The peach pit, p.1
The Peach Pit, page 1
PICK UP MORE PEACH ADVENTURES!
Book 1:
When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie
SERVING UP SOON!
Book 3:
Frozen Peaches
Text copyright © 2022 by Erin Soderberg Downing
All rights reserved. Pixel+Ink is a division of TGM Development Corp.
Book design and interior illustrations by Michelle Cunningham Freddy’s artwork by Henry Downing
www.pixelandinkbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Downing, Erin Soderberg, author.
Title: The Peach Pit / Erin Soderberg Downing.
Description: New York : Pixel+Ink, 2022. | Series: The great peach experiment; 2 | Audience: Ages 8-12. | Audience: Grades 4-6. | Summary: Mayhem ensues when the Peaches are gifted a historic mansion on the condition that they turn it into a bed-and-breakfast.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021047836 | ISBN 9781645950363 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781645951018 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Bed and breakfast accommodations—Fiction. | Dwellings—Remodeling—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D6884 Pe 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047836
Hardcover ISBN 9781645950363
Ebook ISBN 9781645951018
a_prh_6.0_139754570_c0_r1
Contents
Cover
Pick Up More Peach Adventures!
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1: The Creepy Mansion
2: Handing Over the Keys
3: Plan, Prep, Pack & Pizza
4: A Hidden Surprise
5: Classroom Traditions
6: Building Plans
7: Digging Through the Past
8: A Job for Herb
9: Breakfast Practice
10: A Stroll Down Memory Lane
11: First Day on the Job
12: Freddy’s Prank
13: The First Guest
14: Swim-Time Social Hour
15: Secrets in the Wans
16: The Key to the Map
17: Underground Turf
18: Building Blunders
19: A Box of Clues
20: Dogs’ Day Out
21: What Can you Grow Out of a Peach Pit?
22: Fruity Clues
23: Open for Business
24: The Hunt for Hidden Riches
25: The Mysterious (Lunch) Box
About the Author
For all the wonderful teachers who have welcomed the Peach Pie Truck into their classrooms. Thank you.
1
THE CREEPY MANSION
Herb Peach was pretty sure his Great Aunt Lucinda’s house was haunted. There was just something about the massive red brick mansion that gave him the willies. The Peach family visited their great aunt often, and she herself was always cheerful, friendly, and welcoming. The house? It was not.
Maybe it was the way the hall chandelier cast shadows that looked a lot like screaming little faces. Or how the creaky old stairs and radiators groaned and moaned, even when no one was nearby. Then there were the dusty old portraits hanging on the living room wall, with their painted eyes that seemed to watch Herb whenever he rushed past. He also found it strange that the house always smelled like split pea soup and crackers, even though Great Aunt Lucinda didn’t even like soup.
Whatever the reason, eight-year-old Herb always felt a little skittish inside his great aunt’s big, cold house. He looked forward to the moment their dad would say it was time for his family to pile into the car to head back across town to their own small, comfy house. It was always a relief to get home.
This was unfortunate, since it sounded like his family might be moving in to the creaky old mansion.
“Welcome, welcome!” Aunt Lucinda flung open the brick mansion’s enormous front door. She stepped out onto the front stoop and pulled Herb into a hug, squeezing him so tight that he squeaked a little bit. “I’ve missed you so much, Herbie muffin!”
“Mfff mu, too,” Herb said, wriggling out of his great aunt’s arms.
Next, Aunt Lucinda turned and kissed Herb’s big sister, Lucy, once on each side of her face. “Kisses, kisses, like they do in France, ma chérie!” she announced. After offering her great aunt a huge smile and hug in return, twelve-year-old Lucy set to work trying to wipe the bright red lipstick prints off each of her cheeks.
“And look at you,” Aunt Lucinda gasped, stepping across the large, covered stone patio. She grabbed ten-year-old Freddy’s shoulders before pulling him in for a hug that looked slightly less squeezy than the one Herb had gotten. “You’ve grown so much over the summer!”
