“Could you ask her for me?” Anna said. “And what about Freda for my peanut factory worker?” She would have to darken the gray in Freda’s hair, as well, but Freda otherwise had a pretty, youthful face that Anna would love to capture in the painting.

Miss Myrtle chuckled. “I bet Freda would get a real kick out of that,” she said.

“Then I just need to find a willing gentleman for the lumberman and I’ll have my four women and one man.”

Miss Myrtle laughed again. “It’s going to look as though Edenton is run by women,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose it will.” Anna smiled to herself, wondering again what Mr. Drapple had proposed in his sketch.

Chapter 23. Morgan

Chapter 23

MORGAN

June 23, 2018

More and more, I welcomed the daytime hours when I could lose myself in cleaning the mural. I was working faster now that I had faith the paint wouldn’t flake from my touch. It was incredibly satisfying to see colors and details emerge from beneath the grime. Today, one week into the cleaning, I finally reached the central figures of the mural: the three Tea Party women. Their dresses were beautiful once they were freed from the muck that had coated them. Anna Dale had had no fear of color and it excited me to see the vibrancy of the mural emerge with each square I uncovered.

The first square I worked on after lunch showed a small mirror in the hand of one of the ladies. The woman held the mirror up to her face as if to powder her nose, but now that I’d cleaned the grime from the mirror’s glasslike surface, I could see that the reflection was not of the woman’s face at all, but rather the tiny image of a man. The figure was so small against the shimmery gray background of the mirror that I’d thought it was a crack in the paint at first. But no. It was definitely a man—a red-haired man wearing a brown jacket and cap, leaning against a lamppost. Another one of Anna’s bizarre anomalies. I couldn’t wait to show it to Oliver. I’d gotten into the habit of zipping through the gallery to his office after every square and dragging him back to show off my handiwork—or Anna’s handiwork, at least.

“Here she comes again,” one of the construction guys would say.

“Another hundred and forty-four square inches down!” another would add.

Oliver seemed to get a kick out of my enthusiasm, too, stopping whatever he was in the middle of doing to join me in the foyer and stare at the newly revealed block of color.