Lana’s Story Part 13: The Letter My Mother Never Sent

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 12 here to catch up on what Grandma’s letter confessed, the secret drawer in her cedar chest, and the envelope Royce opened in room six.

Last time, I was standing in the doorway of a little motel room by the feed store, watching an old man’s hands shake so hard the paper rattled. Royce had just opened the envelope Grandma hid for fifty years. And it wasn’t her handwriting. It was rounder. Younger. Signed at the bottom with a name I had only ever seen carved in stone.

Caroline.

My mother. A woman I can’t remember, writing to a father she never met. So many of you asked the same thing I was asking myself in that doorway: how did she even know? I found out. And it was the last page that I still can’t stop thinking about. Here is what happened next.

Room Six

Grandma’s instructions were clear. Let him read it by himself first. So I stepped back to close the door and give him that.

“No,” Royce said. “Please. Don’t go.”

He was still sitting on the edge of that motel bed with the letter in both hands. He looked smaller than he had at my gate. Older, all at once.

“Ruth wanted me to read it alone because she thought it belonged to me,” he said. “But this is your mother, Lana. She belongs to you a whole lot more than she ever got to belong to me.”

June squeezed my arm and stayed in the doorway. Jesse sat down on the step outside with his bad ankle stretched out, which is his way of guarding a door without saying so. And I went in and sat down next to my grandfather.

That was the first time I let myself think that word. Grandfather. It didn’t feel right yet. It didn’t feel wrong, either.

My Mother’s Handwriting

There were only two pages, and a pressed purple wildflower fell out from between them when he unfolded them all the way. Royce caught it before it hit the floor like it was the most important thing in the room.

He read it out loud. His voice was rough, but he didn’t stop.

Dear Mr. Kettering. I don’t know what I’m supposed to call you, so I’ll start with that. My name is Caroline. I’m Ruth’s daughter. I found your letters.

Mama keeps them in a feed sack at the bottom of her closet. Eleven of them. She never opened a single one, but she never threw a single one away, either. I opened them. I’m not sorry. I’m twenty-two years old, and I know how to count months on a calendar.

Royce had to stop there. He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth for a second. Eleven letters. Fifty years of thinking she just stopped loving him, and every one of those letters had been sitting in a feed sack, kept.

I’m not writing because I need anything from you. I had a good daddy. The best one. I’m writing because I’m going to be a mother this winter, and I want my baby to have every piece of her story, even the pieces that hurt.

I didn’t realize I was crying until June handed me a tissue from her coat pocket.

That baby was me.

The Girl at the Horse Show

I came to see you once. Last fall, at the cutting show in Oklahoma. I told Mama I was going to look at a horse. I sat in the third row and watched you work a sorrel mare like the two of you were sharing one brain.

Afterward I walked right up to your trailer and asked you how to keep a horse from dropping her shoulder in the turn. You told me, “Sit deep, look where you want to go, and don’t ever let her think you’re scared.” Then you said I had a good seat. I lost my nerve. I said thank you and walked away.

Royce set the page down on his knee and stared at the motel carpet.

“I remember her,” he whispered. “Curly hair. A red barn coat way too big for her. She asked about the shoulder, and I thought, that girl rides like somebody I used to know.” He shook his head slowly. “I watched her walk all the way to the parking lot. I don’t know why. I just did.”

Sit deep, look where you want to go, and don’t ever let her think you’re scared.

Grandma said those exact words to me the first time I ever got on a horse. I always thought they were hers.

Why Grandma Kept It

There was one more thing in the envelope. A square of paper in Grandma’s shaky writing, tucked behind my mother’s pages, so short it barely counted as a note.

Caroline asked me to mail this. I promised her I would. It is the only promise I ever broke to my girl. After that October, I was too afraid of what they would do if they knew she existed. Forgive me. Both of you.

After that October. The deed. Clay Kettering’s folder. Walt pulling those papers out of the county office before anyone could finish the job.

I waited for Royce to get angry. I think I wanted him to, a little, so I would know what to feel. He didn’t.

“She was protecting her,” he said. “That’s all Ruth ever did. Protect the people she loved from my family.” He folded the note very gently. “I would have done the same.”

I drove home that afternoon and did the last thing Grandma asked. I rode Raven. Bareback, no bridle, just a halter and a lead rope, out to the top of the far pasture where the grass goes gold at sunset. Sit deep. Look where you want to go. She carried me like she knew exactly what kind of day it had been.

For about an hour, I let myself think it was over. That we finally had all the pieces.

The Last Line

Royce called a little after ten that night. I was at the kitchen table in my socks with a cup of tea I wasn’t drinking.

“Lana,” he said, “I’ve read it maybe forty times now. I never turned the second page over until just now.”

I heard paper move on his end of the line.

“There’s something written on the back. Small. In pencil. Like she added it after she’d already sealed everything up and then couldn’t stand not to.”

He read it to me slowly.

P.S. Mama doesn’t know I went to see your brother. Clay Kettering told me he’d leave the farm alone, but only if I made him a promise. I made it. If you’re reading this, it means I couldn’t keep it.

The line went so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming.

My mother went to see Clay Kettering. Alone. The man who tried to take our farm.

“Royce,” I said. “What did she promise him?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “But I know my brother. And Clay never once in his life let anybody walk away from a deal.”

So now I’m asking you. What did my mother promise Clay Kettering? And what happened when she couldn’t keep it?

Part 14 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what I find out next.