A month goes by, and Fern squirrels away as much money as possible. She keeps her savings in a small safe under the counter, since she doesn't have a car to drive to the bank. She doesn't have enough, but she's on track to have enough to pay for the value of the empty lot by the end of next month, leaving an extra month of earnings she can use to convince the new owner to sell it to her when her lease is up.
Today is Tuesday, and she plans to spend her afternoon off at her parents' house doing laundry. Aunt Marcy and Marie are going shopping today, so Aunt Marcy picks up Fern and her dirty laundry from Freeman Market and drives her over to John and Marie's house.
Once there, Marcy and Marie take off in Marcy's car to go shopping, and Fern puts her first load of laundry in the washer before changing into work clothes and heading out to the back garage.
This time, the baby blue car is in front of the barn, and John is standing to the side of it filling a bucket with water from a garden hose. Fern knows that that means he's done working on the car and he's gonna wash it today so he can sell it.
"Heyo Fernando, ya gonna help me wash this here car?", John calls out to Fern.
Fern laughs and rolls her eyes at him and replies, "Sure."
"Where do you plan on selling this thing, Dad?", Fern asks.
"I don't plan on selling it," he replies vaguely.
Fern is puzzled.
"Then what're you gonna do with it?"
"I'm givin' it to you," he replies simply.
Fern immediately knows he's serious because he never jokes about things like this, and her eyes go wide.
"Are you serious?!"
"I'm as serious as a heart attack," he replies. Fern laughs and grins, pulling him into a hug.
"Thank you, Dad."
Normally, she would refuse and try to pay him for it, like the time when she was in high school. Fern and John built a fancy loft bed for her together, and she offered to pay for the plywood because it was the most expensive part of the project and she had a bunch of money saved up. He agreed, but when they bought it he beat her to the register and refused to let her pay him back afterwards. But that didn't stop her; Fern Freeman is very stubborn.
Fern paid him back the 200 dollars over the next 8 months, by patiently waiting for opportunities to sneak small amounts of cash into places he would find it and maybe assume that he had left it there. He never figured it out, and she never told him.
However, this time around, she doesn't have any money laying around to try and compensate him, so she just accepts the gift and thanks him.
John has another bucket filled with water by now, so they each pour soap into their water buckets, dip their sponges in, and start washing. Fern is glad for a job where she gets sprayed with cold water every few minutes because the weather is really hot, since it's the middle of August.
A couple of hours later the car is beautiful, all clean and waxed and shiny.
When Aunt Marcy comes to pick up Fern, she's shocked to see Fern sitting behind the wheel of her new car, with the clean laundry already sitting in the backseat.
Aunt Marcy stays for dinner, but Fern decides to go home to see an announcement about the release date of the next season of her favorite show. The announcement was scheduled to be posted while she was in the garage, and the Freemans don't have strong enough internet for her to check it there.
Fern drives home in her gorgeous car, pride written all over her face. She rolls the windows down to let her long hair get blown back by the wind and turns the radio to a station that plays songs from the 80's, because what's the point of driving an awesome old car if you don't play awesome old music while you drive it?
When she gets home, she parks the car and unlocks the back door of the store that leads into her apartment. Once she's on the WiFi, she checks for the announcement.
But when she reads it, it says the show has been cancelled, and won't be releasing the promised new season. She's devastated for a second, but then quickly brushes it off her shoulders, determined not to ruin her happy day.
Suddenly, she realizes that she hasn't been to a restaurant in over a month, because she didn't have a car and was always busy. She immediately knows that she's going to go spend the rest of her day off in a restaurant.
Fern hops back into the car and heads out to the closest American steakhouse restaurant. The food is delicious, and she's content. She needed this break after all of the really hard work she's been doing since Mr. McAllister sold the parking lot.