“And listen, dear,” Miss Myrtle said, “I nearly forgot. A reporter stopped by to talk to you. He’ll be coming back tomorrow afternoon. Said he wants to talk to the lady who’s making a painting for the post office.”

“A reporter!” Anna said. The word alone made her nervous. “I don’t have anything to say to a reporter. At least not yet.”

“Oh, sure you do,” Miss Myrtle said. “Tell him you’re going to paint something that will make Edenton proud.”

Miss Myrtle’s words still rang in her ears by the time she climbed into bed that night. Her head was so full of all she’d seen and heard and experienced over the last week, it was hard to separate one idea from another. But slowly, as she lay there sleepless, the mural began to take shape in her mind. She got out of bed around midnight, carried her sketch pad downstairs, and sat in the chilly living room to draw by lamplight. How she would include everything she wanted to without making a mess of it, she wasn’t sure. The ladies at the Tea Party would be front and center, whether the gentlemen liked it or not. The ladies were a bit of a problem as she sketched, though, since she had no models to work from. She would have to use models for the full-sized cartoon, that was clear. At that moment, though, she just wanted to get her ideas down so that once her art supplies arrived from Aunt Alice, she could begin working on the thirty-six-by-eighteen-inch sketch she needed to turn in to the Section for approval.

She thought of the reporter who wanted to talk to her. What could she tell him? It would be embarrassing if she described the mural taking shape in her imagination only to have the Section reject her sketch. But then she thought of Miss Myrtle’s words and relaxed. She didn’t need to describe her idea to him. She’d tell him the truth: all she cared about was creating a mural that would make Edenton proud.

Chapter 13. Morgan

Chapter 13

MORGAN

June 15, 2018

I found two bare-chested men—Wyatt and Adam—and a T-shirt-clad Oliver on the wide lawn outside the gallery as they put the final touches on the largest stretcher I’d ever seen. For a moment, I stood back, watching them from the sidewalk. Wyatt and Adam seemed to be working under Oliver’s supervision, because he stood at the edge of the yard in his blue T-shirt, earbuds loose around his neck, motioning to them.

“Hey, Morgan,” he called, waving me over, and I walked toward him. “They have a little more work to do on the interlocking joints,” he said, “and then we can tack on the mural and set it up against the wall for you to work on. You’re probably champing at the bit to get started on it.”