Lana’s Story Part 14: The Promise My Mother Made Clay Kettering

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 13 here to catch up on my mother’s letter to Royce, the girl in the red barn coat at the horse show, and the penciled line on the back of the last page.

I didn’t sleep. I sat at that kitchen table until the tea went cold and the window went from black to gray, reading one sentence over and over in my head the way Royce had read it to me on the phone.

Clay Kettering told me he’d leave the farm alone, but only if I made him a promise.

My mother was twenty-two. Pregnant with me. And she walked alone into the house of the man who tried to steal our land. So many of you asked what she promised him. By noon that day, I knew. And I almost wish I didn’t.

The Only Person Still Alive Who Was There

At six in the morning I fed the horses, because the horses don’t care what kind of night you had. Raven pushed her nose into my jacket pocket looking for peppermints, and I let her find one. Then I called June.

“Did Mama ever tell you she went to see Clay Kettering?” I asked.

The line went quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped.

“Come over, honey,” June finally said. “Not on the phone.”

June has known my family since before Grandma got married. If anybody alive knew what happened that winter, it was her. I picked up Royce at the motel on the way. He was already waiting outside room six in his good hat, like he had known I would come.

June’s Kitchen

June poured three cups of coffee and didn’t drink hers. She sat down across from us and folded her hands on the table like she was in church.

“Caroline came to my house that night,” she said. “After. She was soaked to the bone. It was sleeting, and she’d driven all the way back from the Kettering place with the heater broken. She made me swear on my mother’s Bible I wouldn’t tell Ruth.”

Royce didn’t move. I don’t think he was breathing.

“Clay told her he’d drop the claim on the farm,” June went on. “Pull the papers, leave Ruth and Hank alone for good. All she had to do was sign one thing.”

“Sign what?” I said.

June looked straight at me.

“Papers giving him first say over the baby, if anything ever happened to her. Over you, Lana.”

What Clay Wanted

I set my coffee cup down because my hand wasn’t steady anymore.

“Why would he want a baby?” I asked. “He didn’t even know whose baby I was.”

“Oh, he knew,” Royce said quietly. It was the first thing he’d said since we sat down. “Clay always knew everything. He must have figured it out the second she walked into his house with that red hair and my mother’s eyes.”

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“Our daddy’s will left the ranch to the first grandchild. Clay never had any children. I never had any I knew about. If there was a Kettering grandchild out there, that child owned half of everything Clay ever built. Unless Clay owned that child first.”

The kitchen got so quiet I could hear June’s clock ticking over the stove.

My mother didn’t sign away the farm. She signed away me. To keep the farm safe for me.

The Promise She Couldn’t Keep

“She signed it?” I whispered.

“She signed something,” June said. “But she was smarter than Clay ever gave her credit for. She told me she signed it Caroline Brooks. Not her legal name. Not the name on her birth certificate. She said if he ever tried to use it, it wouldn’t hold up for one day in any courthouse in this state.”

Royce let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “That’s Ruth’s girl,” he said. “That’s exactly what Ruth would’ve done.”

“Then why did she write that she couldn’t keep it?” I asked.

June reached under her chair and pulled out an old shoebox tied with baling twine. She slid it across the table to me.

“Because Clay found out the name was wrong,” she said. “Three weeks before you were born. He came to the farm. Your grandpa Hank met him at the gate with a shotgun. That’s the night the fence line fire started, Lana. The one everybody said was lightning.”

The Shoebox

I drove home with that shoebox on the seat next to me like it might bite. Royce didn’t say a word the whole way. He just kept one hand on top of it.

That evening I saddled Raven and rode the old fence line, the one on the north side that Grandpa rebuilt the winter I was born. I’d ridden past it a thousand times. I never once wondered why those posts were newer than all the others.

When I got back, Royce had the box open on my kitchen table. Inside were newspaper clippings about the fire, a county receipt with Walt’s signature on it, and a single folded paper with a fancy legal letterhead.

It was the agreement my mother signed. Her handwriting at the bottom. Caroline Brooks.

And clipped to the back of it, in a heavy, slanted hand I’d never seen before, was a short note.

A wrong name won’t save her. The child is still mine. I’ve waited this long. I can wait for the girl to grow up. C.K.

Royce read it twice. Then he looked up at me with an expression I’ll never forget.

“Lana,” he said. “Clay died eleven years ago. Who has been keeping this box up to date?”

Because the last clipping in the box wasn’t from the winter I was born. It was from last spring. A photo of me and Raven winning the county barrel race.

So now I’m asking you. Who put that clipping in the box? And what do they want from me now?

Part 15 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what I find out next.