Lost Then Found (Summit Springs #1)

Chapter 1LARK

LARK

Running a small-town diner takes exactly three things: a griddle that doesn’t quit, coffee strong enough to resurrect the dead, and the God-given ability to keep a straight face when someone claims their neighbor’s husband’s vasectomy “reversed itself.” Again.

I’ve got all three this morning—coffee, chaos, and barely-there patience. Most days, it’s a toss-up which one holds out the longest.

The Bluebell hums with history. You can feel it in the walls, in the way the windows fog up when the griddle gets going, in the scent of cinnamon sugar and overcooked hash browns that never quite leaves.

It’s got plates that don’t match, forks that bend too easy, and a corner booth that’s heard more confessions than a priest. The cushions still remember the weight of every ass that sat too long waiting for pie, and they’ve got the attitude to prove it.

It smells like home.

Not the glossy kind. The real kind.

Burnt toast. Bad decisions. Something sweet cooling on the counter since sunrise. Whatever Dawn scorched yesterday lingering in the air like a memory no one wants to name.

The place runs too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, and the coffee pot makes noises like it’s dying slowly but refuses to give up out of spite.

There’s still a dent in the counter from when one of the local cowboys dropped a can of peaches back in ‘98. No one’s fixed it. We’ve just learned to work around it.

Honestly? That might be the most accurate metaphor for this whole damn diner.

It’s a little busted. A little stubborn.

But it’s mine.

I’ve made a few changes—new fry baskets, some upgraded appliances—but most of it? Still exactly how Alice left it. The keys were in a drawer. The deed had my name. Still don’t know how I earned it, but here I am anyway.

It’s just past six, that quiet stretch of morning where the town hasn’t shaken itself fully awake yet.

The sky’s still edged in lavender, like it hasn’t made up its mind about the day.

The neon sign over at Scooter’s General flickers half-heartedly to life and I can smell woodsmoke from a few ranches down the road.

My hands smell like yeast and old coffee grounds. I’m wearing a faded T-shirt that says Bite Me with a cartoon waffle flipping the bird.

I’m living the dream. Or something like it.

Dawn barrels through the kitchen door like the building owes her money.

Cherry red hair piled on top of her head, lipstick to match, and a scowl sharp enough to slice through drywall.

She doesn’t bother with a good morning—just grabs an apron off the hook like she’s been summoned by the gods of underpaid labor, then snatches a mug from the stack and holds it out.

“Coffee,” she barks, like it’s both a demand and a warning.

I don’t argue, I just fill it. Because caffeine is the only thing standing between Dawn and someone’s soul getting eviscerated before sunrise.

She takes a long sip, sighs like the caffeine just saved her life, and levels me with a look over the rim. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“You sleep?”

“Define sleep. ”

She hums. “Was it the sexy kind of insomnia or the spiraling-into-an-existential-crisis kind?”

“You ask too many questions for six a.m.”

She shrugs. “I ask because I care. Also because it’s entertaining. Your misery fuels me.”

I flip her off. She grins and sips her coffee like I just paid her a compliment.

To be fair, she’s not wrong. I barely slept. Spent half the night convincing myself that a spreadsheet could solve a financial crisis if I just stared at it hard enough. The other half went to watching freezer repair tutorials on YouTube like I was earning a degree in mechanical engineering.

But that’s a problem for Future Me. Present Me has cinnamon rolls to plate, eggs to scramble, and a minor breakdown to schedule for sometime around three if the lunch rush doesn’t kill me first.

Finn breezes by with a tub of silverware clutched to his chest, singing off-key like the main character in a musical no one asked for.

Nineteen, bleach-blond, perpetually running on Red Bull and vibes.

He thinks the early shift is beneath him, and he’s not wrong—but he also likes being able to afford gas and vape pods, so here we are.

I catch the tail end of whatever pop song he’s butchering and sigh. “Finn, please.”

He flashes a grin over his shoulder. “Please what? More falsetto?”

“Please don’t make me fire you before sunrise.”

He gasps like I’ve mortally wounded him, but the grin still lingers on his face as he disappears into the kitchen.

The front door swings open, letting in the scent of rain and sawdust and something else that smells vaguely like cow. A blast of cold air follows.

Mabel steps inside like she owns the place. Seventy-two, five feet tall, and somehow more intimidating than a tax audit. She’s been here longer than I’ve been alive. Alice hired her back when gas was under a dollar and Dolly still had big hair and bigger dreams.

