Run, Rose, Run

When Ethan goes to inspect AnnieLee’s room at the Aquitaine Hotel, he figures out that a man was there with her and that he was uninvited. Ethan feels breathless, as the room reminds him of the one where his wife, Jeanie, was strangled by a stranger. Although Ethan still misses Jeanie, he tells himself, “It was time to worry about a living woman” (333). He continues to inspect the room, which is in disarray, and notices a scrape of skin on the edge of AnnieLee’s stiletto, indicating that it was used as a weapon. Shocked, he realizes that the intruder was someone AnnieLee feared so much that she threw herself off a balcony rather than face him—and he must have been someone from her past.

Ethan knows he should call the police but also knows that this might backfire, as AnnieLee would refuse to cooperate. He thinks the answers lie with AnnieLee. When he sees how little she packed for a three-week road trip, a mere duffel bag, he realizes that she was traveling light “so that at any moment she could grab everything and run” (335).

Ruthanna informs Jack that the authorities want to do a psychiatric evaluation on AnnieLee. Jack reveals his kindness when he says that although he should be on the phone with all the managerial people to save AnnieLee’s reputation, he’s merely grateful that their “sweet girl” is okay. Ruthanna feels a rush of emotion toward Jack but also guilt in case she pushed AnnieLee too far. She compares AnnieLee to Sophia and feels overwhelmed by the situation. Then, she gets a phone call from Ethan, who says that AnnieLee left the hospital alone without a word.

Ruthanna wishes that she’d been there with AnnieLee to stop her from running, while Jack laments how the media is already spinning stories about the suicidal rising star. While Jack contemplates releasing a diplomatic statement attesting to AnnieLee’s safety, Ruthanna calls her numerous times and, when that doesn’t work, files a missing person’s claim. The officer on the line says that adults are permitted to disappear without notifying friends or family.

Ethan interrupts Ruthanna’s phone call, cutting off her connection with the police. He explains that AnnieLee doesn’t trust the police and that getting them involved will make her even harder to find. He says that he’ll go out and find her himself.

AnnieLee made an easy exit from the hospital and disguised herself as a Las Vegas tourist with gear she bought from a stall. She hitches a ride with three bachelorettes who think they partied with her. Without meaning to, she says her name is Rose. She tells them that she’ll go as far as they’ll take her before hitching another ride.

AnnieLee is almost incredulous about this latest flight, knowing that she’s betraying Ruthanna, Jack and especially Ethan. She recalls how in the Salt Lake City hotel room Ethan felt relieved after his confession to her and was hoping that she’d do the same. However, “she couldn’t give him that, and she couldn’t even tell him why” (346), as she thinks her secret is worse because it’s “about a bad thing that was done to me” (346). She feels that if he learns the truth, he’ll never look at her the same way again.

Ethan borrows a secondhand truck with the intention of driving down Arkansas backroads in search of AnnieLee. He tells his lender that he’ll be back in a few days. As he drives through the desert, Ethan can’t help thinking of Afghanistan, “a place he tried not to remember” (351).

AnnieLee hitches a ride on a Freightliner parked at an Albuquerque rest stop. Her driver is a man named Foster and is headed to Oklahoma City. He asks AnnieLee if someone is waiting for her at the end of the ride, and she says yes and thinks about how she’s going to kill her pursuer when she finds him. Foster hands her a $50 bill and tells her to take a cab next time instead of riding with a stranger.

When Ethan gets a flat tire and stalls at a gas station, he begins to doubt his hunch that she’s going to Arkansas. He inspects AnnieLee’s wallet and finds no photo ID. However, he thinks he knows AnnieLee well enough to guess that she’s on the road to retaliate for the crimes against her. He’s convinced that the man who entered her hotel room was someone from her past and is the reason that she’d hitchhike home to Caster County, Arkansas. He trusts his instincts and at 6pm gets ready to go again. However, a fellow driver lets him know that he has another flat tire.

AnnieLee hitches another ride to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Back in her home state, she feels jittery but finds “vengeance […] one hell of a motivator” (358). She hitches a ride with a woman to a place about 20 miles from her destination. She wants to hitchhike the final road with someone who wouldn’t recognize her, “someone who’d believe her name was Katie—or even AnnieLee Keyes” (359). She tells a man named Wade that she’s heading to a place just outside Jasper, on the way to Rock Springs. AnnieLee is thinking about her journey when she feels Wade’s hand on her leg, and she insists that he let her out, but he says he’ll drive on. When he tries it again, she reaches for her pepper spray but finds that it’s gone. She decides that she has no choice but to throw herself out of the car and into a ditch. She feels stunned and then hears Wade coming down the hill.

