🔹 PART 5
“An old voicemail leads Emily to a truth her father never meant for her to hear.”
The rain had stopped by morning, leaving everything soaked but washed clean.
Emily wiped the diner windows with vinegar and newspaper—just like her mom used to do—while Frank restocked the pie case. They moved around each other in a rhythm that surprised them both.
Neither said it out loud, but something had shifted.
That afternoon, when Frank took Lucky home for his usual nap, Emily stayed behind to catch up on inventory. She needed quiet. A break from routine. Time to think.
She cleaned the office—really cleaned it. Moved boxes, organized folders, even dusted behind the decades-old microwave no one dared touch.
That’s when she found it.
A black plastic answering machine.
Unplugged. Tucked away under an old rag towel and a broken fan blade.
Curious, she plugged it into the wall socket. The light blinked once, then red.
“1 New Message.”
The date stamp read April 19, 2021.
Emily hesitated. Her thumb hovered over the play button.
Then she pressed it.
“Hey, Frank… it’s Marla.”
Emily knew the voice. Marla Carver. Her old middle school teacher. A regular at the diner—always asking about the tuna melt, always dressed like she was headed to church.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but someone ought to… Emily called me last night. From Denver. She was crying. Said she lost a friend, lost her job. Said she couldn’t call you. She was ashamed. She didn’t know how to come home.”
Silence.
“I told her you’d still have that booth waiting. That you never stopped saving her seat.”
The message ended.
Emily stood still in the dim office, the dust floating in narrow beams of light.
She didn’t remember calling Marla that night. But now, hearing it, she could picture it.
That awful Denver apartment. The wine bottle half-finished. The email from HR sitting like poison in her inbox. Her voice, cracked and small: “I can’t call him. He thinks I made it. I don’t want him to know I didn’t.”
And Marla—gracious, kind Marla—had done what her own father hadn’t.
She’d answered.
Frank returned around 3 p.m., Lucky at his heels and his flannel collar wet from walking too close to puddles.
Emily was sitting at the booth. The answering machine rested beside her.
He froze.
“You kept it,” she said quietly.
Frank nodded. “I didn’t know you’d find it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me she called?”
He took a long breath, sat across from her, and stared out the window.
“Because you didn’t want me to know,” he said. “And I figured… maybe someday you’d come when you were ready, not because I came chasing.”
Emily’s throat tightened. “I was so lost.”
“I know,” he said, voice low. “But I also knew you were strong. I had to trust you’d find your way.”
She blinked fast. “You kept the message.”
“I listened to it more than once,” he admitted. “On the hard nights. When the pie case was full but the seats were empty.”
She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For leaving the wrong way. For thinking you were small because you never left town. For measuring success by how far I ran.”
Frank’s jaw clenched. “I never needed you to be big, Em. Just to be happy.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “But I’m getting there.”
They closed early that night.
Emily made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup—burned the edges, just like she used to.
Lucky curled on the worn rug while Frank flipped through a photo album she’d pulled off the shelf. Yellowed pictures. Lake days. Her mom in sun hats and summer dresses.
“She made everything feel soft,” Emily said.
Frank nodded. “She taught me to say I love you without saying it.”
Emily closed the album gently. “I think I finally heard it.”
The next morning, Gerald returned to the diner with a bandage on his arm and a hospital bracelet still half-attached.
Everyone clapped.
Emily brought him free eggs and a hug.
“You saved me,” he said to her.
She shook her head. “You saved me right back.”
After breakfast rush, Frank handed Emily a check register and an envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Back tax receipts. Old insurance forms. And the account keys.”
Emily stared at him.
“You’re giving me the books?”
Frank scratched behind Lucky’s ear.
“I’m thinking I’ll do mornings. You take evenings. Or we run it together. Like a shift baton.”
“You trust me with this?”
“I do,” he said. “And you don’t have to stay forever. But if you want to—”
“I do,” she cut in.
He smiled. “I guess this place always was meant for two.”
Emily glanced down.
“Three,” she corrected, smiling at Lucky.
That evening, as dusk settled over Galesburg, Emily wiped down the counter, set two plates of pot roast, and called toward the back.
“Dinner’s up!”
Frank shuffled in, wiping his hands. Lucky trotted behind.
Emily slid into the booth seat she used to avoid. Frank sat across from her, groaning as he lowered himself slowly—his knees still stubborn after all these years.
They clinked their forks in a makeshift toast.
“To small lives,” she said.
“To full hearts,” he replied.
Lucky barked once.
And for the first time in a long time, they all ate together—with no apology, no pretense, and nothing left unsaid.
TO BE CONTINUED…
👉 Part 6: “Emily discovers an unopened letter in her mother’s handwriting—and a dream she never knew she had.”