toward the silver sedan in the prison parking lot. The only words Lisa had said to me so far were “do you have everything?” and the two of us were quiet as we left the building. I breathed in the sweet air of freedom, but my stomach was full of knots. I held my chin high, though. Put on the tough-girl look I’d perfected inside. I’m not afraid of anything, I told myself … though the truth was, I was undeniably intimidated by the woman at my side. Lisa was Jesse Jameson Williams’s daughter, which was enough to intimidate anyone, but it was more than that. I couldn’t read her. Her brittle silence, for starters. What was that about? Her upright carriage and no-nonsense speed walk as she headed toward the car while checking her phone every two seconds. Her unsmiling, clenched-teeth expression. Anger bubbled just below the surface in this woman, I thought, and I didn’t like the fact that she held all the cards for my future.

I hadn’t anticipated the unease I felt getting into a car. It had been a bit more than a year since I’d been in any sort of vehicle, and my fingers froze on the outside handle of the car door. Lisa was already in the driver’s seat by the time I managed to pull myself together enough to open the door. Even then, I stood there holding the plastic bag of my very few belongings at my side, the muscles in my legs locked in paralysis.

“Come on, get in,” Lisa called.

I climbed into the car and sat down on the leather seat, dropping the bag of belongings at my feet. I pulled the door closed, then buckled the seat belt with fingers that felt ice-cold despite the warm spring weather.

Lisa stuck her phone in the holder on the dashboard, then started the car, still not speaking. Of course, I wasn’t speaking, either. I wanted to say thank you for doing this, but that would make me sound more vulnerable than I wanted to appear. I felt so strange, like I was attempting to step back into the person I used to be. For the first time in a year, I was wearing my small silver hoop earrings, the silver stud in my nostril, and my old blue sleeveless shirt. Not that I’d selected the shirt from my closet; I’d been wearing it the day I got locked up, so that was all I had with me. Still, I was glad I had on this particular shirt, not only because the day was warm, but because I wanted Lisa to see my tattoo in its entirety. The intricacy of the lacy design. It was the only thing I had with me to illustrate that I had any artistic talent. But Lisa said nothing about it.

Why was this woman wound so tight? Did she resent the fact that I was a criminal she’d been forced to spring from jail? Or that she was conservatively dressed and groomed within an inch of her life—I