Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 7 here to catch up on the text I never should have sent, Walt’s empty ammo box, and the hand on my shoulder in June’s hayloft.
Last time, I was lying flat in the hay above Willow’s stall with June Whitaker on one side of me and Travis Pruitt on the other. Dale had just thrown Walt’s empty box against the wall. Raven had just whinnied from the cottonwoods loud enough to wake the whole county. And a big, heavy hand had settled on my shoulder in the dark while a calm voice said, “Morning, Miss Brooks. Thanks for the text.”
Some of you guessed right. Most of you guessed wrong. A few of you just typed a lot of screaming emojis, and honestly, same. Here is what happened next.
The Voice Behind Me in the Hayloft
I didn’t scream. I don’t know how. I think my body was too scared to remember it had a voice.
“Easy,” the man whispered. “Eli Ortiz. State Police. Your vet is my aunt.” He crouched down beside me, and in the gray light coming through the boards I saw a tired face, a ball cap, and a trooper’s jacket zipped up to his chin. “You sent me a recording at two in the morning. I listened to it twice and drove out here. I’ve been up in this hay since four.”
That text. Not the stupid one I sent to the sheriff’s office. The one I sent from my tack room, with Marlene standing over my shoulder.
I wanted to hug him. I wanted to cry. I did neither, because down below, every flashlight in that barn was pointed at the cottonwoods, and Dale Pruitt was already yelling.
“There’s a horse out there! Go!”
Two of his men ran out the big doors toward the trees. Toward Raven.
Raven in the Cottonwoods
“Stay down,” Eli said. “I’ve got two cars coming. Ten minutes, maybe less.”
Ten minutes is a very long time when someone is running toward your horse in the dark.
Raven has been mine since she was a skinny, wild-eyed yearling nobody else wanted. She is stubborn and spooky and she hates puddles, and she is the best thing I have ever done with my life. I was already pushing up onto my knees when Travis put his hand on my arm.
“Let me,” he said quietly.
Before any of us could stop him, he swung down the loft ladder, walked straight out the back of the barn and around the side, right into the beams of those flashlights, with his hands up.
“Dad,” he called. “It’s just me. I tied the horses out there. Nobody else is with me.”
The men stopped. The flashlights swung onto him. And I watched from the gaps in the boards as Dale Pruitt walked out of Willow’s stall, still holding that shovel, and looked at his only son like he had never seen him before.
Travis Stands Up to His Father
“Where’s the old woman?” Dale said.
“Safe,” Travis said. “Somewhere you’re never going to find her.”
I have heard a lot of brave things said in barns. Grandma once told a cattle buyer twice her size to get off her property or she’d let the bull out. But I have never heard anything braver than a twenty-two-year-old feed store boy telling his father no for the very first time in his life.
“There’s a recording, Dad,” Travis said, and his voice only shook a little. “Of everything. The papers. The buyer. What you did to June. It’s already gone to people who don’t play cards with you.”
Dale raised that shovel. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.
Eli was down the ladder before I could blink. “State Police! Put it down, Dale.”
And then, all at once, there were lights everywhere. Blue and red, sweeping across June’s yard, as two trooper cars came flying up the gravel drive. Deputy Cole Harlan took one look and started walking very fast toward his cruiser. He didn’t get there. A trooper stepped out right in front of him and calmly held out his hand for the keys.
Dale dropped the shovel in the dirt. He didn’t say another word.
Only My Mare Knows
By the time the sun came up, the men from Oklahoma were sitting in the back of one car and Dale was sitting in the back of the other. Travis stood by the fence with his arms wrapped around himself, and I went and stood next to him without saying anything, because sometimes that’s all a person needs.
June sat on an overturned water trough, holding Walt’s note in both hands. She read it again and again. The real one isn’t here. Only my mare knows where it is.
“His mare,” she said finally. “Not Willow. Walt never called Willow his mare. Willow was always mine.” She looked up the hill behind the barn, where one big lonely oak stands against the sky. “Belle. Willow’s mama. We buried her under that oak the winter Walt got sick. He went up there every evening until he couldn’t walk anymore.”
Then I called Jesse, because I had promised him I would. He picked up before the first ring finished.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he said, and the way he said it made my knees go soft.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Everyone’s okay. Raven is fine. I’ll tell you everything. Stay on that couch.”
“Lana.” A pause. “When you get home, I have something to tell you too.”
I hung up with my cheeks burning and found June smiling at me like she knew exactly what that phone call was about.
What We Found Under the Old Oak
We walked Willow up the hill. June held the lead rope, and halfway up she unclipped it and just let her go.
That stubborn gray mare didn’t graze. She didn’t wander. She walked straight to the old oak, stopped beside a flat river stone half sunk in the grass, and lowered her nose to it. And she stood there, perfectly still, like she had done it a thousand times.
“Every evening,” June whispered. “She goes up here every single evening. I always thought she missed her mama.”
Eli rolled the stone back. Under it, wrapped in an old oilcloth, was a coffee can sealed shut with layers of tape. Inside was everything June had told us about. The real deed. The proof of who forged those papers in 1998. A letter in Walt’s handwriting that started My dearest June, which she pressed against her heart without reading.
But there was something else at the very bottom. A second envelope. Yellowed, soft as cloth, and addressed in that same careful handwriting.
For Ruth Brooks.
My grandmother.
My hands were shaking so hard June had to help me open it. Inside was another deed, with a crooked county stamp from 1998. It was a deed to my farm. My barn. My pasture. The land Grandma left me.
And at the bottom, in neat blue ink, was my grandmother’s signature, signing all of it away to a name I had never heard before in my life.
So now I’m asking you. Did Grandma really sign that? And who is the stranger whose name is on my farm?
Part 9 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what Lana learns about her grandmother’s secret.