“I can’t believe she loaned him that much money in the first place,” I responded. “I don’t think she would have done that for us and you’re her favorite. He must know how to charm older women.”
Ann had been mentioning the money for a couple of years, but never with much intensity. Russell, a mining engineer, was Earl’s son. He’d borrowed $10,000 to buy a piece of mining equipment, thinking he could resell it for a profit. He’d had trouble locating a buyer, and now Ann was finally impatient.
Ten thousand dollars was nothing to Ann. She was a millionaire in rental property alone. But she also was a serious businesswoman, and she kept a journal of every rent receipt, every loan and every payment. She’d often let renters who were down on their luck delay payments, sometimes letting them catch up when they received their tax refunds, but she eventually collected her money.
It wasn’t like Ann to let a loan drag on for years. When a young man in town borrowed a couple of thousand from her, she had him sign a promissory note. When he didn’t pay her back in a timely manner, she threatened to put a lien on the house he’d bought for his mother.
But Russell was kin, and Ann believed in the blood connection. Just a few weeks earlier, over the Christmas holiday, I’d been reminded of that. Earl’s other child had married a man with a daughter the same age as her daughter. The two girls had grown up like twins. I asked Ann what had happened to her niece’s now grown stepdaughter.
Ann began talking about her and casually commented, “I always got her a Christmas gift—of course, not as nice as I got my own niece.” I couldn’t imagine the two little girls, raised as sisters, receiving Christmas gifts of different value simply because one was a blood relative.
However, the blood thing was a family trait, probably part of their Kentucky roots. Not being a Kentucky native, I found it a little disconcerting. Jack said Ann and Carroll had, at one time, considered adopting a child, and I was grateful—for the child’s sake—that they hadn’t. I doubt an adopted child could have been fully welcomed into their lives. Jack’s great aunt had raised a neighbor’s child—from a poor family with too many kids—and when his great aunt died, she left little or nothing to this woman who had shared her home. Instead, this wealthy woman left stock and money to distant blood relatives, including Jack.
The blood connection was so strong that Russell could take his time paying Ann back, but eventually she’d want her money. Ann discussed all her business ventures with Jack in their weekly calls, but family loans were rarely mentioned. The fact that she’d brought up Russell’s loan showed she’d reached her limit, even for a family member.
“What’s the latest on Ann’s fiancé?” I asked. We’d only met him once when we’d come to Kentucky a few months earlier. We’d joined Ann, her fiancé Bob, Jack’s mom and another older couple for supper at a local restaurant. Bob was a dignified older man, attentive to Ann, and eager to make a positive impression on her favorite nephew.
“She told me she wasn’t sure she was ready to get married again, at least not right now,” Jack responded. “She wants to wait until Grace dies.”
The conversation turned to the conference I was attending the next day. Soon our grandsons, Taylor and Elliott, would be dropped off to spend Saturday with us, as they did each week. So we stopped thinking of the conversation with Ann, the conversation we would replay hundreds of times in the weeks and months that followed.
Sunday afternoon, January 12. My administrative assistant, Nancy, drove with me from North Georgia to a wooded retreat center east of Birmingham. As marketing director for a national mission agency, I was attending the conference of a sister agency primarily as a goodwill gesture. Nancy and I set up a small display about our agency and lured people to visit by announcing a drawing Monday afternoon.
After the first afternoon conference session on Monday, I slipped into the restroom to comb my hair before standing in front of several hundred ladies to do the drawing.
It was a women’s conference, so the ladies restroom was packed. My cell phone rang and I pulled the small Nokia from the clip on my belt. My mother-in-law’s name flashed across the screen.
All around me, women laughed, talked and primped. The buzz of my surroundings grew louder as an uneasy feeling gripped me. Iva Ray had never called my cell. She would have been concerned about interrupting me during a meeting. I knew the call had to be important, and I didn’t want to answer in front of this crowd of scurrying strangers.
I let the phone ring until it went to voicemail, then immediately retrieved the message. Uneasiness changed to panic when I heard Iva Ray’s voice. Her usually calm, controlled voice was quiet but urgent.
“Mary, call me back as soon as you get this message. Please, call me back.”
I knew something terrible had happened. I sensed it in every part of my being. I hurried out of the restroom, my mind racing wildly and irrationally. Had something happened to Jack? Or our children, Penny and Dave? Or our grandsons? I knew that it was unlikely that my mother-in-law would receive such news before me, but that didn’t ease the panic.
It was unusually cold for southern Alabama, ten degrees at best. I rushed outside in just khakis and a long-sleeved oxford shirt. Gripping my cell phone, I walked as far from the conference center as I could to hear the news alone.
I called Iva Ray, and she answered immediately. If you’ve ever been in a car accident and felt as though time went into slow motion as you waited for the impact, you’ll understand the seconds between making my phone call and hearing my mother-in-law’s words.
“Mary, it’s Ann. Someone broke into her house, and she’s gone.”
I felt an immediate relief that Jack, our children and our grandchildren were safe. Then the gravity of Iva Ray’s words hit me.
Gone? Was Ann kidnapped? Was she dead? I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t ask. I could tell from the tone of her voice the words had been too agonizing for Iva Ray to say. I couldn’t press her for more.
Then I recalled that, years ago, when Jack’s dad had died in his sleep, Iva Ray had called early one morning and told Jack, “Your daddy’s gone.”
Sleepy and confused, Jack had asked, “Where is he?”
“In heaven” was his mother’s answer.
Ann was dead. There was no use forcing Iva Ray to say the words. Sobbing, I responded to the reality of her message. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Finally, the words of confirmation: “Earl found her lying at the bottom of her basement stairs. At first, he thought she’d had a stroke. Then … will you tell Jack … and Penny and Dave?”
I wanted to know more, but again, I knew she’d told me all she could. “I’ll tell them,” I promised her. “And we’ll be there as soon as we can.”
I closed my cell phone and sank to the ground. Putting my face in my hands I sobbed until I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up to see one of the hundreds of strangers from the conference. In an almost trance-like voice, I began telling her what had happened. And through the numbness, I could think of only one way she could help me. She could get word to the conference leader that I couldn’t do the drawing.
She turned back toward the conference center, and I sat on a low rock wall. In the quiet chill of the afternoon, with tall pine trees shading the sun, I felt the most amazing presence of God. As surely as if I’d heard an audible voice, God assured me that Ann had simply walked down her basement stairs and into His presence. I tried to hold on to that vision in the awful months which followed.