And then there were the nightmares about Emily Maxwell, but I supposed I would bring them with me no matter where I went.

“You’ll work on the mural in the gallery, which is only partially built at this point,” Lisa interrupted my thoughts. “There’s plenty of room in the foyer. That’s where my father wanted it displayed.”

“It’s not painted on a wall?”

“No, it’s on canvas and it was never … hung, or whatever you call it.”

“Installed,” Andrea said.

“Right,” Lisa said. “It was never installed.”

“Who painted it?”

“A woman named Anna Dale,” Lisa said. “It’s one of those Depression-era murals. You know how, during the Depression, the government hired artists to paint murals for public buildings?”

I nodded, though my knowledge of those WPA-type programs was sketchy at best.

“This mural was supposed to be for the Edenton Post Office. But Anna Dale went crazy or something—I can’t remember exactly what my father told me. She lost her mind while she was working on it, thus the finished product was never installed. My father’s owned it for decades and he wants—wanted—to hang it in the foyer of the gallery. And he said it has to be in place by the date the gallery opens.”

“August fifth,” Andrea said in case I hadn’t heard the date the first time. I most definitely had.

“That’s not even two months from now,” I said.

Lisa let out a long, anxious-sounding breath. “Exactly,” she said. “Which is why you need to start on it immediately.”

“What kind of shape is it in?” I asked.

Lisa shrugged. “I haven’t actually seen it. It’s been rolled up in a corner of my father’s studio closet all these years—it’s a massive thing—and I don’t know what condition it’s in. It must be salvageable, though, if he expected you to fix it.”

I tried to imagine what nearly seventy years would do to a huge canvas stuffed in a closet. What Lisa needed was a professional restoration company, not a novice artist. But what I needed was my freedom.

“Would I be paid?” I looked at Andrea. “If I have to pay restitution to—”

“My father left fifty thousand for the project,” Lisa interrupted.

“For the whole gallery?”

“No,” Lisa said. “For you. For you to restore the mural. Fifty K, plus another several thousand for any supplies you need.”

Fifty thousand dollars? Incredible. Even if I’d gotten my degree, I doubted I could have found a job that would pay me that much in a year’s time, much less for two months’ work. Two months’ work I had no idea how to do. I tried to keep my self-doubt from showing on my face. Uniquely qualified? Not hardly.