“I remember my father telling me it had originally been rolled paint side in, though,” Lisa said. I glanced at her and could see that she had a death grip on her phone. She was as worried as I was about what we would find. “I don’t know for how long,” Lisa continued. “Hopefully it didn’t do too much damage.”

The men had finished unrolling the canvas, which had been wrapped around an enormous, thick, sturdy cardboard tube. Adam and Wyatt rolled the tube aside.

“It’s massive,” I said, overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of the canvas.

“So how do we turn it over without wrecking it?” Adam asked.

Oliver lowered himself to his haunches at one corner of the overturned mural. He touched one ragged-looking edge of the canvas. Lifted it gingerly to peer beneath. “The artist left a good eight inches of unpainted canvas on the borders.” He looked up at Adam and Wyatt. “Get me an eight-foot two-by-four,” he said.

Adam and Wyatt took off for the interior of the building, while Lisa walked toward the windows and began typing on her phone. Oliver turned to me. “Have you worked on one this size?” he asked.

“No,” I said, trying to produce a self-confident smile. “This’ll be a first.” An understatement.

The men quickly returned with the long piece of wood. I watched while Oliver laid it on one of the short ends—short being a relative term—of the canvas and tacked it into place with some device he’d pulled from his pocket. Then he got to his feet, nodded to Wyatt, and they carefully lifted the two-by-four, raising it high above their heads, while Adam and I gently unfolded the canvas from beneath it. Finally the canvas, still covered with the muslin, lay flat on the floor. Oliver stood on one side with Wyatt on the other, and the two men slowly pulled the muslin aside until the full mural was revealed.

I stared wordlessly at the grimy painting. We all did. It took thirty seconds at least before I finally said what all of us were surely thinking.

“What the hell?”

Chapter 6. Anna

Chapter 6

ANNA

December 7, 1939

Anna was the last to arrive in her hotel restaurant, although she was right on time—noon—and she had the feeling the four men—the important gentlemen of Edenton—had met early to discuss how to deal with her. She wore her dark blue dress—the one her mother had loved on her—along with her white gloves and blue pillbox hat. She thought she looked every inch the lady.