“You should see my toenails,” Freddy murmured into Aunt Lucinda’s shoulder, his voice muffled by the enormous black-and-silver curly wig Aunt Lucinda had perched atop her head. Aunt Lucinda’s hair was never the same, Herb had noticed. She had a seemingly endless collection of wigs that she traded out depending on her mood and outfit.
Herb’s dad climbed up the steps and joined his three kids on the mansion’s front porch, offering his aunt a formal handshake. Even though Dad had known Aunt Lucinda his whole life—she was his aunt, after all—Dad always greeted her like she was some distant relative he only saw at weddings and funerals. Great Aunt Lucinda took his hand in hers and, in a friendly voice, said, “Wally, dear. How are you?”
Herb giggled. No one called their dad Wally except Great Aunt Lucinda. Most everyone called him Walter, or Professor Peach (since he was a geology professor at the university in their hometown of Duluth, Minnesota). Herb and his two older siblings just called him Dad.
Dad held out a golden-brown peach pie and said, “It’s good to see you. We brought a pie.” He held it aloft and Herb took a quick step back. Even looking at pie still made him feel a little bit queasy. After spending part of the summer traveling around the country with his family, selling pie out of an old, beaten-down food truck, Herb was pied-out. He never wanted to eat pie again in his entire life.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Aunt Lucinda said. But even as she said it, Herb watched her tear off a small piece of the pie’s crust and pop it in her mouth. She winked at Herb. Before their big summer road trip, the Peaches had visited Great Aunt Lucinda fairly regularly—once a week, usually—and always brought her some sort of little hostess gift. A book, a fake plant, or comfortable socks with funny sayings on them. In exchange, Aunt Lucinda cooked the Peach family delicious homemade meals and had endless supplies of chocolate on hand. “Come in, come in,” she said, ushering them inside.
Before Herb had even taken off his shoes, there was an explosion of yaps and barks as four small, energetic dogs skidded into the front entryway. Their tiny toenails made pat-a-pat-a-pat sounds as the dogs raced across the hardwood floors. They greeted the Peaches with a lot of barking and jumping, and one of the pups even managed to dip his furry snout in the peach pie Aunt Lucinda had carelessly set on a bench just inside the door.
“Dasher! Get away from my snack,” Aunt Lucinda scolded, shooing him away. “Donny, Vix, Rudy—behave!”
Herb plopped down onto the floor and let the dogs run all over him. He hadn’t seen Aunt Lucinda’s pups in nearly two months, not since before his family had left for their monthlong great food truck adventure. When they’d finally gotten back to Minnesota at the end of July, Aunt Lucinda was away and the pups were at “camp,” which is what their great aunt called the kennel. But now that summer was almost over, everyone was back home in Duluth, and Herb had a lot of missed cuddling and playtime to make up for.
Truth be told, Aunt Lucinda and her dogs were the only things that kept Herb coming back to this big, scary mansion. Aunt Lucinda had always felt more like a grandma to him than a great aunt. Herb’s actual grandparents had all passed away long ago, and after their mom died of cancer two years earlier, Dad’s Aunt Lucinda had become an even more important part of the Peaches’ lives. She was the only other family they really had. And the pups were an added bonus.
Herb squirmed around on the wooden floor, trying to give equal belly rubs and ear scratches to everyone. The four little pups loved Herb, and Herb had lots of love to give back. The pups climbed over one another, eagerly sniffing Herb’s face, nibbling and tugging at his shirt, and poking their noses into his pockets. Aunt Lucinda’s pack of pups was very naughty, but also very sweet.
By the time he had finished giving each of the dogs a proper greeting, Herb noticed that the rest of his family had made their way into Aunt Lucinda’s enormous living room. Herb scooped Dasher up into his arms and followed his family. The other three dogs chased after him, leaping onto the sofas and chairs to greet the rest of the family.
