Tom Reynolds

fireland:

My daughter says, “We need to talk.” I sit down and fold my arms and sigh.

She says: “Dad, you know how we got a bunch of peaches yesterday?” I say yeah I guess so, it’s not like I monitor the comings and goings of all the groceries (not true). She whispers: “OK well I ate three peaches.”

I start to get up, assuming this will go the way most of her stories go, i.e., a half-hour plotless stream-of-consciousness Woolf-esque yawnfest. She sits me back down and says: “I mean three whole peaches. Every part.”

My eyes widen in horror. You ate three peach pits, didn’t you! She nods and here come the waterworks. “What’s going to happen to me, Daddy?” she cries.

I tear away from her sweaty little grip. I ask the question.

“Yes!” she shrieks. “Yes I did just drink some water!”

I can’t bear to look at her as I tell her it’s too late, she already watered the seeds. Even now the baby trees are unfurling their tiny leaves in her belly. An hour from now, two at the most, they will burst forth in the grossest, goriest way imaginable. But at least she can die knowing that she’ll be providing her family with fresh, delicious peaches for years to come—absolutely free of charge.

“There must be something we can do!” she wails.

“All we can do is wait,” I say, picking Entertainment Weekly back up and flipping through the pages, pausing for a moment to examine a photograph of Rashida Jones.