It took two trips to get the baskets from his quarters at the back of the store to the café. Harper always arrived first, so he put the one with a pretty little red stuffed bunny toward the front. He made coffee and fidgeted, eager for them to get there so he could see their faces. Annie would want to know every detail. At the end of her life when she couldn’t remember very well, she’d beg him to tell her stories about the girls. Some days he’d kneel in front of her and repeat the same things he’d told her the day before. When she laughed, the clouds parted and he could swear that the angels in heaven were sweepin’ the floors and gettin’ ready for her.
He couldn’t be still another minute, so he pulled on a jacket and went outside to sit on the bench. Harper’s light was on, so she would be there in a few minutes. He lit up a cigarette and shook his head slowly. “I know, darlin’, but it’s too late to quit now, and besides, if I had ten more years, I’d spend them miserable without you, so don’t fuss at me. Aha! I believe that’s Wyatt’s truck.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And he’s leavin’ something on the porch. Well, now, that’s a step in the right direction, ain’t it?”
Sunday morning was just like every other day of the week. Harper got up before daylight, dressed, and twirled her hair up into a ponytail and headed over to the café. But she stopped in her tracks when she opened the door. Sitting right there on the porch was a gorgeous bouquet of red roses with a big chocolate Easter bunny propped up beside it.
“Zed.” She reached for the card but was surprised when she saw the handwriting.
Sorry I left in a hurry. My friend’s wife wanted me to help make arrangements, and truthfully, I didn’t know what else to say or do. My heart hurts for you. I’ll call this afternoon. Until then, happy Easter—Wyatt.
The first thing she did was check to see if either of her sisters was nearby. With them nowhere in sight, she grabbed up the vase and chocolate and took them into her cabin. She sank her nose into the roses and inhaled deeply and then removed the foil from around the bunny and bit off an ear.
Still savoring the taste of the chocolate, she headed toward the café. Zed stood up from the bench when she arrived and chuckled. “Guess you found your first Easter surprise. Wyatt put it out there about fifteen minutes ago and then drove away. I reckon he’s havin’ to come to terms with all this.”
“I reckon so.”
Zed dropped his cigarette into a cigarette-disposal thing that looked like a pipe stuck down in a milk bucket. He opened the door for her and switched on the lights as soon as he was inside.
She stopped and giggled, despite herself, at the sight of four big baskets filled with candy and all kinds of surprises lined up on the table.
“Uncle Zed, that is the sweetest thing.” Harper hugged him. “But you shouldn’t have. I didn’t get you a single thing for Easter. And when on earth did you manage to get all that stuff?”
His face fairly well lit up the whole place in a big grin at her surprise. “Yeah, you did. You are here and that’s what Annie wanted, so it’s the best Easter present in the whole world. I go to town on Sunday night after we close up every week to get my weekly supply of cigarettes and my bottle of blackberry wine. Annie was partial to that when we ran out of elderberry wine. While I’m there, I been droppin’ in to Walmart to get the stuff for the baskets. Go on and open yours up. There’s a little bottle of Jack down in the bottom, because I know you like it.” He winked.
“I threw my last bottle at the wall in a fit of anger and busted it all over the place,” she admitted as she tore into the basket and ate a chocolate egg.
“Guess that’s why you needed cleaner from Flora, right?”
Her head bobbed, and it took three swallows to get the chocolate to go down past the lump forming in her throat. “I’ll never get to make a basket for her, Uncle Zed.”
“Maybe someday you’ll have another baby and you can make Easter baskets for that one.” He walked away from the coffee machine and threw an arm around her shoulders.
“I don’t deserve another baby.”
“Maybe you deserve one even more. You were wise enough to realize you were too young to make a good home for the one you had.” He hugged her even tighter and then went back to the business of making coffee.
Harper wanted to believe Zed, she really did, but she’d lived with the guilt so long that it was impossible.
“Easter baskets!” Tawny squealed when she arrived. “Who did this? Brook?”
“Nope, Uncle Zed did.” Harper wrapped the long strings of an apron around her waist a couple of times and tied it in the front. She shoved an order pad and pen in one pocket and set about making sure all the napkin dispensers were filled.
Zed’s head poked through the window. “The purple one is for you, Tawny. Yellow for Dana, pink for Brook.”
“Mine is red and it’s in the kitchen, so y’all won’t steal my little bottle of Jack that Zed tucked in,” Harper said.
Tawny carefully removed the cellophane and folded it, hugged the purple bunny to her chest, and then kissed it on the nose. “You can keep that. Look at all this chocolate! Man, I’m going to gain ten pounds and I don’t even care.” Tawny ran from the dining area to the kitchen and wrapped Zed into a bear hug that almost knocked his frail body on the ground. “I love you, Uncle Zed. I haven’t had an Easter basket since I was a little girl. The last one might have been back when we got to come here one year for spring break.”
“Yep, you were five, and Dana had just gotten out of high school the year before. Annie was afraid she’d be offended by an Easter basket, but I insisted that we make her one anyway.” Zed grinned.
“You have a sense of fairness about you that I love.”
“Just the way my mama taught me to be.” His smile got even wider. “Now I got to get breakfast goin’. You get on out there and eat up some of that chocolate to keep you from starvin’ before I get it cooked up.”
“You ain’t goin’ to have to twist my arm to do that. Is that cinnamon rolls I smell in the oven?”
“It’s Easter. That’s the special thing for today,” Zed said. “We won’t have a lot of customers until dinner, and then they’ll all flock in here like ducks on the lake for their blue-plate special.”
Tawny was taking each item out of her basket and setting it on the table when Dana and Brook arrived. She and Harper both giggled when Brook’s hand clamped over her mouth and she did a little dance right inside the café.
“Easter baskets!” Her squeals bounced off the walls. “Look how big they are. Is the pink one mine? Who made them?”
Zed came out of the kitchen and leaned on the counter. Tawny loved the expression on his face when Brook grabbed up the one with her name on it. It was the happiest she’d seen him since before Granny Annie passed on. She started to tear up but swallowed hard and kept it at bay. Zed needed a happy day, and she’d do her best to give him one.
She raised her voice to get over Brook’s squeals as she found her bunny and treats. “Uncle Zed did that for us. Pretty special, huh?”
“I’m going to name my bunny Miss Jo after Granny,” Brook yelled even though Dana was right beside her. “And look at all this chocolate and Peeps. I love Peeps.”