Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,8

could smell jasmine-scented perfume in the air—while I sat there in my torn-at-the-knee jeans with a tattoo on my arm? Or that some of the money Lisa stood to inherit was going into my pocket? Or maybe that I was white on top of it all? I had no idea. All I knew at that moment was that Lisa was too close to the car in front of us while driving sixty-five miles per hour. You were supposed to allow a car length for every ten miles per hour. I remembered the rule from driver’s ed, though I’d probably never followed it myself. But that was before. Now I had to fight the urge to press an imaginary brake on the floor to slow Lisa down. This is the new Morgan, I thought sadly to myself. The Morgan afraid of the outside world.

We’d ridden ten minutes in silence before Lisa finally spoke.

“The government never fully paid the artist—Anna Dale—for the mural, so after she went crazy—or whatever happened—it essentially became my father’s property to do with as he pleased,” she said. “But since the gallery is a gift to the community, your work on the mural becomes a sort of community service.” She glanced at me, and the smallest of smiles lifted the corners of her lips. “So says Andrea.”

The rationale seemed quite a stretch and I waited for her to continue, unsure of her point. “I understand,” I said when it was clear Lisa had nothing more to say on the subject. “But why did the mural end up with your father?”

She shrugged. “No idea,” she said. “He didn’t leave me much in the way of details. I’m just following his orders.”

I kept my gaze riveted on the brake lights of the car in front of us.

“You have to meet with the parole officer within three days,” Lisa added.

“I know.” My responsibilities had been drilled into my head. “Is it possible … I can get an advance on my pay?”

Lisa looked at me sharply.

“I need clothes for the outside,” I said. “I mean, for … I just need clothes. I don’t have any with me except what I have on. And I’ll need a phone.”

“Could your family send you your clothes?”

“My parents and I aren’t talking.”

“Do they know you’re out? Would that make a difference?” Lisa’s phone rang and she looked at it. Pressed a button to stop the call. “I mean, would they talk to you now?” she continued.

I hadn’t called them. What was the point? If I’d learned anything at all those AA meetings I’d attended this past year, it was that I needed to cut toxic people out of my life.

“No, it wouldn’t make a difference,” I said.

Lisa didn’t respond and we drove in silence for a few more minutes. Then she made a call using the speaker on her phone. Something about a house. A contract. She was a real estate agent, I realized, and the little house pin on her lapel suddenly made sense. As she spoke into the phone, Lisa’s voice was higher, friendlier, more upbeat. A completely different person. When she hung up, she glanced at me. “Yes, you can have an advance,” she said. “You are going to need a phone. We need to be in touch all the time, and you’re going to need a laptop computer for restoration research, I’m sure. So I’ll advance you four thousand. Get what you need.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We were on Route 64 now and I watched the speedometer creep past eighty. I tried to shift my thinking to the absolute insanity that I was now out of prison because of Jesse Jameson Williams. Just the idea of him having known my name sent a thrill through me, though I still couldn’t help but feel he’d had me confused with another Morgan Christopher. Yet what was the likelihood there was another young artist—some young black artist, maybe—with my name in North Carolina? I wished I knew how he’d learned about me. It wasn’t like I’d been a top student. If my lifelong passion for art had been enough, I would have been a star, but my desire to create hadn’t been enough. One of my not-so-tactful professors told me I was in the top of the pack when it came to effort, but the “bottom of the middle of the pack” when it came to talent. “Talent can’t be taught,” he told me. He’d crushed me with those words. I’d thought of dropping out then,