At noon a single fellow braved the weather to eat at the café, and Zed hurried back to the kitchen when he saw the man hang his raincoat on the back of a chair. Harper didn’t recognize the guy, so she raised an eyebrow toward Dana.
“Zedekiah Williamson!” The man followed him across the floor and through the swinging doors. “You cannot run from me. You missed your appointment this morning and there’s no excuse for it.”
All three sisters slid back their chairs and crowded into the kitchen. The stranger had a rim of gray hair, beady little blue eyes set in a big, round baby face, and a paunchy gut that hung out over his belt.
“Who are you?” Harper asked.
“Dr. Glenn Tipton. Zedekiah did not make his appointment this morning. I’ve been his and Annie’s doctor for thirty years. Why didn’t he even call to cancel? I thought maybe he’d died.” The doctor’s eyes shifted from one sister to the other and then came back to settle on Harper.
“We’re Annie’s granddaughters,” she explained. “Is it too late to get Uncle Zed in to see you today? I’ll bring him myself.”
“I ain’t dead and I can drive myself. I didn’t want to get out in this rain,” Zed fussed.
The doctor handed a card to Harper. “Friday afternoon at three o’clock. You’ll have him there, right?”
“I don’t need a chauffeur. I’ll be there. Now the bunch of you get out of my kitchen and let me make this man a cheeseburger,” Zed grumbled as he pointed toward the door.
“Is Uncle Zed sick?” Tawny asked outright when she took a glass of water to the doctor’s table.
Harper’s chest tightened at that thought. “Is this just a routine checkup, or is it something that he’ll need a driver to bring him home?”
“Are you doing tests?” Dana asked bluntly.
“Just a checkup, ladies. And I’ll have the biggest glass you got back there of sweet tea to go with my lunch. So y’all are the granddaughters that Annie talked about so often?”
“Harper.” She raised a hand.
“Dana.” She nodded.
“Tawny. And you would tell us if Uncle Zed had something wrong with him, right?”
Zed set a basket filled with sweet potato fries and a plate with a huge double-meat, double-cheese burger in front of the doctor. “He’s bound by some of them new privacy laws to keep his mouth shut, but I’m tellin’ all of you that this is just my three-month checkup. Last time me and Annie went, we was together for the checkup. Besides the rain, I just didn’t want to go without her. That’s all there is to it.”
Harper had lived on the edge long enough to smell a rat when there was one present, and Zed was not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If she made him place his hand on the Bible and raise the other toward heaven and swear that he was fit as a freshly tuned fiddle, she’d bet dollars to dead fish that there was something more to be said. Doctors didn’t check on patients in the pouring-down rain.
She touched each sister on the arm and nodded toward the outside. “I’m in the mood for a candy bar. Y’all want to go with me to the store?”
“There’s a whole stand full of umbrellas in the kitchen. Me and Annie got them when we had to close up the door between the store and the café,” Zed said.
Harper laid a hand on Zed’s shoulder. “Call me if we get a big rush?”
“Ain’t damn likely,” he said gruffly.
The rain had slowed considerably, so the umbrellas kept them from being drenched when they reached the store. They ducked inside and Harper went straight for the candy rack, picked up three of the biggest bars, and laid them on the counter.
Harper felt like she had a stone in her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. “I’m treating today. Put these on my bill, and be honest. Do either of y’all think Uncle Zed is sick? A doctor coming to the café? It don’t sound good.”
Tawny peeled back the wrapper and took a big bite of the chocolate. She held up a finger, which meant she needed time to think, and when she finally spoke, her voice cracked. “He’s lost weight and he’s coughing more and more. Oh, Lord, what would we ever do without him?”
Dana hiked a hip on the old wooden stool behind the counter and reached for her candy. “We’ll take care of him if he is, but I can’t imagine runnin’ this place without him. It was tough losing Flora, but Uncle Zed is the cornerstone now.” She blinked several times to keep the tears at bay.
“He said it was just a checkup and he’s never lied to us, so . . .” Tawny gulped twice. “I need a cup of coffee to go with this. You can put three cups on my bill and I’ll get us each one.”
“I’d rather have a bottle of milk,” Harper said.
“Lord love a duck!” Dana laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that you wanted to drink milk.”
“Or that Tawny wanted coffee over Pepsi or beer.” Harper tore the wrapper back from her candy.
Tawny went to the back of the store and brought back a pint of milk, then drew up two cups of coffee. “I’ve decided to quit drinkin’ anything alcoholic. So coffee, sweet tea, and soft drinks are the future.”
“Nick got something to do with that?” Dana asked.
“A lot.” Tawny nodded. “He said he didn’t have the courage to call until last night. He’d planned to go fishing on Monday evening and stop by my porch to see if I might be sitting outside. But it was raining. I done figured that my clumsiness and inability to say the right things scared him away.”
“And?” Harper asked.
Tawny smiled. “We talked for an hour about everything and I didn’t want to hang up, but he said he’d call again.” The smile faded. “But that’s not the issue here today. Uncle Zed is. I overheard him talking to Granny Annie last night when I had the window open in my cabin. Do you think there was anything between them other than friendship? He called her Annie darlin’ when he was talkin’ to her.”
“He calls us darlin’ all the time. It’s just an expression,” Dana said. “The cough comes from him smokin’ like a chimney, but . . .” She sighed.
“But what?” Tawny asked.
“But we need to know what’s wrong. Or if anything is,” Dana answered.
“He’ll tell us when the time is right,” Harper said.
Tawny picked up her coffee and candy and said, “See y’all later. I’m going to go get completely caught up on my book work. If the sun comes out, we’ll have a full house starting tomorrow and through the weekend, so I’ll be busy cleaning and doing laundry.”
The doctor’s vehicle was gone when she passed the café, and Zed had taken up his usual place on the bench with a cigarette in his hand. “Glad to see the sun. Rain makes my old bones ache,” he said.
She stopped and really looked at him. His face had always been thin and now it was wrinkled, but Tawny couldn’t see that his eyes were yellowed or that his hands were shaking any more than usual.
“Me too,” she said. “How often does it get this slow around here?”
“Couple or three times a year. Annie hated it. She was a real busy bee.” Zed crushed the cigarette butt on his heel. “She hated for me to smoke. I started over there in Vietnam, and when I got home, I tried all that stuff to quit—the gum and patches and pills—but I just couldn’t break the habit.”