Lana’s Story Part 31: Two Blue Folders at the Pasture Gate

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 30 here to catch up on the last picture on the memory card, the locksmith behind the wheel of Cole’s car, the two pages hidden in Grandpa Hank’s barn coat, and the ride in the dark to the Kettering east pasture gate.

Last time, I shut the laptop before Sheriff Cole Pruitt could see the last picture on the card. It showed Abel Haskins, the locksmith, driving Cole’s unmarked car out of the courthouse lot with Rita Lane in the passenger seat. June and I hid Clay’s note and the twelfth page in the torn lining of Grandpa Hank’s barn coat, rode Willow double across the creek field without a light, and I met Annie at the Kettering east pasture gate before sunrise.

Then a white Haskins Lock & Key van rolled out of the fog with no headlights. June’s flashlight lit Abel up behind the wheel. And Rita Lane stepped down onto the gravel with a faded blue folder of her own and smiled at Annie like an old friend at church.

“Morning, Annie. You brought her. Just like we agreed.”

Just Like We Agreed

I have been scared plenty of times in my life. I’ve been thrown, kicked, and stepped on. I sat in a dark tack room last week listening to boots on the loft ladder. But I had never felt anything like the cold that went through me when Annie didn’t answer her.

She just stood there between me and the gate, turning that ring of keys over and over on her finger.

“Annie,” I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “Tell me she’s lying.”

Annie didn’t look at me. She looked at Rita.

“I said I’d bring her,” she said quietly. “I never said I’d give her to you.”

Rita laughed. Her own little sister had just stood up to her, and she laughed. It was a nice laugh, warm and easy, the kind of laugh that sells raffle tickets after Sunday service. “Oh, Annie. You always did think there was a difference.”

Behind the van, the driver’s door creaked. Abel Haskins climbed out and leaned against the fender with his arms folded. He didn’t come any closer. He didn’t have to. In the gray light I could see the big ring of keys clipped to his belt, and I thought about what June had said at the kitchen table. If he wanted a third key to that car, there’d be a third key.

Back in the cottonwoods, June’s flashlight never moved. She kept it right on Abel’s face, and every few seconds I heard Willow stamp and blow in the cold.

“The folder, dear,” Rita said, and held out her hand across the top rail of the gate.

Annie glanced back at me for the first time. I couldn’t read her face. Then she lifted the feed sack and passed it over the gate.

Eleven Pages

Rita didn’t open the sack right away. She set it on the hood of the van, slid out the pages, and squared them against the metal like a bank teller with a stack of bills. Then she counted. Her lips moved on every page.

When she got to the end, she counted again. Exactly the way Annie had.

“Eleven,” she said.

Nobody answered her.

“Twelve red stamps in that folder, and somehow this morning there are eleven.” She looked up, and the warm church smile was still there, but her eyes weren’t smiling at all. “And no note. Clay Kettering never put anything in a folder without writing a note to go with it. I knew that man.”

I made myself breathe. In, out. The two pages were pressed flat against my back under the coat, and I swear I could feel every crease in them.

“That’s all there was,” I said.

Rita tilted her head and looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at the coat.

“That’s Hank’s old barn coat,” she said softly. “I’d know it anywhere. He wore it to every cattle auction in this county for years.” She smiled again. “Has June ever sewn up that tear in the lining, honey? She was always going to.”

My stomach dropped straight into my boots.

Annie took one step sideways, just enough to stand between Rita and me again. Rita noticed. She noticed everything.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll do it the honest way, then.” And she opened her own blue folder.

What Was in Rita’s Folder

There weren’t many pages in it. Three, maybe four. Rita took out the top one and held it up over the gate so I could see it in the growing light, but not close enough to take.

It was a photocopy of an old county form, the kind with typewriter boxes and carbon smudges. Across the top it said Accident Report. Halfway down I could make out the words county road, creek crossing, and vehicle submerged. And at the bottom, there was a signature I didn’t need June to read for me.

“This is the only report anybody ever wrote about the night Annie went into the creek,” Rita said. “I’ve had it for a long time. I’m happy to trade. Clay’s note and that twelfth page, for this. You can burn it in June’s woodstove and nobody in this county ever has to know what really happened that night. Not Vera. Not anybody.”

