The Great Peach Experiment 1, Erin Downing [books to read romance .TXT] 📗

since Mom died. It makes me sick that we’re pretending to have this big adventure in her honor, since she would absolutely hate the way you’re sucking the fun out of it!” She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re spending this summer experimenting with the wrong thing, Dad. We’ve been wasting all this energy trying to get a stupid food truck up and running, but isn’t it more important that our family work first? We’re breaking down!”

Her dad gaped at her. Her siblings’ mouths hung open. Lucy knew why: it wasn’t like her to lose her cool. She was usually tough, hard, and unsmooshable. But today she was hot and frustrated, and she just wanted to flop down in a hammock and read her book. Or better yet, do nothing at all!

She was exhausted. And she missed her mom. She missed the way things used to be. If Mom were still alive, she would say: “Let’s go grab an ice cream cone and find a lake to cool off in,” or “Who’s up for a little Frisbee golf?” or even, “Great work today, kids, it’s fun doing this as a team.” But Dad didn’t say any of that. He never said any of that.

Lucy quietly went on, “I wish you’d take a second to look at the big picture, instead of getting all bogged down in the stupid details of this so-called Great Peach Experiment. We’re your family; not an experiment. The point of this summer shouldn’t just be winning! This is my life, our summer break, and I hate that you’re messing with it. I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be.”

“Lucy…,” Dad began, his voice soft. There was a very long pause, during which his mouth opened, closed, and then finally opened again. “I’m trying.”

“Are you really?” Lucy huffed, her hands on her hips.

“But, Lulu,” Dad went on, slowly, as though he couldn’t quite pull the words out of his brain. “We can never go back to exactly the way life used to be. I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s reality.”

Lucy felt hot, messy tears crowding into the space behind her eyeballs. She refused to let them spill. Then Herb scooted over and wrapped his arms around her tightly. He gave her a sad smile and rubbed his cheek against hers, and suddenly, she couldn’t stop her tears from falling. Dad was right: nothing would ever be the same again. She had known this for a long time, but she’d refused to see it. She’d been trying so hard to cling to the life they’d once had, but it was time to figure out how to build a new family—just the four of them.

The time had come to let go of what was, and accept what is. She swiped at her face and said, “If this is how it’s going to be, we need to make some changes.”

Dad drew in a sharp breath. He looked at her, really looked at her in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Then he closed his eyes, shook his head, and said nothing.

The kids all waited. The only sounds were the loud squeal and thunk of the campground’s bathroom door in the distance, the trilling of chickadees in a tree overhead, and the pop of gravel as a car drove slowly past their campsite.

Lucy was the first to speak, after a long silence. “There need to be changes, Dad. We don’t have a choice.”

He glanced up at her. His eyes were unfocused, as though he’d drifted off into his own world—again. But then, finally, he said, “You’re right.”

“I am?” Lucy gasped.

“She is?” Herb asked.

“We can’t go to Indianapolis,” Dad said, dropping his chin into his hands. “I can’t do it.”

“Did we lose our permit?” Freddy asked.

“We need a break.” Dad stood up. “I’ve been trying so hard to create a fun adventure for us. I just wanted to succeed at something, to show that we have what it takes—just the four of us—to function as a family. But simply chasing Mom’s old dreams isn’t the thing that’s going to bring us together. Lucy’s right: this isn’t the solution.” He looked at each of them in turn. “I don’t want to let you kids down by giving up on our goal, but I seriously think we need to come up with a new plan.”

Lucy cringed. She waited, wondering what “new plan” her dad would spout out next. At least chasing Mom’s dream involved some element of whimsy and fun. Dad seemed to have lost his ability to have fun.

“What do you say we hit the road?” Dad said after a long pause. “Bail on the Peach Pie Truck and have some fun—a new way.”

“What about the Food Truck Festival?” Freddy asked. “What about winning? We can’t just quit. You said you don’t like to fail, Dad? Well, I don’t quit. Mom wouldn’t quit. We’ve put in all this work, and I’m not going to let us give up completely.”

“We can come back for the festival, if that’s what we all decide we want to do,” Dad said, nodding. “But we have a week before it starts, and a little more fun money to burn, so why not make the most of it? Another week of hard work and practice isn’t going to make or break us at the festival. I haven’t been to the beach in North Carolina since I was a kid. We’re halfway there. Let’s pack up our stuff and go.”

“To North Carolina?” Lucy asked. “To the beach?”

“To North Carolina!” Dad cried. Then he galloped around the table, waving his hat in the air like a full-on fool.

From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

CRAZY CORN

We didn’t stop a lot on the way from Ohio to North Carolina (it’s a LONG drive), but we did see a couple cool things. There’s this field in Dublin, Ohio, that is jam-packed with more than 100 giant