“I wasn’t coming,” she said.
I waited.
“She asked me for last Sunday, and I told her I had a hair appointment Saturday and didn’t feel up to the drive. It’s fifty miles, Annette. It’s fifty miles on a good road.”
She was looking at the carton. Not at me.
“And she said, then come this Sunday. And I said I’d see. I’d already thought up what I was going to tell her. I had it ready.”
“Aunt Lucille.”
“She packed me eggs. I told her for thirty years that store eggs were good enough for me. And she packed me eggs every single time. And I’d get them home, and they’d sit there until I threw them out.”
Her mouth wasn’t working right.
“I can’t sit down in this house. Do you understand me? If I’m scrubbing something, I’m not sitting in it. I thought if I could just get it emptied out, it would quit being hers.”
I sat down on the step beside her. The boards were cold.
I had a speech ready. I’d worked on it in the truck, driving between farms. Every word in it was true.
I looked at my mother’s sister, seventy-eight years old in her good coat, holding a carton of eggs she’d been too busy to come get. And I found I couldn’t say any of it.
Kim Kroeker had seen in five minutes, on her own front step, what I hadn’t let myself see in five days.
But I didn’t tell her it was all right, either. Because it wasn’t.
“I have thirty-one of them back,” I said. “Nine are gone, and I may never find them. Tomorrow is Saturday. Mom’s customers are coming to that door at eight o’clock like they have every Saturday since I was twelve. And they’ve all heard what happened, because I put it on the radio.”
I kept my voice even.
“I’m not going to tell them who sold her hens. I’m not going to tell them anything. You can be in Lincoln by then. Or you can be standing at that door handing out the last eggs she packed. I’d rather you were at the door. But that’s yours to decide.”
She didn’t answer right away.
“What about the realtor?” I said.
“I called her at seven this morning.” She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, hard, the way Mom used to. “I told her I’d spoken out of turn and the place wasn’t mine to list. She was very nice about it.”
Then she put her car keys in her coat pocket.
Saturday came up clear and cold. There was frost on the truck and a meadowlark singing on the fence post.
Lucille was dressed by six.
She had on Mom’s apron again. But there was no bucket this time, and no rubber gloves. She’d set the fourteen cartons out on the kitchen table in two rows, with the names facing the door. She had Lu’s carton off to one side, by the sugar bowl. She kept touching it.
The first car pulled in at ten minutes to eight.
I stood back by the stove with my coffee. And I let my aunt open that door.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.