He nodded and picked up a second egg. “This one will be for you,” he said. He didn’t dwell on his words. It seemed very natural to him that he should want to paint his aunt an egg, but Celeste treasured his words as if they were rare and precious gems, and her eyes misted.
“Thank you, Bruno,” she said softly. “That’s very sweet.”
They spent a good hour painting eggs; then, while they dried, Celeste drove Bruno into Alresford to see where his uncle worked. Robert was surprised to see them and showed his young nephew around his shop while Celeste popped into the supermarket to get supplies. Instead of buying the usual things, she wandered around looking for inspiration for more exciting dishes. She noticed a glossy cookery book on sale and popped it into her trolley. She’d cook something different for supper tonight.
When she had finished shopping and loaded the bags into the car, she returned to Robert’s shop. He was busy showing Bruno how to use the till. When the old colonel came in to complain about something else, he saw the child at the counter and forgot about his ill humor. He bought a case of claret just so the boy could do the sale. “You’ll make a good salesman one day,” said the colonel with a chuckle.
“You should come and work here more often,” said Robert, when the old man had left. “Colonel Thackery hasn’t been in such a good mood for years!”
When Celeste suggested they return home for lunch, Robert offered to take them out for a pizza. “It’s been a while since we’ve eaten out,” he said. Bruno skipped about the shop excitedly. Celeste was lifted by the child’s exuberance and her husband’s spontaneity and she chatted all the way up the street to the pizzeria.
“Bruno will have a pizza with pepperoni,” said Robert. “What are you going to have, darling?”
She smiled and blushed at the tender way he said “darling.” “I’ll have a pizza Fiorentina. It’ll be fun to try something new.”
When Celeste and Bruno returned home in the early afternoon, Huxley was waiting to take his grandson on the combines again. “I’ll varnish the eggs while you’re out,” said Celeste, and she waved them off in Huxley’s Land Rover. Then she went down to her office.
She sat at the table varnishing the eggs to the sound of a pigeon cooing on her roof. It was loud and rhythmic and made her feel nostalgic for the days before Jack had fallen ill. She remembered picnics by the fields during harvesttime, his wide smile when she picked him up from school, the sound of his laughter resounding across the lawn as he practiced cricket with his father. She didn’t cry. Memories that had given her so much pain before now gave her pleasure, but she didn’t know why.
She laid the eggs carefully on sticks, then cut ribbon to thread through them. The one Bruno had painted for her was decorated with glitter and sequins and glinted in the sunlight that streamed in through the windows. She sat for a moment wondering what to do next. Then she saw Bruno’s box on the end of the table. Would he mind dreadfully if she opened it and looked inside?
She thought not. After all, he had shown her the horseshoe and the butterfly. So she pulled the box across the table and lifted the lid. She frowned at the sight of so many funny things. There was a Harry Potter wand of Jack’s, the butterfly, nuts, the grey feather, the leaf, the peacock’s feather, the horseshoe, the dog picture she’d made out of icing. She lifted one thing after another and looked it over.
As she allowed her mind to wander she heard herself speaking out loud in the way she used to do with Jack, when they played taboo. The wand belongs to a wizard, so that must be Harry Potter. The grey feather has to belong to a pigeon. The pheasant feather to a pheasant, those were easy. The dead butterfly is a butterfly and the leaf, which has been eaten by caterpillars, means caterpillar because he couldn’t put a live creature in a box. The horseshoe for a pony, and nuts . . . hmm, a squirrel, I think. The peacock feather for a peacock and . . . She looked across at the egg. Easter egg. Could that just be an Easter egg? At that moment she felt the blood drain from her head to her toes and she was overcome with dizziness. She stood up slowly and walked over to the quilt. She barely dared breathe because she knew what she was going to find.
Her heart began to pound as she opened the quilt. She laid it on the floor, and with the pulse throbbing frantically in her temples she looked at the pictures she had sewn into the squares. Jack’s favorite things: a peacock, a pheasant, a squirrel, his pony, a caterpillar, the pigeon from the movie Valiant, a butterfly, Harry Potter, Tarquin, and—with her eyes filled with tears she could barely make it out—the Easter Bunny. The final square lay blank.