Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 11 here to catch up on the answer I gave Royce, the line in Grandpa’s handwriting hidden in the family Bible, and the sealed letter June brought me at sunrise.
Last time, I was standing in my driveway in yesterday’s clothes, with Willow blowing warm air on my shoulder and June Whitaker holding out an envelope I never knew existed. Thick. Sealed. Newer than the one Royce brought. And on the front, in Grandma’s loopy handwriting, five words.
For Lana. When Royce comes.
So many of you told me to open it right away. A few of you said to wait for the test. One of you just wrote, “Ruth planned this, so trust Ruth,” and I read that one three times. Here is what happened next.
The Envelope on My Kitchen Table
I didn’t open it in the driveway. I couldn’t. My hands weren’t working right, and the wind kept trying to pull it out of my fingers.
So I put Willow in the round pen with a flake of hay, and I walked June up to the house, and I set that envelope down on the kitchen table right between the cold coffee mugs from the night before. Then I just stared at it.
Jesse came in from the tack room, still limping, his hair flat on one side from the couch. He looked at the envelope, then at June, then at me. He didn’t ask a single question. He just started a fresh pot of coffee, because that is who he is.
“She wrote it the winter before she passed,” June said softly. “She sat at my kitchen table for two whole afternoons. Wouldn’t let me read a word. When she sealed it, she made me swear on my own mother’s grave.”
“Did she say anything else?” I asked.
June smiled a little, the way you smile when a memory hurts. “She said, ‘Lana will want to wait. Tell her not to.'”
That was Grandma. Even from the other side, still telling me what to do.
So I picked up a butter knife and slid it under the flap.
What Grandma Wrote
There were three pages, written front and back. Her handwriting was shakier than I remembered, but it was hers. The loopy capital R. The little tail at the end of her name.
I read it out loud. I had to. If I stopped, I knew I would never start again.
My Lana. If you are reading this, then Royce has finally come home to this valley, and I am not here to explain myself. I’m sorry for that. I was a coward about exactly one thing in my whole life, and it was this.
Your mother was Royce’s daughter. I told your grandfather the night he asked me to marry him. I thought he would walk away. Instead he took my hand and said, “Then she’ll have two people who love her before she’s even born.” Hank never once went back on that, not for one single day.
I never told Royce because I was afraid. Not of him. Of his family. I knew what Kettering men did to things they thought belonged to them. I could not let them take my baby the way they tried to take everything else.
June had both hands over her mouth. Jesse had stopped pouring coffee halfway, and the pot was just hanging there in the air.
I turned the page.
The Secret in the Cedar Chest
There is something I kept for him all these years. I couldn’t throw it away and I couldn’t give it back. Look in my cedar chest. On the left side, near the bottom, there is a dark knot in the wood. Press it hard. Your grandfather built that drawer for me the spring your mother was born, and nobody else alive knows it is there.
I was already out of my chair.
The cedar chest still smelled like lavender soap and saddle oil. I took everything out. The wedding quilt. The show ribbons. The family Bible. I ran my fingers down the left side until I found it, a dark round knot about the size of a quarter, and I pushed until my thumb hurt.
Something clicked. A thin drawer slid out of the bottom of the chest, so smooth it was like it had been waiting for me.
Inside, on faded blue velvet, was a tiny ring box. And under it, a photograph of a baby in a white bonnet sitting on the saddle of a paint mare, with a young Grandma holding her steady. On the back, in pencil: Caroline, one year old. For her father, someday.
And under the photograph, one more envelope. Sealed. Addressed to just one word.
Royce.
Driving to Town
I opened the ring box with Jesse looking over my shoulder. It was a thin gold band with one small stone, scratched from being worn, then not worn, for fifty years.
“That’s from the fair,” June whispered. “She wore it on a chain under her shirt the whole first summer she was back. I always wondered what happened to it.”
I went back to the kitchen and read the last page of Grandma’s letter. It was short.
Give him the ring and the picture. Give him the letter with his name on it, and let him read it by himself first. It is not mine to read to him. Then come home and ride Raven, baby girl. Whatever you learn, you are still mine. Love, Grandma.
I didn’t cry. I think I was past that. I just went down to the barn and stood with my forehead against Raven’s neck until my breathing matched hers. She shoved me with her nose, twice, the way she does when she wants me to get on with it.
So I got on with it. Jesse rode shotgun with his bad ankle propped on the dash, and June followed in her old truck. All the way to town, I held that envelope on my lap like it might fly away.
The Letter Wasn’t From Grandma
Royce’s silver pickup was parked right outside room six at the little motel by the feed store. He opened the door before I even knocked, like he had been sitting up all night waiting. Maybe he had.
I gave him the photograph first. He held it so carefully, like it was made of glass. He touched the baby’s face with one finger and didn’t say anything for a long, long time.
Then I gave him the ring. He laughed, one short broken laugh, and closed his hand around it.
Then I gave him the envelope.
He sat down on the edge of the motel bed and opened it, just like Grandma asked, by himself, with the three of us waiting in the doorway. I watched his eyes move across the first lines. And then I watched every bit of color drain out of his face.
He looked up at me. His hands were shaking so hard the paper rattled.
“Lana,” he said. “This isn’t your grandmother’s handwriting.”
He turned the page around so I could see it. The writing was rounder. Younger. And at the very bottom, it was signed with a name I had only ever seen on a headstone.
Caroline.
My mother.
So now I’m asking you. What did my mother know? And why did Grandma keep her letter hidden all these years?
Part 13 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what my mother wrote to the father she never met.