Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,94

took her nearly an hour to shift the weight off her chest long enough to get up, shower, and put on her pants and blouse. She had no appetite, and she was glad Miss Myrtle wasn’t home so she didn’t have to make idle chatter over a breakfast she didn’t want to eat. Freda, always easygoing, didn’t bat an eye when Anna said she wasn’t hungry, and for once, Anna was glad for the housekeeper’s muteness.

She drove to the warehouse and wasn’t surprised to find Jesse already inside at his easel, intently working on an overly ambitious painting of a woman staring out a window. Anna had bought him three more canvases as well as a couple of sketchbooks, and his paintings and sketches were now strewn all over the walls of the warehouse. He’d taken to arriving very early in the morning. Sometimes he would get there before sunup, and Anna was no longer surprised to find him already at the easel when she arrived. He wanted to get as much time in the warehouse as he could before he had to go home to the farm.

On the table next to the easel, she could see that he had the Old Masters library book open, probably to one of the Vermeers, since it was clear he was experimenting with evening light in the painting. It did something to her heart, seeing this young boy’s attempt to emulate his idol, and she smiled for the first time that morning. There was so much she wanted to teach him. So much she wanted him to have the chance to learn. She wished she could take him to New York. She’d told him about the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the new Whitney Museum, but telling him about them was no substitute for actually being there. For seeing the art up close. She’d told him, too, that he would be allowed into any museum he wanted to visit in New York City. “The color of your skin wouldn’t matter up there,” she’d said. She knew that was a lie, but at the moment she said it, she felt giddy with the thought of all he could do and see in the city. But then she snapped back to reality. They were trapped in a warehouse in Edenton, and she was filled with sadness again.

“Do you want some help?” she asked, trading her sweater for the smock that hung over the back of her chair.

“Not yet,” he said. “I wanna figger this out by myself.” He stood back and studied the painting on the easel. “Can you tell who this is?” he asked.

Anna came to stand next to him, buttoning her smock over her blouse. The woman was looking out the window, and her large eyes, so much like Jesse’s, gave her identity away. Slowly, she nodded. “Your mother,” she said. “Without a doubt.” The angle of the fading daylight on the woman’s bare arms was not quite right, but she thought it best to let him see that on his own. “Did she model for you?”

“I sketched it while she was washin’ dishes,” he said, chuckling. “Then she hollered at me for jest sittin’ around, doin’ nothin’ worthwhile.”

“Did you show her the sketch?”

“Nah, it’s gonna be a surprise, this paintin’.” He nodded toward the easel. “Next week’s her birthday so this’ll be her present.”

“Oh, she’ll love it,” Anna said, hoping that was the truth. A beat of silence followed, then without thinking, she said, “Today would have been my mother’s birthday.”

She felt Jesse’s eyes on her but kept her own gaze on his painting, her hands resting on the back of the chair in front of the easel.

“Would’ve been?” he asked.

“She died in November,” she said. “Just a couple of weeks before I came here.” She glanced at him. “She killed herself.” It was the first time she’d said those words out loud. Why she said them to Jesse but not Miss Myrtle, not Pauline, she had no idea. But there they were, a burden of syllables dumped on the shoulders of a seventeen-year-old boy.

“Damn,” he said. “How … I mean … why she do that?”

Anna returned her gaze to the woman in the painting. “She had an illness called manic-depressive psychosis,” she said. “That means she would be very happy and energetic—extremely energetic—for a while—sometimes months—and then she’d be very sad for just as long. Her sadness this time lasted and lasted and … it just didn’t let up. My aunt