Lana’s Story Part 20: The Name in the Locksmith Log

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 19 here to catch up on the midnight quitclaim with my name already typed on it, the county clerk’s rejected stamp, the locksmith’s spare key Deke tossed in the dirt, and the second set of headlights rolling toward us along the north fence.

Last time, Deke Pruitt climbed back into his truck and told me to sign or watch him file everything he’d already forged. The clerk ran for her car. And Vera asked a question in the dark that none of us could answer.

“I’ve lied to you before, Lana,” Vera said, her voice breaking. “I copied Daddy’s hand once, for you. But I never opened that door. I need you to believe me until we can prove it.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted it so badly my hands hurt. But the sticky note in the clerk’s folder said one thing in careful print — Check the locksmith log. The name is not Pruitt. — and the second headlights were still coming.

Out Past the North Fence

Royce didn’t turn our lights on until we were past the cattle guard. Gravel popped under the tires. The orange survey flag disappeared behind us, and for one long breath I thought we’d made it clean.

Then the second set of headlights swung off the fence line and followed.

Not fast. Not like a chase in a movie. Just steady, like whoever was driving knew exactly where our lane went and didn’t need to hurry to get there.

“Deke’s truck turned the other way,” Vera said, twisting in her seat. “That’s not him.”

“Then who is it?” I asked.

Nobody answered. Royce’s jaw was tight. The clerk’s manila folder was crushed against my ribs, the quitclaim still folded on the floorboard like a snake none of us wanted to touch. I picked it up anyway and slid it inside the folder with the rejection form. If Deke wanted my name on that paper, he could explain to a judge how it got into our truck.

Halfway up the lane, the headlights behind us flashed twice. Bright. Dim. Bright.

Royce slowed. “That’s a signal,” he muttered. “Old ranch hands used to do that on the county road. Means pull over, I’m friendly.“

“Or means pull over so I can catch you,” Vera said.

Royce looked at me. It was my land they wanted. It was my call.

“Stop at the barn light,” I said. “Where June can see us from the porch.”

The Truck That Wasn’t Deke’s

The barn light at our place hums like a beehive. Royce parked right under it. The other vehicle rolled up twenty feet behind us and stopped, engine running, headlights still burning my eyes in the mirror.

It wasn’t a truck at all. It was an old white work van with a ladder rack and a dented side door.

The driver’s door creaked open. A thin old man climbed out slowly in canvas coveralls, a ring of keys clinking at his belt and a thick, water-stained ledger tucked under one arm. He put both hands up before he took a single step.

“Name’s Abel Haskins,” he called. “County locksmith. Thirty-one years. The clerk phoned me at ten o’clock tonight crying so hard I could barely understand her. Said if I wanted to make anything right, I’d better bring my book to the Brooks fence.”

Vera made a small sound beside me. “You made Daddy’s spare.”

Abel’s face softened in the barn light. “I did, Miss Vera. Clay asked me to keep one at the shop in case he ever fell and couldn’t get to the door. I kept it eleven years after he passed, because nobody ever told me to stop.” He swallowed. “Two weeks ago somebody came and signed it out. I didn’t think about it until the clerk told me what was missing from that house.”

“Then why were you behind Deke’s truck at the fence?” Royce asked.

“I wasn’t behind him, son. I was watching him.” Abel tapped the ledger. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

The Name in the Locksmith Log

He laid the ledger open on the hood of our truck. Pages of careful columns — dates, addresses, key numbers, signatures. He ran one crooked finger down to an entry from fourteen days ago.

Thursday. 1:40 PM. Kettering residence — spare, front door. Signed: V. Lane.

My heart stopped. June knew Vera as Vera Lane. So did everyone who’d met her doing June’s Thursday groceries.

Vera stared at the page like it had slapped her. “That’s not me,” she whispered. “Lana, that’s not me.”

Deke’s voice came back to me from the fence — ask her who learned his handwriting first. I hated how fast my mind went there. I hated that part of me took one step away from my own sister.

Abel shook his head before I could say a word. “Look again,” he said quietly. “Look at the ID number next to it.”

Next to the signature, in Abel’s own block print, was a driver’s license number with two letters in front of it.

NM.

“New Mexico license,” Abel said. “The woman who signed for that key was older than you, Miss Vera. Silver rings. Rodeo buckle. She said she was Clay Kettering’s family and she’d come to settle his estate. I believed her because she knew his dog’s name.”

Vera’s hand found my arm and held on so hard it hurt.

“The V isn’t a V,” she said. “Look at the bottom. She always closes it.”

And there it was. A little loop at the bottom of the letter, almost hidden. Not a V at all. An R.

“R. Lane,” Vera breathed. “Rita Lane. That’s my mother.”

Thursday at June’s Kitchen Table

June was on the porch before we called her, wrapped in her old barn coat, a flashlight in one hand and the kitchen calendar in the other like she’d heard every word.

“Two weeks ago Thursday,” she said, holding the calendar up to the barn light. “Vera was in my kitchen from noon until almost four. She put away my groceries. She fixed the porch screen. She sat at my table and read me the paper because my eyes were tired.” June tapped the square in red pen. Vera — groceries. “And I have the store receipt in my coffee can with her initials on the back, because I always make her sign for my change.”

Vera started crying then. Not loud. The kind of crying that’s been held in so long it doesn’t know how to come out right.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it with my whole chest. “I’m sorry I let him put that doubt in me, even for a second.”

She shook her head and wiped her face with her sleeve. “You were right to doubt. I need to tell you the rest of it, or Deke will tell it worse.”

She looked out toward the dark pasture.

“The year I lived with Daddy, my mother came up from Las Cruces twice. She’d sit at his kitchen table late at night with his old checkbooks, practicing his signature over and over. She said it was a game. She said she was teaching me how to be useful.” Vera’s voice cracked. “I was just a kid. I learned his hand at that table because she taught it to me. And when she went home angry that winter, there was a boy who used to come around with his daddy to fix fence for her. Quiet. Watched everything.”

Royce went pale. “Deke.”

“Deke,” Vera said. “He told you someone taught him the rest. It wasn’t me. It was her.”

The Woman in the Second Headlights

Abel closed his ledger very gently. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “I told you I wasn’t the only one watching Deke at that fence.”

He pointed down our lane.

At the far end, past the mailbox, a silver pickup sat in the dark with its lights off. I hadn’t seen it pull in. None of us had. Horse trailer hitch. Dust on the tailgate. And when Royce swept the flashlight across it, the beam caught a faded decal I’d seen on rodeo trailers my whole life without ever knowing what it meant.

Lane Barrel Horses — Las Cruces, N.M.

The driver’s door opened. A woman stepped down into the gravel — tall, silver rings flashing, a rodeo buckle catching the barn light, green eyes exactly like Vera’s. She didn’t come closer. She didn’t need to.

In her hand was a stack of papers I would have known anywhere. Willow’s registration papers. The ones stolen from our tack room.

“Hello, baby,” she called to Vera. Then her eyes slid to me. “And you must be Caroline’s girl. Deke is impatient. I’m not.” She lifted Willow’s papers like a gift. “I didn’t drive all the way up from Las Cruces for a quitclaim, sweetheart. I came for what Clay hid in your family’s barn the night of that fire.”

Behind me, inside our barn — the barn I’d been standing beside the whole time — the hayloft light flicked on.

Somebody was already in there.

So now I’m asking you. What did Clay Kettering hide in our barn the night of the fence-line fire? Is Rita Lane the real hand behind every forgery — or is Deke still working for someone else? And who just turned on the light in our hayloft while every one of us was standing in the yard?

Part 21 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what happens next.