🔹 PART 8
“A health scare changes everything—again—and Emily must decide where her heart truly belongs.”
The first sign was the shaking.
Frank dropped a stack of clean plates one morning. Not just one or two—all of them. The sound was loud, startling, and sharp as a bell in the quiet before sunrise.
Emily rushed in from the storeroom.
He stood there, frozen, palms bleeding slightly from where a ceramic shard had sliced him. His face pale. His hand trembling like a leaf that couldn’t settle.
“Dad,” she breathed, grabbing a towel. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, trying to brush her off. “Just clumsy. Hands don’t always listen.”
But they both knew it wasn’t just clumsiness.
The urgent care visit took most of the afternoon.
Frank grumbled the whole way.
“They’re going to make me sit for two hours and send me home with Tylenol.”
But Emily insisted. She noticed the shake had been happening more often—when he held a spoon, when he tried to tie Lucky’s leash, when he wrote checks for the flour delivery.
The physician assistant was kind, middle-aged, and calm.
She ordered bloodwork. Asked questions. Ran some simple coordination tests.
Frank cracked jokes. But Emily saw the flicker of fear behind his eyes.
A week later, the results came.
Early-stage Parkinson’s.
It wasn’t devastating. Not yet. But it wasn’t nothing.
The doctor explained the slow progression, the meds, the physical therapy options. They discussed fall risks. Hand dexterity. Even diet.
Frank nodded a lot. Said very little.
Emily sat beside him, trying to stay still.
She felt the future shifting—slow, inevitable, heavy as pie dough with too much butter.
Back at home, Frank poured himself a glass of water with both hands. Emily watched him pretend not to be afraid.
“I can still work,” he said.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“I can still cook.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want people looking at me like I’m—” He trailed off, then slammed the glass on the counter. “Broken.”
“You’re not broken, Dad,” she said gently. “You’re just… different now.”
He stared out the window for a long time. Lucky laid his head on Frank’s slipper and didn’t move.
Finally, Frank whispered, “I don’t want to stop.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I can’t keep doing everything.”
“You’re not alone anymore,” she said. “Let me carry some of it.”
Over the next few days, Emily reorganized the kitchen—moving heavy items to waist-level shelves, installing rubber mats near the stove, writing down a log of new prescriptions taped inside the pantry door.
She also called the insurance company.
A long, drawn-out process with transfers and forms and “Your call is important to us.”
The private plan Frank had—barely enough. Outdated. With premiums that had quietly ballooned in recent years.
Emily jotted notes, bookmarked better options. She’d worked in claims. She knew the language, the loopholes, the hidden Medicare supplemental coverage options no one explained.
At night, she stayed up comparing financial assistance programs for small business owners, wondering if they could qualify for tax credits, or even veteran subsidies, since Frank had served in the reserves.
It was the first time she’d used her background and actually felt good about it.
Not to climb.
But to protect.
Colin came by one evening with Smokey in the passenger seat and two coffees in hand.
“I heard,” he said quietly, handing her a cup.
Emily nodded. “It’s early. The doctor said we have time. But it still feels like something cracked open.”
He leaned against the truck bed. “You gonna stay?”
She looked up sharply. “I am staying.”
He smiled gently. “I mean really stay. Plant roots. Start that pie truck. Build a future. Not just fill a space.”
Emily looked across the parking lot to the diner, bathed in golden light.
Frank sat in the window booth, Lucky at his feet, eating meatloaf like it was a sacred ritual.
“I think I already did,” she whispered.
That night, she sat with her father under the porch light.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Dangerous,” Frank teased.
She smiled. “About expansion.”
He blinked. “Of what?”
“The bakery side. The pie truck. The markets. Maybe even selling at the train station twice a week. Make Jessie’s mobile—like Mom always imagined.”
Frank rubbed his chin. “That’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“Do you want all that?”
“I do,” she said. “But not without you. I want you there. Even if you’re just peeling apples and telling bad jokes.”
He chuckled. “I can manage both.”
She laid her head on his shoulder, like she hadn’t done since she was a child.
“I want to do something that feels like both of you,” she whispered. “You and Mom. Something lasting.”
“You are that,” he said softly. “You always were.”
They worked out a rhythm.
Frank handled mornings. Emily managed evenings and orders. Lucky supervised, ever noble in his duties.
Customers noticed.
Some asked about the tremor. Some didn’t.
But no one turned away.
In fact, more came.
More pies sold.
More names on the chalkboard.
And every Thursday night, they made a raspberry one.
For her mother.
For the train station.
For the memory of a girl who thought sugar could keep sadness away.
One Saturday morning, as Emily packed pies into the new food trailer—a hand-painted sign reading Jessie’s on Wheels swinging in the breeze—Frank sat nearby on a folding chair, sun on his face, a cup of tea in his hand.
“Train pies, huh?” he murmured.
“Yeah,” Emily said, tightening the last strap. “Heading out in ten.”
“Got your list?”
“Yep.”
“Got your dog?”
She turned—and Lucky was already waiting by the trailer door.
She laughed. “Got everything.”
Frank smiled. “Go make ‘em feel like home.”
She looked back at him, heart swelling with fear and love and pride and something she couldn’t quite name.
“Always,” she whispered.
Then she climbed into the truck, turned the key, and drove.
Into the morning.
Into the market.
Into her mother’s dream.
And her own.
TO BE CONTINUED…
👉 Part 9: “An unexpected loss forces Emily to take the wheel—alone—for the first time.”