“Don’t,” Annie whispered. I didn’t know if she was saying it to me or to Rita.

“And if I say no?”

Rita slipped the page back into her folder. “Then I drive into town with Abel, and by lunchtime half the county is reading it over coffee at the feed store. Vera will be one of them.” She glanced at Annie. “I doubt she’d like to find out that way. Would you, Annie?”

Annie’s face went white. The keys finally stopped turning on her finger.

For one terrible second, I actually reached for the button at the top of the coat. I thought about Vera upstairs at June’s, still asleep, after twenty-three years of thinking her mother was dead. I thought about how she’d finally started laughing again this month. I thought about how much one piece of paper could take away from her.

Then I heard June’s voice behind me, sharp as a snapped branch.

“Lana Brooks, you keep your hands at your sides.”

June Walks Out of the Trees

She came out of the cottonwoods leading Willow, with Hank’s big silver flashlight in her other hand. She was limping a little from the ride, and there was frost on the hem of her coat, and I have never in my whole life seen anybody look so tall.

She stopped right beside me and kept the light pointed past Rita, straight at Abel.

“Morning, Rita,” she said. “You’ve gotten up awful early to rob a girl at a cattle gate.”

“Nobody’s robbing anybody, June. We’re trading.”

“A trade is when both people get to walk away.” June’s voice didn’t shake once. “This is you standing on Kettering ground at dawn, with a man who can open any lock in three counties, asking my granddaughter to undress in a pasture.”

For the first time, Rita’s smile slipped.

“Seven o’clock was the generous offer,” she said. “Now is now.”

She nodded once to Abel. He pushed himself off the fender and walked to the gate. There was a heavy chain and padlock wrapped around the post, the kind the Ketterings had used for as long as I could remember. Abel didn’t even look at his ring. He just picked out one small brass key, slid it in, and the lock dropped open in his hand like it had been waiting for him.

The chain rattled to the ground. The gate swung in an inch on its own weight.

Willow threw her head up and backed against her reins, and June let her. I backed up too. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it over the creek.

“A key for every lock,” Rita said. “Abel’s very good at his job.”

Cole Followed the Hoofprints

That’s when the light hit all of us.

Not June’s flashlight. Headlights. Two of them, coming fast down the field road behind the cottonwoods, bouncing over the frozen ruts. The engine roared, then cut out, and a car door slammed hard enough to echo off the loading chute.

Somebody was running toward us across the pasture.

It was Cole.

No hat. Jacket half zipped. Breathing like he’d run the whole way. And behind him, in the headlights, I could see exactly how he’d found us. Willow’s hoofprints in the frost, dark as ink, a perfect trail across the creek field from June’s back gate to right where I was standing.

“Nobody move,” he said, and his hand was on his belt. “Abel. Step away from that gate.”

Abel stepped back. Slowly. He put both hands up, and the brass key glinted between his fingers.

I thought Rita would run. I thought she’d at least look afraid. But she just turned toward Cole as calm as anything and tucked her blue folder under her arm.

“Sheriff,” she said. “Right on time. I was hoping you’d come.”

Cole stopped about ten feet from the gate. “It’s over, Rita.”

“Is it?” She slid the photocopy back out of the folder and held it up so the headlights shone right through the paper. “Then tell this girl whose name is signed at the bottom of the only accident report anybody ever wrote about Annie’s car going into that creek. Tell her who climbed down the bank in the dark that night. Tell her who wrote down that nobody came back up.”

Cole didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to. I watched every bit of color drain out of his face, the same way it had at June’s kitchen table when he finally opened his hand and gave me that memory card.

Annie made a small sound beside me. Not a word. Barely a breath.

“Cole,” she whispered. “You promised me.”

June’s flashlight beam dropped to the frozen grass. Willow went perfectly still. And under Grandpa Hank’s old barn coat, I could feel those two pages pressed flat against my back, and I suddenly didn’t know who in this whole county I was supposed to be protecting them from.

So now I’m asking you. What did Cole promise Annie the night she went into the creek? Is the sheriff who’s been trying to save us the one who helped bury her secret? And should I hand Rita those two pages, or keep them no matter what it costs Vera?

Part 32 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what happens next.