Oh my God. August 5? Was this the reason Jesse wanted the gallery to open on that date? To commemorate his receiving the National Medal of Arts? If that was the case, the medal was more important to him than it appeared to be, hanging in the hallway here between the sunroom and bathroom. We needed to move it to the gallery.

We.

I stunned myself as the pronoun passed through my mind. We. Not they. The gallery was no longer simply my job. My mere ticket out of prison. It had become more to me than that.

Carefully, I lifted the framed medallion from the wall and carried it into the kitchen. I propped it up against the fruit bowl on the island, then wrote a note for Lisa. Check out the date! We need to hang it in the gallery.

Then, with a smile on my face, I went to bed.

Chapter 34. Anna

Chapter 34

ANNA

January 28, 1940

Following the directions Jesse had given her, Anna drove into the countryside, imagining what her afternoon with the Williams family would be like. Sunday dinner would be at three o’clock because they apparently spent the entire morning and early afternoon at church. Anna hoped they didn’t ask her about her own churchgoing habits—or lack thereof. She felt nervous about this visit. What right did she have to tell a mother and father how they should handle their son?

She expected that they would be very poor, like so many colored families. She pictured their farm on a small plot of land. Perhaps they were sharecroppers and their home little more than a rundown shack. She needed to prepare herself to feel even more like a fish out of water than she already did in Edenton.

As soon as she pulled into the long driveway of the white, two-story farmhouse, she knew her expectations had been wrong. She had faulty preconceived notions about people, just like everyone else, she thought. She had prejudgments. She had prejudices.

The house was not huge by any means, but it was not a shack, either. On either side of it stretched fields, fallow now for the winter. A truck and a wagon were parked on one side of the house, a dusty black sedan on the other. She stopped her Ford in the driveway and dogs appeared from nowhere to greet her as she got out of the car. Four of them clustered around her, barking, tails wagging. They seemed friendly enough and she held out her hand for them to sniff. Jesse came out of the house, screen door slapping closed behind him, and told the dogs to “hush.”

“Dinner’s near ready,” he said in greeting. “Come on inside.”