I nodded. “All right,” I said, whispering back. “Lisa’s angry with me, though. She called my PO. Even talked about firing me.”

“That’s crazy,” he said. “None of it was your fault. And we’ll find a way for you to keep working. I’ll talk to her.”

“No, don’t,” I said, my hand on his arm. I loved having an excuse to touch him. “Might make things worse.”

He hesitated, then nodded. He gestured toward the mural. “Why don’t you focus on everything that’s at chair level for a while,” he said. “It might be awkward, but maybe you can keep your ankle elevated that way. There’s a stool in my other office … my real office down the hall … It should be the right height for you to rest your foot on. What do you think?”

I looked at the mural. The lumberjack’s perfect arm I’d created—or at least, the perfect arm Anna Dale had created and I’d re-created—gave me enormous pleasure, so much so that it nearly erased the misery of the night before. Lisa would consider replacing me? I couldn’t imagine losing this. This work. This joy. And if I lost my work on the mural, I’d also lose my freedom.

“Good idea,” I said to Oliver. “Thanks.”

Oliver disappeared into the interior of the building and returned a moment later with a short stool I recognized from his makeshift office. He set it down for me, then gave me a quick, gentle hug I wished would last longer.

“I would have missed you if Lisa let you go,” he said, and that tiny image of him grew a little bigger in the empty space of my heart.

Chapter 44. Anna

Chapter 44

ANNA

March 14, 1940

Although there were still some very nippy days, spring definitely began early in Edenton. Quite suddenly, the little town felt like a different place. The waterfront was alive with fishing boats that glittered with herring, and the air near the wharf reeked quite nauseatingly of fish.

“You won’t even notice the smell in a couple of days,” Miss Myrtle assured Anna, who found that impossible to imagine.

Away from the water, gardens bloomed with color, and only then did Anna realize how badly she needed spring and growing things and all those vibrant colors surrounding her. The more color there was in her world, the happier she was, and she thought she now understood her mother’s passion for photographing flowers, preserving them in pictures she could enjoy when the cold weather set in.

Yet Anna wasn’t getting to see—or smell—too much of Edenton’s springtime: she was practically living in the warehouse these days.