Chapter 12: The Lot

Lacey left before one in the morning, and I did not stop her.

At the door she turned and said, "Don't tell Boone I came."

"I won't."

"He's weak, Dani. He isn't cruel. Hoyt is the cruel one."

"That doesn't help me."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry anyway."

She drove away with her headlights low.

I locked the side door, and then I stood in the middle of the shop with the map spread on the bench, and my father's voice in my head.

You keep the paper, Dani. A man can lie to your face. He can't lie to a deed.

Ray Rawlins had kept a gray fireproof box under the cot in the back room for as long as I could remember.

He had told me, three weeks before his heart stopped, that the key was in the pulley on the drill press.

I had never gone looking.

I had been burying him, and then I had been building a clubhouse and marrying a man.

I knelt beside the cot now and dragged the box out with both hands.

The pulley was cold and rusty, and when I unscrewed the cap there was a little steel key tucked in the hollow.

My fingers shook so hard it took three tries to turn it in the lock.

Inside, in a manila envelope that had gone soft at the edges, were four things.

The first was his will, signed, with the notary stamp still crisp.