Page 24 of Peach Tree Family

"All right then, I'll just come along to make doubly sure," Seth said with a wink and Ace smiled.

Theo didn't say anything either way and Seth figured that was the best he could hope for.

When they got to the house there was a van from the power company in front.

"What does it mean?" Ace asked. He seemed kind of worried and Theo didn't get too excited either.

"We'll find out if we're getting power, I guess," Theo said as he parked, shut off the engine and went to find the man from the power company.

"Video games!" Ace said as he jumped out of the truck. Now he was seeing the upside.

"You got homework you need to do?" Seth asked, not that he was in charge of him or anything.

"Theo already asked me. I did it with DJ. But Ry wanted to do pencil fighting." Ace did some sword fighting moves.

"Sounds like fun."

"Yeah, but DJ and me did it after we finished," Ace said.

"You're good guys. You know what else you'll have if you get power? A working fridge," Seth said holding up the takeout bags from Peach Tree Cafe.

"I forgot about the food," Ace said.

"Let's take it inside." He and Ace went in through to kitchen door and Seth put the bags on the counter. Suddenly the light inside the open fridge came on and Ace got startled and jumped, then he screamed, "We have power! Power!"

"Do we high five now?" Seth asked and Ace hit his hand hard.

They saw the van from the power company drive away and then Theo came in and Ace high fived him too.

"You're happy," Theo said.

Ace gave him the reason. "Video games!"

"I'm thinking we eat first. Maybe we can heat up some of this," Seth said taking the food he brought out of the bag. Evening was already coming on and Ace went around to see which lights worked.

"Too bad we don't have a microwave," Theo said, but then it turned out they didn't have an oven either. Only the range worked.

Theo had bought a frying pan that came in handy to heat up the rice and then the spicy chicken.

"This is the chicken that goes into the jambalaya. Wish I had some of that adouille sausage for you guys," Seth said.

"This is plenty," Theo told him. He had only said a few words to Seth. That made him worry that Theo might kick him out or tell him he wasn't welcome to go with them to Ashbury after all.

He didn't say anything like that while they ate, but maybe he was waiting until Ace was asleep. With their dinner done, Seth got out three pieces of pie and told Ace and Theo what Mrs. Del Rio said about them, "Something sweet for you sweet boys."

"We're sweet?" Ace said looking from Seth to Theo like he was doubting their sweetness.

"Mrs. Del Rio is just a nice lady," Theo told him.

They ate the pie while Theo checked over Ace's homework. "Good work," he told him.

"I get to play video games as much as I want?" Ace said, his eyes big and bright.

"You get half hour and maybe we'll watch something too," Theo told him and that was plenty good enough for Ace.

"Yes!" Ace said and strutted all around. He was happy and it seemed to Seth that Theo was in a better mood too now that they had electricity. He was plugging in his laptop and other chargers, and Seth could tell all that stuff was important to him. And here he was without even a phone.

They hadn't talked about it, so Seth wanted to make sure he was welcome to stay the night. He was pretty certain that Theo would have told him already if he wasn't, not kicked him out after dark. Seth still mentioned it but lowered his voice so Ace couldn't hear.

---