“You look tired,” Mabel says, dropping a twenty-pound sack of flour like it weighs nothing and adjusting her glasses like she’s about to diagnose me with something chronic.

“Morning to you too, sunshine.”

She pats my cheek on her way past, all grandmotherly affection with the subtlety of a freight train. “I’ll get some biscuits going for you.”

And that —right there—is why Mabel’s got lifetime immunity around here. She could set the place on fire and we’d still name a breakfast special after her.

I turn to grab a fresh pot of coffee and nearly trip over Hudson, who’s somehow materialized at my side like a small, silent assassin.

“Jesus, kid,” I mutter, pressing a hand to my chest. “You ever consider wearing a bell?”

My son blinks up at me, deadpan. Unbothered. Brown eyes sharp beneath the disaster zone he calls a haircut—something he insists on styling himself now, which explains why it looks like he lost a fight with a leaf blower.

His skin’s already golden from baseball season—a soft hazelnut against my year-round ghostly complexion. He’s all elbows and knees these days, growing like he’s trying to outrun me.

Without saying a word, he slides onto the stool at the counter, baseball magazine in one hand, the other already reaching for a cinnamon roll.

“You were in my way,” he says, voice flat.

I raise a brow. “ You were standing directly behind me .”

He shrugs and takes a bite that’s at least three sizes too ambitious for his mouth. Cinnamon smears at the corner of his lip, but he doesn’t blink. Doesn’t pause. Just chews like he’s got a game to prep for and no time for nonsense.

He’s twelve. He’s insufferable. He’s my favorite person in the world.

I pour him a glass of orange juice, then ruffle his hair on instinct. He swats at my hand like I’ve just mortally offended him but misses by a mile—too focused on whatever stat line he’s studying now.

Baseball is his obsession and has had him in a chokehold since preschool. Player trades, batting averages, ERA rankings—he talks about them the way I talk about payroll: with reverence, anxiety, and the full understanding that one bad call can screw up everything.

He flips a page, muttering something about the Red Sox bullpen like it’s a personal betrayal and I just watch him for a second. Because he’s got my dad’s fire. My stubborn. Alice’s humor.

And I’d go to war for him a hundred times over.

I wipe my hands on my apron and lean against the counter. “Anything interesting today?”

Hudson flips a page, eyes still scanning. “The Cubs traded for a new shortstop.”

I hum like that means anything to me. “Bad trade or good trade?”

He finally looks up, expression pained. “Mom. You can’t just ask that. There are factors.”

“Factors,” I repeat.

“Yeah, like, how does he fit into their defensive strategy? Is he a long-term play or a short-term fix? And don’t even get me started on his OBP—”

I hold up a hand. “Oh, trust me, I won’t.”

Hudson sighs like I’m the emotional burden he never asked for—which is rich coming from someone who still leaves peanut butter fingerprints on the fridge handles like it’s his signature.

Behind me, a plate hits the pass-through with a clatter sharp enough to make my spine straighten. Scrambled eggs, served with a side of judgment.

Opal.

She doesn’t need to announce herself. She is the announcement.

The air shifts the second she steps into the room—like the diner knows better than to screw around when she’s behind the grill.

Her plates always land with the kind of precision that says she’s proud of them…

and also personally offended that someone had the audacity to order food this early.

“Order up,” she calls, wiping her hands on her apron like the eggs just insulted her mother. “And Lark? If you don’t get Finn to shut the hell up with that Backstreet Boys pop shit, I will drop a skillet on his foot. Accidentally. On purpose.”

I glance toward the kitchen, where Finn’s voice—high, nasal, deeply committed—is currently mauling a boy band ballad that should’ve stayed buried with low-rise jeans and bedazzled belt buckles.

I sigh, loudly. “Finn.”

His bleach-blond head pops into view like a whack-a-mole. “Yeah, boss?”

“I warned you.”

“You’re stifling my creative expression.”

“You’re about to be stifling your limp if Opal follows through.”

He mutters something about hostile work environments and disappears again, presumably to butcher another early 2000s classic.

Hudson, unfazed by the chaos, licks frosting off his fingers like he’s got nowhere else to be and slides off the stool. “I’m gonna go watch my movie.”

He wanders toward the back like he hasn’t just inhaled half a dozen cinnamon rolls and makes himself at home in the office—aka the sacred cave where my ancient fifteen-inch TV still manages to play his scratched-up Spider-Man: No Way Home DVD without glitching into static.

I don’t even have to look.