His father gave him an address near the rail station. “Try the old framing shop. Mrs. Renner kept Leona’s unused display pieces after the exhibition fell apart. If anyone knows whether she’s alive, it’ll be Alma.”
Owen thanked him and hung up. He stood beneath the mural for another minute. At the painted woman’s feet was a broad golden path that the committee had labeled THE ROAD TOGETHER. Owen recalled his father insisting it was not a road. Leona had painted a ribbon cut from a garment, a reminder that a city was made through mending as much as through construction.
As he examined the brushstrokes, he noticed a narrow strip beneath the paint that had not been cleaned. A sequence of tiny handprints ran along the edge. The volunteers had restored some in blue and yellow; others vanished under white primer. Each handprint was distinct. One had only three fingers. One carried a small mark where a ring would sit.
“Do you know why there are handprints down here?” Owen asked the nearest volunteer.
The teenager shrugged. “Etta told us to cover them. She said they were tests.”
Owen took a step back. The handprints were not tests. They looked like signatures that could be touched and recognized without reading a name. And someone was in the process of painting them out before the Saturday crowd arrived.
CHAPTER THREE: ALMA’S WINDOW
Alma Renner’s framing shop occupied the narrowest building on Market Street, wedged between a locksmith and a grocery with a faded green awning. The bell over the door rang when Owen entered. Rows of sample frames lined the walls, and the air smelled of sawdust, polish, and coffee that had been reheated too many times.
Alma was nearly eighty, with strong forearms and a silver braid tied behind her head. She recognized Owen before he introduced himself. “You have your father’s ears,” she said. “And you’re late.”
“For what?”
“For realizing this wall was never one woman’s picture.”
Owen laid a photograph of the ceramic moth on her counter. Alma studied it without touching his phone. “Leona’s first touch-marker. That one came from the east panel. Where did you find it?”
“By my mailbox. Somebody set it there before the box burned.”
Alma exhaled slowly. “Then she finally sent it.”
“Leona?”
“She’s alive, Owen. And she’s been trying to reach the restoration committee for months. Every invitation came back unanswered or declined. Etta claimed Leona wanted no part of the celebration.”
“Where is she?”
“On the coast, at a school for ceramic artists. She can’t travel far at the moment. But she has students in town. One of them brought me a package on Monday.”
Alma reached beneath the counter and lifted out a shallow cardboard box. Inside lay dozens of ceramic moths and narrow slips of paper bearing names. No legal seals, no certificates, just the ordinary labels of a workshop: people remembering what they made. The names belonged to bricklayers, bakers, teachers, gardeners, children. Many of them were still living in Briar Glen.
