Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,81

wood so dark and silky that Anna couldn’t resist running her fingers over it. She was seated between Jesse’s mother and Aunt Jewel, while across from her, Jesse’s eight-year-old sister Nellie sat flanked by Jesse and Dodie. The little girl shared those round doe eyes with her mother and Jesse.

Mr. Williams sat at the table’s head. A bespectacled man with black hair salted with gray, he hadn’t yet offered her more than a grunt in greeting. Was he the sort of man who never smiled, or did his grim expression have to do with her presence? She hoped none of the Williams family had read Thursday’s paper, which had printed a letter to the editor from Theresa’s father, Riley Wayman. The letter was about Anna and was quite bitter. Riley Wayman said that Anna Dale didn’t understand Edenton’s “mores,” and what was she thinking, having a young male colored student working with his daughter in a “seedy, decrepit warehouse”? He went on to blame the government for “hiring this outsider” when Edenton already had a “perfectly fine and willing painter” right in town. Et cetera, et cetera. If anyone in the Williams family had seen the letter, no one was mentioning it.

The meal began with a lengthy grace, perhaps inspired, Anna thought, by the family’s very long morning at church. Jesse’s father had some of the preacher in him. He sat at the head of the table and thanked the Lord for everything under the sun, including Anna, which surprised and touched her. Then they began passing the food. Fried chicken, whipped potatoes, a bowl of some sort of greens, corn, and canned tomatoes. Every bit of it came right from the farm, Jesse told her.

“Really!” Anna said. She wondered if the chicken she was eating had been running around the Williams’s yard a few hours earlier. “That’s amazing.”

“What’s so ’mazin’ ’bout that?” Nellie asked, looking up from her plate where she’d been playing with her food more than she’d been eating it. She was a tiny, adorable child who looked closer to six than eight. Her hair was in short braids, so many of them that they nearly formed a halo around her head. She had absolutely no knowledge of how to behave with company, which led her to say funny and inappropriate things that made Anna laugh. Except for Jesse, Anna felt more at ease with the little girl than with anyone else at the table.

“Don’t be so rude,” Dodie said to the child in response to her question. Dodie struck Anna as sullen and quiet, and Anna wondered if she was always that way or if it was her presence that brought out that side of the girl. Was it as odd for them to have a white woman at their table as it was for her to be there? It felt strange to be the different one in the group, she thought. Being different could lead to paranoia. She kept wondering, Are they saying that or acting that way because I’m white or is this the way they always are? Silly thinking, she decided, and not very useful.

“Not many farms up north, I guess?” Jesse’s mother asked.

“Oh, yes, there are plenty of farms up north,” Anna said. “As a matter of fact, New Jersey, where I live, is called the ‘Garden State.’ But I live in a town not too far from New York City. We get our food from the grocery store.”

“You’re a city girl for sure,” Aunt Jewel said with a smile. She struck Anna as the sharp blade in the family. The smart one. Well, perhaps they were all smart, but Anna thought Jewel must be better educated than Jesse’s parents. She spoke better English and there was something more worldly about her. Anna remembered Jesse telling her that his aunt was a midwife for the colored community. She’d probably been educated as a nurse, then. Maybe Aunt Jewel would be the one to understand why Jesse’s talent needed to be nurtured.

Anna felt Nellie’s gaze riveted on her and she caught the girl’s eye and smiled.

“You so pretty,” Nellie said. “I wish I had hair like that. And your eyelashes.” She touched her own lashes. “Yours is so thick.”

“Well, I think your hair is adorable in all those little braids,” Anna said.

“You got a piece of collard in your teeth,” Nellie said, pointing to her own two front teeth.

“Don’t be so rude!” Dodie said again.

“No, that’s fine.” Anna laughed, then worked the offending