Freddy had flopped onto a couch, Lucy was browsing the built-in bookshelves on the far end of the living room, and Aunt Lucinda sat in her recliner next to the unlit fireplace. Dad was perched awkwardly on the front edge of Herb’s favorite big, squishy armchair. Herb squeezed in behind Dad, trying to hide from all the paintings that always seemed to be keeping watch over his every move.
“So…” Dad said, at the exact same time Aunt Lucinda said, “Well…”
Aunt Lucinda chuckled and went
Dad nodded. When the Peaches had returned from their summer road trip in the Peach Pie Truck, they had found a letter from Great Aunt Lucinda waiting for them in the mailbox of their tiny house across town. It was filled with a bunch of surprises.
The past summer had been filled with surprises. First, the Peach kids had learned that one of their mom’s inventions had sold, two whole years after she died—which turned the Peach family into overnight millionaires. Dad had donated most of the money to charity, and saved most of the rest for his kids’ college, but he’d also set aside a small sliver of Mom’s windfall to spend on “fun stuff.” Then, Dad had surprised the kids with the news that he’d bought a used food truck—this, he told them, was what he meant by “fun stuff.”
But the biggest shock of all had come when they’d found out Dad was taking a whole month off from work, in order to travel around the Midwest, selling pies as a family. Aunt Lucinda’s surprising note had capped off a summer that was full of twists and turns.
Great Aunt Lucinda had been visiting her daughter in Europe when Herb and his family had returned home, so the Peaches had all been waiting impatiently—for nearly all of August—to find out what her unusual letter meant. “Like I said in my letter, I’ve decided to move into an apartment at the Birch Pond retirement community, and I’m giving you my house,” Aunt Lucinda said bluntly. This is what Lucy had told Herb the letter said. He’d even read it with his own eyes, but he had a hard time believing it could be true. Who just gave someone a house?
“Why?” Lucy asked, spinning away from the bookshelves. “You love this house.”
“I love this house, yes, but it’s a pit,” Aunt Lucinda said, gesturing to a patch of peeling wallpaper and the light switch that everyone in the family knew didn’t work. “It’s too much for me to keep up. And frankly, I’m lonely. All I’ve got is these dogs to keep me company day in and day out, and I’m just not putting the place to good use.”
“So, what are you saying? You want us to…put the place to good use?” Dad asked. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Move in. Make it great again and bring the place back to life—” Before Aunt Lucinda could finish what she was saying, a loud clank sounded somewhere upstairs. Then something clunked and vibrated inside the walls. The dogs all started barking at once, and Herb squeezed in closer to his dad.
“That’s just the ghost upstairs,” Aunt Lucinda explained with a casual laugh. “One of many, as you know. You’ll get used to all the racket they make.”
Herb gulped. Aunt Lucinda had joked about her house ghosts before, but Herb had never really paid much attention. After all, he’d never had to sleep in the mansion alongside all those funny noises. But now it was sounding like…that might be changing?
He looked around the room, taking it all in with fresh eyes. The creepy shadows on the walls, eyes staring out from the artwork, the spooky noises, secret passageways, and dark corners. Home sweet home.
2
HANDING OVER THE KEYS
Lucy Peach didn’t know what to say. Who just gave someone a house? Aunt Lucinda, that’s who. One of the things Lucy had always loved most about her great aunt was that she didn’t seem to do things the way most people did. She was eccentric, and this surprise news about giving the Peaches her mansion proved it. Lucy also loved that she and her great aunt shared a name: Lucinda. It was majestic and having the same name made Lucy feel like they were connected somehow. Lucy liked thinking that someday she might grow up to be a lot like Great Aunt Lucinda.
“What do you mean, you want us to make your house great again?” Lucy asked, hustling across the enormous living room. Her little brother Herb had always been creeped out by Aunt Lucinda’s mansion, and she could tell that the crack about ghosts hadn’t helped at all. Lucy plucked one of the dogs off the floor and plopped it into the chair beside Herb and Dad. The pup licked and sniffed Herb’s face, which Lucy hoped would distract her brother from the alarming sounds in the walls.
