The Movers They Sent To My Farm

By late summer, they made their move. Kelso showed up on a Tuesday with my mother trailing behind him, both of them dressed like they were headed somewhere important, and he was carrying a folder of his own. He set it on my grandmother’s kitchen table, right on the lace runner she had crocheted herself, and told me that a lawyer friend of his had found “an error” in how the property transferred, that the house was legally his now, and that I had until Friday to clear my things out because he already had a buyer lined up from three counties over who wanted to flip it before winter.

My mother stood behind him with her arms crossed, and she said the words I will remember for the rest of my life. “This is easier for everyone, Lettie. You’re young. You’ll land on your feet somewhere else. Kelso has a family to think about.”

I looked at the papers Kelso had brought. They were sloppy, a quitclaim deed with a signature on it that did not match my grandfather’s hand from a single document I had ever seen him sign, notarized by a name I did not recognize from any office in three counties. I did not raise my voice. I did not cry, though something in my chest went very cold and very still, the same way it had the night my grandfather told me what he wanted for me. I looked at my mother, then at my brother, and I said, “We’ll see.”