Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson Read Free Book Online Page A

could feel myself scowling. “I’m not pouting.”
    My mom glanced through the screened-in porch out to the water, then looked back at me. “This summer is going to be hard enough for all of us without this… attitude.”
    I closed the silverware drawer harder than I probably needed to, now feeling guilty as well as annoyed. I’d never been my mother’s favorite—that was Gelsey—but we’d always gotten along fairly well.
    “I know you didn’t want to come here,” she said, her tone softening. “But we have to try and make the best of it. All right?”
    I pulled the drawer open, then pushed it closed again. I’d been in this house for only a few hours, but already I was feeling claustrophobic. And the presence next door of an ex-boyfriend who hated me—with good reason—wasn’t helping. “I just,” I said, a little haltingly, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here all summer. And—”
    “Mom!” Gelsey stomped into the kitchen. “The crib is still in my room. And the lights aren’t working.”
    “The Murphys probably took the lightbulbs, too,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I’ll go look.” She walked out behind Gelsey, her hand resting on my sister’s shoulder, but stopped at the kitchen threshold and turned back to me. “Taylor, we can talk about this later. In the meantime, why don’t you or Warren go pick up a pizza? It doesn’t look like I’m going to be cooking anything here tonight.”
    She left and I stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes longer, my eyes drawn to the plastic orange prescription pill bottles that lined the counter. I looked at them for a moment longer, then headed off in search of my dad, since I knew wherever he was, Warren would be as well.
    I found them both—not that it was a very long search, in a house this small—sitting around the dining table, my father with his glasses on, a stack of papers and his laptop in front of him, Warren with a huge book that he was frowning importantly at, making notes on a legal pad as he read. Warren had gotten in early-decision to Penn, and was already planning on the pre-law track, but to look at him, you’d think that he was already an equity partner, and that law school—not to mention college—would just be a formality.
    “Hey,” I said, poking my brother in the back as I took the seat next to my dad. “Mom said to pick up pizza.”
    Warren frowned. “Me?” My father shot him a look and he got to his feet. “I mean, sure. What’s the name of the place downtown?”
    I turned to my dad, and so did Warren. My brother might have had a photographic memory, but it was my father who always remembered the important things—events, dates, names of pizza restaurants.
    “The Humble Pie,” my dad said. “If it’s still there, that is.”
    “I’ll find out,” Warren said, straightening his polo shirt and walking to the door. He stopped after a few steps and turned to us. “You know that pizza was developed as a way to use leftovers, starting in Italy, in the fifteenth—”
    “Son,” my dad said, cutting him off. “Maybe over dinner?”
    “You got it,” Warren said, flushing slightly as he walked out. A moment later, I heard the front door slam and the sound of the car engine starting.
    My dad looked at me over his computer screen and raised an eyebrow. “So, kid. Your mother really asked your brother to get the pizza?”
    I tried to hide a smile as I pulled at a loose thread at the end of my T-shirt and shrugged. “She may have suggested either of us. I delegated.”
    He shook his head, smiling slightly as he looked back down at his papers. He hadn’t stopped working when he was diagnosed, claiming that he was just going to finish up a few loose ends, but I knew that he wouldn’t have been happy if he wasn’t working. He’d been a partner at his law firm, specializing in appeals. He went intothe office every Saturday, and most Sundays as well. It was just normal that he was only at dinner one