Another week goes by, Freeman Market runs smoothly, Fern begins turning a little bit of profit, and all is well, excluding the phone call in the middle of the night from Emily.
Emily is Fern's high school best friend, and she lives in Florida right now, working as a Cinderella for Disney World. She always loved Disney when they were growing up and she's living her dream now just like Fern.
Emily called her at 3 in the morning because she's going through a bad breakup. Fern was grumpy at first, but later she was grateful that Emily called her for something like that, because it would be easy for them to lose touch. She talked Emily through it and went back to sleep, and called her a few times as the week went on to chat and make sure she was OK.
Fern knew that she would have to go to her parents' house to do her laundry, so she called her mom to tell her she was coming and borrowed Aunt Marcy's car for the day.
She pulls into her parents' driveway. They have a modest home that her dad built with his own hands after she had graduated high school. The big pole barn off to the side and behind the house has the door open, and she can hear the radio from there, so she knows her dad's in there working on something.
John Freeman has always been really handy, and his pole barn is the culmination of everything he has ever wished for. It's far enough from the house that he can blast the music and it won't bother Fern's mother, Marie, and it has tons of room for all his tools and projects.
Fern grabs her basket full of dirty laundry from the trunk of Aunt Marcy's car and walks up to the house. She doesn't bother knocking and instead walks in and announces her presence. Her mother responds from the living room, where she sits on the couch watching tv. Marie Freeman is Marcy's older sister by 3 years.
Fern and her mother chat for a few minutes, talking about how the store's going and how many loads of laundry Fern's gonna wash. Then Fern puts her laundry in the wash, changes into clothes she doesn't mind getting dirty, and heads out the back door to the pole barn.
When she walks in the doorway she hears Metallica[1] blasting and sees a baby blue Dodge Charger with the hood popped.
John slides out from under the car and grins at Fern.
"Hey Fernando, how's it goin'?"
She rolls her eyes at hearing him use that ridiculous nickname.
"Where'd you get this car?", she asks.
"Well, George over at the auction house gave me a tip on it and I went over there about a week ago, I got it for a thousand bucks. It needs a new transmission so I ordered that and I'm waitin' for it to come, I gotta run into town tomorrow to pick up new brake pads, oil, and an oil filter. I'm just finishing up replacing a fuel line right now. Hand me that crescent wrench, will ya?"
Fern grabs the wrench and joins him under the car. They work on the car for the rest of the night, and Fern goes into the house occasionally to swap her laundry between the washer and the dryer. Marie calls them in for dinner so they go in the house, shower, eat dinner, and pick out a movie to watch together, before Fern heads home with a basket full of clean laundry.
[1] Metallica is a popular American heavy metal band