Aunt Lucinda chuckled. “This place has turned into an utter pit,” she said. “Wobbly banisters, broken door handles, too many rooms that no one’s used for years. There could be a whole family of mice living in the fourth-floor bedrooms for all I know.” Lucy noticed her brother Freddy cringe when she said this. Freddy wasn’t scared of much, but he hated mice. Aunt Lucinda sighed. “I never even get up to the third or fourth floor anymore. What I’d like you to do is move in, give this place some love, and fill it with family and life again.”
“But,” Lucy’s dad said, “we have a house.”
“True,” Aunt Lucinda agreed. “But your house is small for three growing kids. And let’s face it, this one is better.”
No one could argue with that. Even though the Peaches’ house was cozy and comfortable enough, it was small. But more importantly, Lucy and her siblings had all agreed that it never felt quite right after their mom died. Sure, there were good memories of happy times in their little house, but for the past few years, it had also felt like something was missing. Maybe moving into Aunt Lucinda’s mansion would be the perfect next step for the Peaches, who’d been desperately trying to make a fresh start as a new kind of family.
A family without Mom, but a family nonetheless. The summer working together as a family in the Peach Pie Truck had been challenging and frustrating, but it had also been fun. Even more importantly, it had proven that the Peaches were capable of rebuilding after everything fell apart.
“Do you expect me to buy this place from you?” Dad asked. Lucy’s head swiveled from him to their great aunt. “Because we don’t have much left.” Lucy knew her dad had donated most of the money their mom had earned from the sale of her solar cling invention. He’d also socked away some in college savings accounts for Lucy and her brothers. Dad had recently shifted his schedule so he could work fewer hours, and she knew (thanks to Freddy eavesdropping when he shouldn’t have been) that Dad had taken a bit of a pay cut. So even though they’d been millionaires for a minute, money was once again tight. “There’s a little bit left over from the sale of the Peach Pie Truck, but—”
Great Aunt Lucinda cut him off. “It’s a gift. With conditions.”
“What about…David?” Dad asked, scratching the tufty hair on the top of his head. Unlike the three Peach kids, who all had thick dark hair like their mom’s, Dad had wispy, pale hair that had been getting thinner with each passing year. “Won’t he want the house?”
“Who’s David?” Freddy asked. While the others talked, Freddy had been carefully using a felt-tip pen to turn the scab on his shin into a piece of art. The scab now blended in as one of many planets in a solar system that Freddy had drawn on his entire lower leg.
Lucy rolled her eyes and plunked down on the sofa next to her brother. “David Peach,” she blurted out. “Dad’s cousin? Aunt Lucinda’s son?”
“Oh,” Freddy said with a shrug. “That guy.”
“That guy,” Aunt Lucinda said, smirking, “lives in California and has no interest in moving back to Duluth. And Renee—my daughter; I think you kids met her once?—she’s got her life in Europe. If I were to give either of them the house, they’d just turn around and sell it. In fact, David’s trying to bully me into thinking that would be the sensible thing to do. But sensible schmensible. Who’s got time for that?”
Dad frowned. “Sensible generally makes a lot of sense.”
“Eh,” Aunt Lucinda waved a hand in the air. Then she snapped her fingers and said, “Fred, hon, can you grab a fork from the kitchen and hand over that pie you brought for me? I’m just gonna eat it straight out of the pan. A plate would be sensible, but it wouldn’t taste half as good as just diving right in. I am the one who created this peach pie recipe to begin with, so I get to decide for myself how I want to eat it.”
Lucy giggled. Her dad, meanwhile, looked uncomfortable with this plan of attack.
As soon as she had her pie on her lap and fork in hand, Aunt Lucinda said, “So here’s the deal.” They all waited while she scooped a bite of pie right out of the very middle of the pan. She chewed, then went on. “I’ve got a few conditions that come along with giving you the house.”