Ethan calls Ruthanna from a convenience store outside Texas and reports that he’s making good time. She says that her assistant, Maya, spent hours trying to find AnnieLee online but came up with nothing. Ethan tells Ruthanna that his search territory is 800 square miles in Caster Country—and that he knows she grew up in the woods next to Little Buffalo River Creek. He insists that someone will know her and that he’ll find her.

In Boone County, which neighbors Caster, Ethan goes into a bar. He asks the people there if they know AnnieLee and shows them her picture. The bartender says that “‘a girl as pretty as that [would] […] get the hell out as soon as she could, and she wouldn’t never come back’” (365).

The next morning, Ethan drives around, asking the inhabitants of successive run-down towns if they know anything. While he finds the countryside around him “wild and beautiful,” he notes that “the abandoned buildings crumbling at the corners of empty crossroads seemed almost haunted” (366). For miles, he has no luck, but in one town a waitress acknowledges that she has heard of the country singer AnnieLee Keyes—and even sings her lyrics. When Ethan shows the waitress a backstage picture of AnnieLee, the waitress asks to see more and then exclaims, “That’s not AnnieLee Keyes […] that’s Rose McCord” (368). The waitress says that she preferred her with “her natural hair” (368). When Ethan learns that AnnieLee’s real hair color is caramel blond, he realizes that she has been lying about everything. He asks the waitress where Rose McCord used to live, and she reveals that Rose was nice until she found a boyfriend and disappeared. The waitress is suspicious about why Ethan wants to find out where Rose lived. He assures her that he’s Rose’s bodyguard. She directs Ethan to Blaine at the pawnshop, and he leaves two $20 bills and doesn’t collect the change.

Ethan buys a fishing rod and a damaged ukulele from Blaine and asks him whether he knows about a Rose McCord. He mentions that he knows her stepfather’s name is Clayton. Blaine describes Clayton as “a mean sumbitch” who will “knock the pretty right off your face” (371). Ethan insists that he wants to find Clayton, and Blaine gives him directions to a road off the highway that leads into the woods. A creepy dead maple bears a “No Trespassing” sign and two dolls hanging from the broken branches (372).

Clayton’s place looks like a rusting dump, but an incongruously shiny hunting vehicle is parked there. A man greets him by pointing a rifle in his face, and Ethan says that he’s there looking for Rose. A teenage girl and a younger girl, who both look a little like AnnieLee, poke their heads through. Clayton yells that they don’t know where Rose is and that “whatever they did to her, she deserved it” (375). The teenager admits that they haven’t seen her in a few years. Ethan tries to give the teenager his number in case Rose calls, but Clayton asks him to leave and threatens him with the gun. He takes the rifle from Clayton before leaving, realizing that it’s the same one that he once owned.

Ethan falls asleep in front of a derelict building and is awakened by AnnieLee’s teenage half-sister banging on his window. She stole her father’s truck to get to Ethan and talk to him, and she says her name Alice Rae. She tells him that to punish her, her father locks her up in her room for a few days. However, he has mellowed since his collapse and doesn’t hit the others the way he did Rose. She tells him that she thinks Rose is in danger because “if she made it this far and she didn’t come see us, it’s because she wanted to see somebody else first […] and it didn’t go well” (380). Alice Rae speculates that the man Rose wanted to find was Gus Hobbs, “a really bad man” (380) and Rose’s husband.

Ethan can’t fathom that AnnieLee has a husband and for a second wonders whether Alice Rae is lying like her sister. Still, he follows her directions to Hobbs’s house, which is surrounded by barbed wire. Ethan shores himself up, determined not to lose AnnieLee like he lost his friend Antoine and his wife Jeanie. He gets into the house through a window and sees the kitchen door swing open.

A cat opened the kitchen door, and as Ethan makes his way through it, he sees a man reclining. Immediately thinking the man is Gus Hobbs, Ethan attacks him. However, the real Gus Hobbs emerges and levels a pistol at Ethan’s chest.

Ethan sees that Hobbs is “lean but muscular, with a hard, almost handsome face” (387). Ethan can’t imagine AnnieLee living here and marrying Hobbs but tries to concentrate on the situation at hand. He obeys Hobbs’s commands, while keeping his gun in sight. Ethan tries to shoot Hobbs but puts a hole in the wall instead. He pursues Hobbs outside, demanding to know where AnnieLee is. Under pressure from Ethan, Hobbs says that a guy named Wade from the gas station found her and that she was “passed out cold, then woke up cross-eyed and saying my name” (389). Hobbs said that Wade brought her to him and that he did what he had to do: He locked her in the cellar.

Ethan is shocked but insists that Hobbs take him to AnnieLee, threatening him with a gun all the way. He finds AnnieLee curled in a corner, her hands and feet tied and tape over her mouth. His knees almost buckle with relief to find her alive. He beats Hobbs unconscious and goes to release AnnieLee. She responds that she’s okay but that she has “sure as shit been better” (391).

