Lana’s Story Part 24: The Woman at the End of the Lane

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 23 here to catch up on the second photo hidden in Clay’s lockbox, the missing death certificate, June’s secret Christmas cards to Silver City, and the name on Rita Lane’s bond.

Last time, we learned Vera’s mother never died in any car wreck. There was no death certificate. There was a photo of a woman on a gray horse with a little girl on the fence, and Clay’s handwriting on the back: A.K. — Silver City. Don’t let her find out where. June confessed she’d mailed Vera’s picture to a post office box in New Mexico every Christmas for eleven years.

Then Sheriff Cole Pruitt called at sunrise. Somebody had posted Rita Lane’s bond in cash.

“The name on the bond is Annie Kettering.”

A Truck at the Gate

Vera was on her feet before Cole finished his sentence.

“Where is she? Where did she go?”

“Deputy saw a white Ford with New Mexico plates head south out of the jail lot,” Cole said. “Two women inside. I’ve got a car looking. Stay put. I mean it, Miss Brooks.”

We did not stay put for long.

At six-forty, while June was finally scrambling eggs because she said nobody solves anything on an empty stomach, Willow started screaming from the barn. Not her hungry whinny. Her stranger whinny. Royce was out the back door first and I was right behind him.

A white Ford pickup with New Mexico plates sat idling at the end of our lane, right where Rita’s silver truck had been two nights before.

Only one woman was inside.

She got out slowly, both hands where we could see them. Long braid gone mostly gray. Faded denim shirt. Boots that had seen real work. She looked past me, past Royce, past June on the porch with the spatula still in her hand.

She was looking at Vera.

“Hi, baby,” she said. “I’ve been driving all night trying to figure out what to say to you, and that’s the best I’ve got.”

Sisters

We sat in June’s kitchen again. Same table. Same lockbox. Different woman across from us.

Vera wouldn’t sit next to her. She stood by the window with her arms locked across her chest. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t have either.

“Rita is my older sister,” Annie said. “Eight years older. She raised me after our mama passed, and for a long time I thought that made her a saint.”

Nadine stopped typing. Royce leaned forward. June put the spatula down.

“When Vera was two, Clay’s mother noticed money missing from her savings. Big money. The transfer slips had my signature on them.” Annie turned her hands over on the table, palms up. “I never signed a single one. Rita did. She’d been practicing my hand since I was in grade school. She practiced everybody’s hand.”

“Like she taught Deke,” I said.

Annie nodded. “The sheriff before Cole was ready to charge me. Rita came to me and said she could make it all go away if I left. Left the county, left Clay, left my baby. If I stayed, she’d make sure I went to prison and Vera went to her.”

Vera’s voice was ice. “So you just left.”

“Clay and I made a plan,” Annie said. “He told everybody I died in a wreck so nobody would ever come looking for me, and so Rita would think she’d won. He set me up in Silver City with a cousin who trains horses. He was going to clear my name. He was close, baby. That lockbox was him getting close.”

“And then he died,” June said softly.

“And then he died.”

The Christmas Cards

Annie reached into her shirt pocket and laid a stack of photographs on the table. Church bulletin cutouts. A county fair picture. A newspaper clipping of Vera holding a ribbon next to a bay gelding.

Eleven of them. One for every Christmas.

June put her hand over her mouth.

“These kept me alive,” Annie said. “Every December I’d check that box, and every December there was my girl, a year older. I didn’t know who was sending them. I figured Clay set it up before he went. I wrote back once, last year, because I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

Vera finally turned from the window. She looked at the pictures. Then at Annie’s hands. Then at her own hands.

They were the same hands. Same long fingers. Same crooked pinky on the left. The card had said it: she has his stubborn chin and my hands.

“Why did you bail her out?” Vera said. “If she did all this to you. To us. Why would you pay to put her back on the street?”

A Message From This House

Annie didn’t answer right away. She pulled out her phone, unlocked it and slid it across the table to me.

“Because of this,” she said. “At four-oh-two this morning.”

It was a text message. The number was a local one, and it took me a second to recognize it because I’d only ever seen it written on the sticker on June’s wall phone. But it wasn’t the wall phone. It was the number for the cell plan June shares with the farm. The phone that sits on the charger by the back door, where anybody walking in or out can pick it up.

The message said: Rita is in county lockup. Post her bond before 6 or Vera pays for it. Come alone. Don’t tell the sheriff.

“I’ve been hiding for twenty-three years,” Annie said. “I know what Rita’s threats look like. That one wasn’t hers. Rita doesn’t text. Rita calls, because she likes to hear you scared.”

I looked at the charger by the back door.

The phone was sitting right where it always sat.

Somebody in this house had picked it up at four in the morning, while we were all here at this table, while Vera was crying on the floor and June was making coffee nobody drank. Somebody had walked to that back door and sent the one woman Clay spent his life hiding straight into Rita Lane’s arms.

Who Was at the Back Door

I made myself think about it. Really think.

Royce had been sitting by that back door all night with his boots on. Nadine had stepped out on the porch twice to “get a signal.” June had gone in and out to check on Willow. Abel had left early, out the back, before Cole ever called. And Vera had been on the floor by the stove the whole time, except for the five minutes she went to splash water on her face.

Five people. One phone. One message.

“Annie,” I said, “did Rita say anything to you in the truck? Anything at all?”

Annie’s jaw tightened. “She laughed. She said I’d been lied to my whole life by the one person I trusted most. Then she asked me to drop her at the truck stop on the highway. When I looked back, somebody was already waiting there to pick her up.”

“Who?”

“I couldn’t see a face. Just the truck.” Annie looked at Royce. Then she looked at me. “Older blue Chevy. Farm plates. A dent in the tailgate shaped like a horseshoe.”

Every head in that kitchen turned toward the window.

Because parked out by our barn, the way it’s been parked every morning for three months, was Royce’s old blue Chevy.

With a horseshoe-shaped dent in the tailgate.

So now I’m asking you. Did Royce, the man who stood between me and that barn door, really pick Rita up at that truck stop? Or did someone borrow his truck to make it look that way? And if somebody in June’s kitchen sent that text, who in this family has been working for Rita all along?

Part 25 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what happens next.