She drew the collar of her coat closer to her throat as she walked the few blocks to the post office, passing dozens of businesses along Broad Street: department stores, barbershops, drugstores, a hardware store, a grocery store, a filling station, a bank. The street bustled with people. The town was not as quiet as she’d first thought, and every single person she passed—every single one of them, man, woman, and child—nodded a greeting to her as she walked by, which made her forget about the unappealing waterfront and lifted her mood. That would not happen if a stranger walked down Front Street in Plainfield, she thought.

She took a picture of the local theater as she passed it. The theater’s name stood out in huge letters above the roof: TAYLOR. The marquee announced that Dancing Co-ed with Lana Turner was playing. Her mother would have loved to see that film. Why, Mom? she thought, biting her lip. Why did you do it when there were still things you were looking forward to? Turning her back on the theater, she continued her walk.

The post office stood across the street from an Episcopal church and graveyard. The small brick building looked quite new. Its four front windows were topped by smart striped awnings, and slender pillars flanked the front doors. A flag flew from a pole on the roof. Inside, Anna felt a jolt of excitement when she spotted the wall where her mural would be installed. The bare space was above the door to the postmaster’s office and she instantly realized that she could divide one large canvas into three images if she chose to. Three images connected to one another by style, but reflecting three different elements of the town—whatever they might turn out to be. She stood there for several minutes, snapping pictures of the space, oblivious to anything else going on behind her in the small post office.

“Can I help you?”

She turned at the sound of a male voice and spotted the clerk behind the counter eyeing her curiously. Two customers, both women, were also gazing at her, and she wondered if she looked quite silly standing there in the middle of the room, taking pictures of a blank wall. She felt very much the stranger, then, but she smiled and they smiled back.

“I’m looking for the postmaster,” she said. “Is he in?”

“Just knock on that door.” The clerk gestured to the door in front of her. She knocked and was immediately invited inside.

The man behind the desk was almost exactly what she’d imagined. He was a string bean of a man—middle-aged and very tall. He had a graying brown mustache that matched his graying brown hair. He had on metal-rimmed glasses and he smoked a pipe, a fragrant curlicue of smoke rising toward the ceiling. The only surprise was his remarkably bushy eyebrows. On his desk was a nameplate: Clayton Arndt.