The next morning, we woke to the sound of someone knocking on our front door.

“Angela? June Bug? You guys up?”

Mother groaned and put the pillow over her head.

I jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. “That’s Uncle Toby!” I said happily.

“Tell him to go away,” said Mother.

“Hey!” he called again. “I brought you some donuts!”

“It’s not even Saturday,” Mother muttered. “June, tell him we don’t need him.”

He knocked again, even louder.

“Hey, Angela. It’s raining out here. Would you let me in? I’m getting soaked.”

“I don’t want him tracking all that rain and dirt into the house. Tell him to go away.”

“I don’t want him to go away,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed. “I’m letting him in.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Mother.

But I was already bouncing out of bed. I flew down the stairs and ran headlong to the heavy wooden door. I grabbed the brass doorknob with both hands and yanked it as hard as I could.

Uncle Toby was drenched. There was rain dripping from his nose. His hair and his beard were soaked. He looked like a cat that someone had left out in a storm.

“Oh my gosh!” I cried. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. Come in! Come in! Hurry!”

He was carrying a soggy bag of donuts and a large brown paper cup of warm coffee that he handed to me. The wonderful smell filled our house, warm and sweet, while the rain lashed against the windows.

“Let’s get your mom,” he said, and began walking toward the stairs.

I stood in front of him so he couldn’t get by.

“You’re wet,” I said.

“This is true,” Uncle Toby said. “You have inherited your father’s amazing powers of observation.”

“You need to take off your shoes so you don’t track mud and stuff into the house.”

Uncle Toby untied the laces of his waterlogged work boots. His socks were drenched too. When he took a step, his toes left a semicircle of water on the wooden floor.

My heart froze. “Oh no,” I said.

“What?” said Uncle Toby.

“The water. The water on your sock.”

“It’s just a little rain,” whispered Uncle Toby. “I’ll clean it up.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why not?”

“Because whatever we clean it with will need to be cleaned. And then that thing will need to be cleaned. And it’s not even Saturday.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Saturday is when we do it.”

“June Bug,” said Uncle Toby. “Please. You aren’t making sense. Listen. Why don’t you get me a towel. I’ll dry my feet and towel off my head, and I promise, sweetheart, I won’t track rain in or mud or anything. Okay? How does that sound?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice catching in my throat. “It sounds good in one way, but not good in another.”

“Because of the donuts?”

“No.”

“Because of the towel?”

I nodded, tears suddenly coming to my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered.

“Because you’ll have to clean the towel, and then you’ll have to clean whatever cleans the towel?”

I nodded again.

Uncle Toby put his hands on either side of my face and kissed my forehead.

“What if I take the towel home?” he whispered.

“You want to take our towel?”

“No,” said Uncle Toby, laughing. “I don’t want to take your towel. I don’t want to take anything from you. All I want is to give you and your mom a donut for breakfast and know that you ate something, and then I want to come back in a couple days and bring you something else. So why don’t you go get me a towel. I’ll dry myself off. And then we will give this a try. I want to get your mom eating, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

I set the coffee and the donuts down by the hallway steps. Then I ran to the kitchen and found an old orange and green hand towel and ran back to Uncle Toby with it. I could still smell the wonderful donuts, warm and sweet, the scent curling up from the bag and filling the room. My stomach trembled.

Uncle Toby took the towel and dried off his feet. Then he dried his hair and beard and then his hands. He tugged open the back door and threw the wet towel onto the porch.

“I’ll take that with me when I go. Come on. Let’s bring a donut and coffee up to your mom. I haven’t been in those upstairs rooms for a long time and I kind of miss them. You think my old bedroom’s still there?”

He started walking to the stairs again with the coffee in one hand and the donuts in the other.

“June Bug!” called Mother as soon as his foot touched the first stair. “Tell him no!”

I hesitated.

“Tell him no! Tell him no!”

“She doesn’t want you to go up there,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” I began, looking up the stairs toward our bedroom. “Because . . .”

But I didn’t know how to finish my sentence because I didn’t have the right words. I fell to my knees at the edge of the stairs. I started to cry. I put my hands in front of my mouth so Mother wouldn’t hear.

“Oh, honey,” muttered Uncle Toby, taking his foot off the stairs and kneeling down on the floor along with me. “Oh, sweetheart. Please. I was only trying to help. I won’t go up. I won’t go up, I promise.” He put his arms around me, and I rested my head in the warm space between his shoulder and his chin, and he rocked me. I could feel his beard on my forehead. He smelled like a woodstove. I closed my eyes against him and I breathed and I breathed, and I tried to gather myself back together.

“How about if you bring a donut up to her? I’ll stay down here. Would that be okay?”

“June Bug!” Mother screamed from upstairs. “Tell him it’s time to go!”

“I’ll bring them after you go,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Uncle Toby. She’s just not feeling that good this morning. She has a stomachache. I think it’s the flu. All this rain maybe.”

“June!” screeched Mother. Her voice sounded broken.

“You should go,” I said. “We’ll be okay.”

“There’s a frosted one in there for you,” said Uncle Toby, handing the bag to me. “I know you like them frosted. And there is a plain one for your mom. I picked them out. I was thinking about what you both would like, and I picked them out special.”

“Thank you for doing that,” I whispered. “Mother and I will eat them together for breakfast. I promise. And I’ll give her the coffee. She’ll love it.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go up there?” He put his hands on either side of my face and looked into my eyes as though he wanted to find some kind of answer there.

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ll bring it to her after you go. It’ll be fine. Mother loves donuts and coffee. It will be the perfect thing for her. As soon as she’s feeling better. Thank you for coming over, Uncle Toby.”

He reached over and pulled his socks and boots back on.

He tied his laces in silence.

“I’m coming back in two days,” he said.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“I want to try this again.”

“Okay.”

“I love you more than anything in this whole entire world. Do you know that?”

“I know,” I whispered. “I love you too.”

When he left, I kept my back turned because I couldn’t bear to see him go. I heard him linger in the hallway behind me, maybe looking at me or up the stairs to where he knew my mother was hiding. I heard the sound of the old wooden door opening, and then the sound of the rain and the door closing softly behind me, and then the clattering sound of Uncle Toby’s truck pulling back onto Trowbridge Road and out in the rain toward town.

I wiped tears from my cheeks. I took a deep, shaking breath in and then out. I carried the donuts and the coffee into the kitchen and put them on the table. I took out two plates and two forks and two knives and set the table all nice and pretty. I put a donut on each plate. The plain one and the frosted one. I put the coffee down next to the plain donut and sat down across from it. Want a donut, darling? I picked them out especially for you. Try them. Try them. They are sweet and delicious. “Thank you,” I said out loud in the empty kitchen. “Don’t mind if I do.” I took my knife and my fork, and I ate my frosted donut one tiny bite at a time, so that maybe, just maybe, I could convince myself for a little bit longer that there are some kinds of sweetnesses that really do last forever.