“Sakes alive, I sure know how to kill a mood, huh?” said Mom, patting her cheeks with the crumpled napkin. “Now, let’s see what I can do to fix that.” She stood to shake the crumbs from her sundress and made her way to the dangling paper cloud. Grabbing up the Whacker and raising it high in the air, she said, “I’d like to propose a toast.”

She waved the stick all around without even touching the piñata once, and said, “Here’s to home sweet home…to family…and in particular, to the Southern Mobile Aid Response Team’s youngest future volunteer, Castanea Dentata Nordenhauer.”

Mom shot me a twinkly smile. My spirits flared up fast as a struck match.

“And here’s to doing more,” she said, holding the Whacker firm with both hands and rearing back for a big try at the cloud.

“Wait! Toodi! Wait!” My dad yelled out so loud, he seemed as startled by his own volume level as the rest of us. His mid-swing holler scared Mom into launching the Whacker clean out of her fists, and it landed with thwunk! onto the roof of Syd’s house.

“Whoa, Nellie!” said Uncle Clay.

“You don’t mean it,” said Aunt Jo.

“Awes toss!” said Syd.

We all gazed hopelessly at the far-flung whacker, until Dad cleared his throat in a big dramatic way.

“I’ll go fetch that later,” he said, bringing our attention back to earth. “But first, I too have a presentation to make.”

A hush filled the little porch. I couldn’t imagine what Dad was going to say.

“Toodi, do you remember when Cass was a baby and you made a wish on that heart-shaped lemon? That maybe someday we could all go sweeten the world together as a family?”

“Mmm-hmmm, I sure do,” she said.

“Well…” said Dad, aiming his hand across the way, toward the old covered motor home in our backyard. “Folks, may I direct your attention to what’s behind, or better yet, what’s under curtain number one.” All six of us gazed at The Roast, big and stuck as ever.

“Happy fifteenth anniversary, Toodi,” Dad belted out. “I know she’s not so easy on the eyes, and she don’t exactly run like the wind, so I won’t uncover her just yet. But underneath that plastic over yonder is a circa 1991 Roadstar Deluxe that I like to call The Roast.”

Mom’s eyes widened, and I hoped hard that Dad’s speech would get better from there. Thankfully, it did.

“Or maybe we should call her a wish come true,” he continued. “Just imagine, if you will, Toodi. You, me, and Cass. Out there on the road together in that RV…helping people. Like our own little storm rescue team.”

I found myself instantly wowed by Dad’s words. Rough around the edges as it might be, his plan set off a pinball game of possibilities in my head. Unfortunately, though, Mom’s version of wow looked more like she’d just bitten into a heart-shaped lemon.

“You mean the three of us,” she said. “Living in there?”

Dad gave her a slow unsure nod.

“Together,” he said.

“And you plan on getting that thing ready in the next two weeks?”

“Well, you did throw me for a loop with this Florida announcement,” said Dad. “But if I work on her every night, I believe The Roast could be roadworthy just in time.”

Mom crossed her arms. “Just how in the world do you plan to pay for this trip, Douglas?”

Dad sat on the edge of the workbench, pulled off his cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

“I’ve been putting aside a few bucks here and there,” he said. “A family can save a lot on bulk cereal, homemade haircuts, and potpies, you know.”

Dad recapped himself.

“Besides, frozen meat travels well,” he added. “I can borrow a freezer and sell on the road. That’ll pay for our gas and food. And we’ll be sleeping in The Roast.”

I looked from Dad to Mom to The Roast, picturing my family as yams squished together in a dented can, but it was okay. Dented cans are bad, but yams are good. And together is even better.

Dad shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

“So what do my ladies think?” He said it kind of practiced and clumsy, like it was his one line in the school play.

Mom’s blank expression was as hard to read as a wet newspaper.

“Don’t you see, Toodi?” Dad said. “I know that you want to do more. This is how we can all do more and be together as a family. We can all help those kids in Florida.”

Yes, yes, what Dad said! I thought, trying hard to hide my reaction until I could see how Mom was going to respond. It took tremendous control to not shoot Dad a toothy grin, like a dog must feel wagging only the tip of its tail. But then, all too quickly, Mom crossed her arms and added the period to the end of Dad’s speech.

“Douglas, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just don’t know if that’s going to work out. Can we maybe discuss this a little later?”

Then, for what seemed like forever, Mom and Dad looked to be having a no-blink contest.

Okay, well, maybe what Mom said, I thought. Perhaps she just has to think it all through before she says yes. No big deal. Even so, I still felt like wagging just the tip of my tail.

“Sure, Toodi,” Dad said, breaking the silence to dig a Dr Pepper from the cooler and press it to his flustery face. “We can discuss things later, I suppose.”

And that’s when I realized that feeling embarrassed for someone else can make you twice as squirmy as feeling embarrassed for yourself.

“Whoa,” Syd whispered to me. “He totally got shot down in flames.”

Looking at the stunned faces around the porch, I had to agree that it had been a very short trip from awes to awk.

“Bro, I believe you have really outdone yourself this time,” said Uncle Clay, like he was trying to chase the weirdness from the air with some kind words.

“Yes, Douglas, I think that is all just terribly exciting,” said Aunt Jo. “Looks like everyone just has to let the idea soak in a bit. In the meantime, why don’t we all get cozy and do some more catching up?”

And that’s just what most of us did for the rest of the afternoon. Aunt Jo, Mom, and I squeezed together onto the porch swing, and with my head on Mom’s lap, I listened to the hum of their conversation until the lightning bugs came on duty. Looking mostly deflated, my dad sat at Uncle Clay’s workbench, crushing one can after another in the vise. Uncle Clay kept him company until he slumped over the edge of his recliner in a snooze. And Syd spent the rest of his day throwing rocks, big and small, trying to knock Ye Olde Piñata Whacker off the roof. With every run of her long nails across my neck, Mom tickled away most of the pity I’d felt for Dad when his surprise fizzled. My head became filled with images of sitting on a beach after a long day of heroics, sorting through seashells under a chartreuse-and-goldenrod umbrella.

“Aunt Toodi, you’re like a lady version of Fearless Fenwick,” Syd said, dissolving my dreaming as he lobbed a broken brick for one final attempt at the Whacker.

“Syd Nordenhauer, you break a window and you’ll be scrubbing the bathroom tomorrow,” snapped Aunt Jo. “And with no help from Fearless Fenwick.”

“I think that’s our cue,” Mom said. “Jo, Syd. Thank you for a darling celebration. Please give Clay my thanks as well.”

She hung her sandals off her thumbs, so I hung my tennies off mine. We tiptoed together through the grass while Dad and Aunt Jo helped Uncle Clay into the house.

My mind flickered in as many directions as there were sands on the seashore as I considered how to go about talking Mom into taking a ten-year-old amateur rescuer with her to Florida, whether in a tin-can RV or not. And how if I didn’t convince her tonight, I would never hear the end of Syd making that buh-gert! chicken noise he does when I bail out of something.

Mom and I ooch-ooched barefoot across the sharp driveway rocks.

“You never whacked your storm cloud,” I said to her.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “That cloud will still be there tomorrow.”