Lisa looked at her watch. “For a while,” she said. “We can’t stay too long. I have a world of calls to make yet tonight.”

“Okay,” I said, and as Lisa headed back toward the kitchen, I turned my attention once more to Mama Nelle. The women on either side of the old woman gave me looks of caution.

“She don’t remember much of anything, honey,” one of them said quietly. “Don’t put much stock in what she say.”

I gave them an “okay, fine” smile before riveting my gaze on Mama Nelle.

“How did you know Anna Dale?” I asked.

“Who?” Mama Nelle responded.

“You were just saying you remembered Anna … Miss Anna. The mural painter?”

“The mural, yes. In the big barn.”

“Big barn?”

“Where she done paint it.” Mama Nelle lifted her trembling arms into the air again, wide apart. “Was like a … a big white garage wit’ big ol’doors,” she said.

“The warehouse!” I said, remembering the photograph and article Oliver had shown me from the paper. “You’re right. She painted in a big warehouse. Can you tell me what she was like? Miss Anna?” I didn’t feel as though I could come right out and ask the old woman if Anna had been crazy.

“We had to be very quiet,” Mama Nelle said. She lifted a shivering finger to her lips. “Shh.”

“You had to be quiet while she painted?” I asked. “So she could concentrate?”

“No, not then,” Mama Nelle said. “We couldn’t let nobody know nothin’ ’bout her.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I tol’ you, honey,” the woman born in 1950 said. “Half of what she say these days don’t make no sense, so don’t worry ’bout it.”

I barely heard her, my attention on Mama Nelle. “Would you like to see a picture of the mural?” I asked her, leaning to the side so I could pull my phone from my jeans pocket.

“Her eyes ain’t so good,” another of the women warned me.

I swiped the screen of my phone until I reached one of my first pictures of the entire mural. I held it up in front of Mama Nelle.

“What’s that?” Mama Nelle asked.

“A picture of the mural Anna Dale—Miss Anna—painted,” I said. “Though it’s been in storage and is very dirty. Probably very different from when you last saw it.”

Mama Nelle frowned. “Jes’ a big ol’ blur to me,” she said.

“Let me see it,” the 1950 woman said, and I held the phone in front of her.

The woman laughed. “That’s a big mess, that’s what that is. How you expect her to make anythin’ out of that?”

I looked at the picture myself. I supposed to someone not accustomed to seeing the damaged mural every day, it did look a mess. To me, though, it was becoming a source of fascination.