At a small-town police station, the cops try to question AnnieLee about what happened, to no avail. AnnieLee tells Ethan that this particular officer, Chief Anderson, did nothing to protect her: She used to call the cops when Clayton beat her, and they said she was an attention-seeking liar. Every time she ran away, they took her back to Clayton. Ethan responds by seeking a different cop, and a female officer named Danvers takes her statement.

AnnieLee tells Officer Danvers that she came back to kill Gus Hobbs. Danvers is taken aback and wants to focus on the crime committed against AnnieLee and how she ended up tied up in the cellar. AnnieLee responds that she woke up there after a kid named Wade took her to Clayton’s house.

Ethan implores AnnieLee to start at the beginning of her story, sensing that it goes back a long time. She explains how she met Gus Hobbs when she was 20 and how he initially helped her escape her stepfather’s beatings. However, he then changed and “pretty soon he’d dragged me so deep into hell I thought I’d be there forever” (396).

AnnieLee hesitates to tell the truth, as her survival ever since Houston depended on denying it. She says that initially Gus made an impact because he was the first person who was kind to her since her mother’s death. She didn’t marry him but told Clayton they’d eloped so that they could move in together. After they did, a controlling nature emerged, belying Gus’s initial charm, and he went as far as telling AnnieLee that people would hurt her if she went out without him. Although she wanted to get away, Gus wouldn’t let her, saying that she owed him and that she needed to earn back what he’d spent on her. AnnieLee is sobbing as she describes how Gus then “sold me like a goddamn used car” (398).

Ethan is furious as he hears how a man called D said that AnnieLee belonged to him now “and that if she didn’t do exactly what he said, he would go back and get her sisters,” adding that “the younger they were […] the more they were worth” (399). He set her up in a house with three other women in Little Rock and then in rotation between Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Houston. AnnieLee says she never saw daylight, only “the insides of one shitty motel room after another and my own dead eyes in the bathroom mirror” (399). She finally managed to escape to Nashville when D got drunk and fell deeply asleep in front of the TV. She ran away knowing he’d kill her if he caught her.

In Ethan’s arms, she tells them that both Gus and D came after her because she was always blabbing about how she’d one day make it in Nashville. However, in Las Vegas, D came for her himself.

She tells Ethan that she didn’t want to tell him because she worried that he wouldn’t forget what happened to her like she had to make herself forget. Ethan just holds her because he can’t find suitable words. He then tells her that he loves her and he’ll never let anyone hurt her again.

AnnieLee and Ruthanna are scheduled to perform together at the Country Music Awards at the Bridgestone Arena. Ruthanna is now in a relationship with Jack. Meanwhile, Officer Danvers made a strong case against D and put him in jail.

On stage, AnnieLee and Ruthanna are singing Ruthanna’s song “Big Dreams and Faded Jeans.” The crowd goes wild, and the two women share a special moment. Ruthanna then acknowledges that she’s going to let AnnieLee take over. AnnieLee tells the audience that her real name is Rose McCord and that she’s grateful to be free and onstage. She thanks Jack, Ruthanna, and Ethan, to whom she’s engaged. She sings her song “Dark Night, Bright Future.”

Songs by Rose McCord

These songs are by AnnieLee. “Run” is about finding the opportunity to run away from danger into new opportunity and it features a riff on the book title in the lyric “Run-run, run Rose run” (412). “Firecracker” is about her inner passion and resilience and a warning to anyone who seeks to mess with her. “Woman Up (and Take It Like a Man)” is a fight song, rallying herself and others to face their obstacles and conquer their dreams.

“Dark Night, Bright Future”—the song she sings at her triumphant gig with Ruthanna—is about hope after unbearable darkness. In the novel, many people quote a line from it: “Like the phoenix from the ashes, I shall rise again” (422).

Songs by Ruthanna Ryder

“Big Dreams and Faded Jeans” is Ruthanna’s famous song, which speaks of how hard work and being down-to-earth get you to your dreams. It’s the song she sings with AnnieLee at their gig.

Song by Ruthanna Ryder and Rose McCord

“Blue Bonnet Breeze” is a love story about a forbidden romance between a rich city boy and a poor country girl.

Songs by Ethan Blake

“Secrets” reveals Ethan’s frustration at AnnieLee’s secret-keeping and his wish to be let in and be there for her. “Lost and Found” is the song he worked on with AnnieLee and expresses that in finding her, he found company and hope. “Demons” acknowledges that while both he and AnnieLee have demons, now they don’t have to fight them alone.

Song by Ethan Blake and Rose McCord

“Love or Lust,” the duet that Ethan and AnnieLee perform, expresses the sexual tension beneath their friendship and trying to figure out what their emotions mean.